The Middenstandspartij (in Dutch: Middenstandspartij , MP) was a Dutch political party representing middle class interests. It played only a marginal role in Dutch politics.
55-513: The MP was founded by Abraham Staalman a businessman from Amsterdam. The 1918 elections were the first election in the Netherlands which used a system of proportional representation . With about 12,500 votes (1% of the votes) the MP won one seat, as did several other one or two person parties. After the elections the election law became more restrictive. Between 1918 and 1921, the MP cooperated in
110-589: A majority of 52 seats. The liberal parties lost the most seats. While in 1917, two of the liberal parties, the Liberal Union and the League of Free Liberals , had won 31 seats, they were now reduced to 10 seats. Together with three smaller liberal parties, liberals now held only 15 seats in the House of representatives. The fragmentation of the House was caused by the low electoral threshold of just 0.5%, with
165-616: A majority of votes, but nevertheless won an outright majority of seats due to a record number of votes for parties which failed to reach the threshold, including the Free Democratic Party (the CSU's coalition partner in the previous state parliament). In Germany in 2013 15.7 percent voted for a party that did not meet the 5 percent threshold. In contrast, elections that use the ranked voting system can take account of each voter's complete indicated ranking preference. For example,
220-624: A much lower wasted vote compared to the other years. In the Russian parliamentary elections in 1995 , with a threshold excluding parties under 5 percent, more than 45 percent of votes went to parties that failed to reach the threshold. In 1998, the Russian Constitutional Court found the threshold legal, taking into account limits in its use. After the first implementation of the threshold in Poland in 1993 34.4 percent of
275-458: A particular electoral district, to obtain seats in the legislature. In single transferable voting , the election threshold is called the quota, and it is possible to achieve it by receiving first-choice votes alone or by a combination of first-choice votes and votes transferred from other candidates based on lower preferences. In mixed-member-proportional (MMP) systems, the election threshold determines which parties are eligible for top-up seats in
330-434: 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 seat under the least favorable circumstances. Arend Lijphart suggested calculating the informal threshold as the mean of these. The electoral threshold is a barrier to entry for political parties to the political competition. The Parliamentary Assembly of
385-534: A party winning an outright majority of seats without winning an outright majority of votes, the sort of outcome that a proportional voting system is supposed to prevent. For instance, the Turkish AKP won a majority of seats with less than 50 percent of votes in three consecutive elections (2002, 2007 and 2011). In the 2013 Bavarian state election , the Christian Social Union failed to obtain
440-511: A party wins a directly elected seat, the threshold does not apply. The threshold is 3.25 percent in Israel's Knesset (it was 1% before 1992, 1.5% from 1992 to 2003 and 2% form 2003 to 2014) and 7 percent 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 often a small German minority representation in
495-505: A party with ten percent of the general vote is expected to easily achieve the threshold in at least one district even if not in others. Most STV systems used today set the number of votes for the election of most members at the Droop quota , which in a six-member district is 14 percent of the votes cast in the district. Carey and Hix note that increasing the DM past six lowers the natural threshold in
550-621: A predictable "natural" or "hidden" threshold. At a normal election, each state returns six senators and the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory each return two. (For the states, the number is doubled in a double dissolution election.) As such, the quota for election (as determined through the Droop quota) is 14.3 percent or 33.3 percent respectively. (For the states, the quota for election
605-419: A seat each and the proportion of wasted votes reduced slightly to 21 percent, but it again increased to 29 percent in 2010 due to an increase in number of participating parties. These statistics take no account of the wasted votes for a party which is entitled to more than three seats but cannot claim those seats due to the three-seat cap. Electoral thresholds can produce a spoiler effect , similar to that in
SECTION 10
#1732798294443660-770: A separate list for the elections (some times combined with the Neutral Party). In 1929 , this special position was abolished and Staalman left the Liberal State Party to found the Middle Party for City and Country , which won one seat in the 1929 elections. In 1971, the New Middle Party entered in the elections, which saw itself as a continuation of the Middle Class Party. The MP was a typical special interest party. Its main goal
715-620: Is applied across the whole legislative body. The German Federal Constitutional Court rejected an electoral threshold for the European Parliament in 2011 and in 2014 based on the principle of one person, one vote . In the case of Turkey, in 2004 the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe declared the threshold of 10 percent to be manifestly excessive and asked Turkey to lower it. On 30 January 2007
