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The electoral threshold is the minimum share of the vote which a political party requires to secure any representation. This limit can operate in various ways. For example: In party-list proportional representation systems, an election threshold is a rule that requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes (e.g. 5%), either nationally or within a particular district, to obtain any seats in the parliament. If there are a number of multi-member constituencies, each constituency will have a quota, i.e. a minimum percentage of the votes in that constituency to be awarded one seat. One can define two boundaries: a threshold of representation is the minimum vote share that might yield a party a seat (under the most favorable circumstances for the party), while the threshold of exclusion is the maximum vote share that could be insufficient to yield a party a seat (under the least favorable circumstances for the party). Lijphart suggested calculating the informal threshold as the mean of these.〔Arendt Lijphart (1994), ''Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945–1990.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 25–56〕 The effect of an electoral threshold is to deny representation to small parties or to force them into coalitions, with the presumption of rendering the election system more stable by keeping out radical factions. It is also argued that in the absence of a ranked ballot system supporters of minor parties are effectively disenfranchised and denied the right of representation by someone of their choosing. ==Legal election thresholds in various countries== In Poland's Sejm, Germany's Bundestag and New Zealand's House of Representatives, the threshold is 5%. However, in Germany and New Zealand, if a party wins a minimum number of directly elected seats—three in Germany and one in New Zealand—the threshold does not apply (though the directly elected seats are kept regardless). The threshold is 3.25% in Israel's Knesset (it was 1% before 1992, 1.5% in 1992–2003 and 2% until March 2014), and 10% in the Turkish parliament. In Poland, ethnic minority parties do not have to reach the threshold level to get into the parliament, and so there is always a small German minority representation in the Sejm. In Romania, for the ethnic minority parties there is a different threshold than for the national parties that run for the Chamber of Deputies. There are also countries such as Portugal, South Africa, Finland, the Netherlands, and the Republic of Macedonia, that have proportional representation systems without a legal threshold, although the Netherlands has a rule that the first seat can never be a remainder seat, which means that there is an effective threshold of 100% divided by the total number of seats. In the Slovenian parliamentary elections of 1992 and 1996 the threshold was set at 3 parliamentary seats. This meant that the parties needed to win about 3.2% of the votes in order to pass the threshold. In 2000 the threshold was raised to 4% of the votes. In Sweden, there is a nationwide threshold of 4%, but if a party reaches 12% in one election district, it will take part in the seat allocation for that district. However, through the 2014 election, nobody has been elected based on the 12% rule. In Norway the nationwide electoral threshold of 4% applies only to leveling seats. A party with sufficient local support may still win the regular district seats, even if the party fails to meet the threshold. Following the 2009 election, the Liberal Party won two seats in this manner. In Australia, which uses a single transferable vote proportional representation system, they avoided the need for a formal electoral threshold by establishing smaller electorates with each multi-member electorate returning fewer members of a Parliament and as such requiring a higher quota percentage in order to be elected. As Australia also uses a ranked voting system supporters of minor parties are not disenfranchised as their votes are redistributed to other candidates according to the voter's nominated order of preference which can then form part of another candidates winning quota. In elections to the Danish Folketing, the electoral threshold is two percent of the valid votes cast in the election. In the United States, as the majority of elections are conducted under the first-past-the-post system, legal election thresholds do not apply in the actual voting. However, several states have threshold requirements for parties to obtain automatic ballot access to the next general election without having to submit voter-signed petitions. The threshold requirements have no practical bearing on the two main political parties (the Republican and Democratic parties) as they easily meet the requirements, but have come into play for minor parties such as the Green and Libertarian parties. The threshold rules also apply for independent candidates to obtain ballot access. Countries can have more than one threshold. Germany, as mentioned earlier, has a "regular" threshold of 5%, but a party winning three constituency seats in the Bundestag can gain additional representation even if it has achieved under 5% of the total vote. Most multiple-threshold systems are still in the proposal stage. For example, in Canada, one proposal to reform the electoral system would see a 5% national threshold, 1% of the vote and 1 seat in the House of Commons, or 2% nationally and 15% of the vote in any one province. Election thresholds are often implemented with the intention of bringing stability to the political system. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe recommends for parliamentary elections a threshold not higher than 3%.〔(Resolution 1547 (2007), para. 58 )〕 However a 2007 European Court of Human Rights decision, ''Yumak and Sadak v. Turkey'', held that Turkey's 10% threshold did not violate Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR (right to free elections).〔Turkish Daily News, 31 January 2007, (European court rules election threshold not violation )〕 Because Turkey has no limits for independent candidates, the 10% rule has to some extent been circumvented by parties running candidates as independents.〔Turkish Daily News, 24 July 2007, (Here come the independents )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「election threshold」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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