770-415: Is halved in a double dissolution election.) However, as STV is a ranked voting system , candidates who receive less than the quota for election in primary votes can still end up being elected if they amass sufficient preferences to reach the Droop quota. Therefore, the sixth (or, at a double dissolution election, the 12th) Senate seat in each state is often won by a party that received considerably less than
825-414: Is not a strict barrier to entry: any party or independent who wins a constituency is entitled to that seat regardless if it has passed the threshold. Parties representing registered ethnic minorities have no threshold and receive proportional representation should they gain the mathematical minimum number of votes nationally to do so. The 2021 election demonstrated the exception for ethnic minority parties:
880-401: Is the chair of the parliamentary party and the lijsttrekker is the party's top candidate in the general election; these posts are normally taken by the party's leader. The party drew most of its support from Amsterdam , where Abraham Staal was a well-known figure. The party also had a seat in the city's municipal council. 1918 Dutch general election General elections were held in
935-407: Is the minimum share of votes that a candidate or political party requires before they become entitled to representation or additional seats in a legislature . This limit can operate in various ways; for example, in party-list proportional representation systems where an electoral threshold requires that a party must receive a specified minimum percentage of votes (e.g. 5%), either nationally or in
990-439: Is the smallest possible number of votes. That means that in a district with four seats slightly more than 20 percent of the votes will guarantee a seat. Under more favorable circumstances, the party can still win a seat with fewer votes. The most important factor in determining the natural threshold is the number of seats to be filled by the district. Other factors are the seat allocation formula ( Saint-Laguë , D'Hondt or Hare ),
1045-410: Is to deny representation to small parties or to force them into coalitions. Such restraint is intended to make the election system more stable by keeping out fringe parties. Proponents of a stiff electoral threshold say that having a few seats in a legislature can significantly boost the profile of a party and that providing representation and possibly veto power for a party that receives only 1 percent of
1100-588: The 2002 elections as many as 45 percent of votes were cast for parties which failed to reach the threshold and were thus unrepresented in the parliament. All parties which won seats in 1999 failed to cross the threshold, thus giving Justice and Development Party 66 percent of the seats. In the Ukrainian elections of March 2006 , for which there was a threshold of 3 percent (of the overall vote, i.e. including invalid votes), 22 percent of voters were effectively disenfranchised , having voted for minor candidates. In
1155-462: The 2021 Czech legislative election 19.76 percent of voters were not represented. In the 2022 Slovenian parliamentary election 24 percent of the vote went to parties which did not reach the 4 percent threshold including several former parliamentary parties ( LMŠ , PoS , SAB , SNS and DeSUS ). In the Philippines where party-list seats are only contested in 20 percent of the 287 seats in
SECTION 20
#17327982944431210-656: The European Court of Human Rights ruled by five votes to two and on 8 July 2008, its Grand Chamber by 13 votes to four that the former 10 percent threshold imposed in Turkey does not violate the right to free elections (Article 3 of Protocol 1 of the ECHR ). It held, however, that this same threshold could violate the Convention if imposed in a different country. It was justified in the case of Turkey in order to stabilize
1265-570: The Netherlands on 3 July 1918. They were the first elections held after a series of reforms that introduced universal male suffrage and pure proportional representation , replacing the previous two-round system in single member constituencies. This change was known as the Pacification of 1917 , which also included the introduction of state financing of religious schools, and led to the start of consociational democracy . The change in
1320-776: The South Schleswig Voters' Association entered the Bundestag with just 0.1 percent of the vote nationally as a registered party for Danish and Frisian minorities in Schleswig-Holstein . The 5% threshold also applies to all state elections, while there is no threshold for European Parliament elections. German electoral law also includes the Grundmandatsklausel ('basic mandate clause'), which grants full proportional seating to parties winning at least three constituencies as if they had passed
1375-443: The first-past-the-post voting system , in which minor parties unable to reach the threshold take votes away from other parties with similar ideologies. Fledgling parties in these systems often find themselves in a vicious circle : if a party is perceived as having no chance of meeting the threshold, it often cannot gain popular support; and if the party cannot gain popular support, it will continue to have little or no chance of meeting
1430-424: The parliamentary election held under the same system, fewer voters supported minor parties and the total percentage of disenfranchised voters fell to about 12 percent. In Bulgaria, 24 percent of voters cast their ballots for parties that would not gain representation in the elections of 1991 and 2013 . In the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election , 28.47 percent of all valid votes did not gain representation. In
1485-552: The power index in the assembly, which may have dramatic implications for coalition-building. The number of wasted votes changes from one election to another, here shown for New Zealand. The wasted vote changes depending on voter behavior and size of effective electoral threshold, for example in 2005 New Zealand general election every party above 1 percent received seats due to the electoral threshold in New Zealand of at least one seat in first-past-the-post voting, which caused
1540-406: The Council of Europe recommends for parliamentary elections a threshold not higher than three percent. For single transferable vote , to produce representation for parties with approximately ten percent of the vote or more, John M. Carey and Simon Hix recommend a district magnitude of approximately six or more in the districts used. Support for a party is not homogenous across an electorate, so
1595-588: The Droop quota in primary votes. For example, at the 2022 election , the sixth Senate seat in Victoria was won by the United Australia Party even though it won only 4 percent of the primary vote in that state. Germany's mixed-member proportional system has a threshold of 5 percent of party-list votes for full proportional representation in the Bundestag in federal elections. However, this
1650-542: The European Parliament . In the Cyprus EU constituency , the legal threshold is 1.8 percent, explicitly replacing the threshold for national election which is 3.6 percent. Cyprus only has 6 MEPs , raising the natural threshold. An extreme example of this was in the 2004 EU Parliament elections , where For Europe won 36,112 votes (10.80%) and EDEK won 36,075 votes (10.79%); despite both parties crossing
1705-574: The Parliament with just 34.28 percent of the vote, with only one opposition party ( CHP , which by itself failed to pass threshold in 1999) and 9 independents. Other dramatic events can be produced by the loophole often added in mixed-member proportional representation (used throughout Germany since 1949, New Zealand since 1993): there the threshold rule for party lists includes an exception for parties that won 3 (Germany) or 1 (New Zealand) single-member districts . The party list vote helps calculate
Middle Class Party - Misplaced Pages Continue
1760-554: 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 Finland, Namibia, North Macedonia, Portugal and South Africa that have proportional representation systems without a legal threshold. The Senate of Australia is elected using single transferable vote (STV) and does not use an electoral threshold or have
1815-517: The desirable number of MPs for each party. Major parties can help minor ally parties overcome the hurdle, by letting them win one or a few districts: The failure of one party to reach the threshold not only deprives their candidates of office and their voters of representation; it also changes the power index in the assembly, which may have dramatic implications for coalition-building. There has been cases of tries to attempts to circumvent thresholds: Electoral thresholds can sometimes seriously affect
1870-480: The district only in small increments and deceasingly each time. In Poland's Sejm , Lithuania's Seimas , Germany's Bundestag , Kazakhstan's Mäjilis and New Zealand's House of Representatives , the threshold is 5 percent (in Poland, additionally 8 percent for a coalition of two or more parties submitting a joint electoral list and in Lithuania, additionally 7 percent for coalition). However, in New Zealand, if
1925-847: The electoral system led to major changes in the political makeup of the House of Representatives . The confessional right-wing parties, the General League of Roman Catholic Electoral Associations , the Anti-Revolutionary Party and the Christian Historical Union , together won 50 seats. Along with two Christian splinter parties (the Christian Democratic Party and the Christian Social Party ) they were able to gain
1980-495: The electoral threshold, even if they did not. This rule is intended to benefit parties with regional appeal. This clause has come into effect in two elections: in 1994 , when the Party of Democratic Socialism , which had significantly higher support in the former East Germany , won 4.4 percent of party-list votes and four constituencies, and in 2021, when its successor, Die Linke , won 4.9 percent and three constituencies. This clause
2035-406: The legislative chamber. Some MMP systems still allow a party to retain the seats they won in electoral districts even when they did not meet the threshold nationally; in some of these systems, top-up seats are allocated to parties that do not achieve the electoral threshold if they have won at least one district seat or have met some other minimum qualification. The effect of this electoral threshold
2090-450: The lower house, the effect of the 2 percent threshold is increased by the large number of parties participating in the election, which means that the threshold is harder to reach. This led to a quarter of valid votes being wasted, on average and led to the 20 percent of the seats never being allocated due to the 3-seat cap In 2007 , the 2 percent threshold was altered to allow parties with less than 1 percent of first preferences to receive
2145-528: The majority of elections are conducted under the first-past-the-post system , legal electoral 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
2200-853: The neutral parliamentary party, with four other one or two seat parties, namely the Peasants' League , the Economic League , the Neutral Party and the Alliance for Democratization of the Army . The parliamentary party was led by former minister Willem Treub . In 1921 several of these parties, including the Middle Class Party merged into the Liberal State Party , together with two larger liberal parties. The Middle Class Party continued as an independent part of this new party, with
2255-409: The number of contestant political parties and the size of the assembly. Generally, smaller districts leads to a higher proportion of votes needed to win a seat and vice versa. The lower bound (the threshold of representation or the percentage of the vote that allows a party to earn a seat under the most favorable circumstances) is more difficult to calculate. In addition to the factors mentioned earlier,
Middle Class Party - Misplaced Pages Continue
2310-493: The number of votes cast for smaller parties are important. If more votes are cast for parties that do not win any seat, that will mean a lower percentage of votes needed to win a seat. In some elections, the natural threshold may be higher than the legal threshold. In Spain, the legal threshold is 3 percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—with most constituencies having less than 10 deputies, including Soria with only two. Another example of this effect are elections to
2365-505: The popular vote did not gain representation. There had been a similar situation in Turkey , which had a 10 percent threshold, easily higher than in any other country. The justification for such a high threshold was to prevent multi-party coalitions and put a stop to the endless fragmentation of political parties seen in the 1960s and 1970s. However, coalitions ruled between 1991 and 2002, but mainstream parties continued to be fragmented and in
2420-501: The regular district seats, even if the party fails to meet the threshold. For example, the 2021 election saw the Green Party and Christian Democratic Party each win three district seats, and Patient Focus winning one district seat despite missing the threshold. In Slovenia, the threshold was set at 3 parliamentary seats during parliamentary elections in 1992 and 1996. This meant that the parties needed to win about 3.2 percent of
2475-549: The relationship between the percentages of the popular vote achieved by each party and the distribution of seats. The proportionality between seat share and popular vote can be measured by the Gallagher index while the number of wasted votes is a measure of the total number of voters not represented by any party sitting in the legislature. The failure of one party to reach the threshold not only deprives their candidates of office and their voters of representation; it also changes
2530-469: 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. Regions: 3% European parliament: 4% The electoral threshold for elections to the European Parliament varies for each member state, a threshold of up to 5 percent is applied for individual electoral districts, no threshold
2585-477: The smallest party, the Alliance for the Democratisation of the Army , managing to win a seat with only 6,828 votes. The elections were the first in which Dutch women could stand for election, despite still not being allowed to vote. Suze Groeneweg was elected as the first female member of the House of Representatives. Electoral threshold The electoral threshold , or election threshold ,
2640-404: The threshold in 1999 , passed it again: DYP received only 9.55 percent of the popular vote, MHP received 8.34 percent, GP 7.25 percent, DEHAP 6.23 percent, ANAP 5.13 percent, SP 2.48 percent and DSP 1.22 percent. The aggregate number of wasted votes was an unprecented 46.33 percent (14,545,438). As a result, Erdoğan 's AKP gained power, winning more than two-thirds of the seats in
2695-419: The threshold by a high margin and a difference of only 37 votes, only "For Europe" returned an MEP to the European Parliament. Other examples include: An extreme example occurred in Turkey following the 2002 Turkish general election , where almost none of the 550 incumbent MPs were returned. This was a seismic shift that rocked Turkish politics to its foundations. None of the political parties that had passed
2750-448: The threshold. As well as acting against extremist parties, it may also adversely affect moderate parties if the political climate becomes polarized between two major parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In such a scenario, moderate voters may abandon their preferred party in favour of a more popular party in the hope of keeping the even less desirable alternative out of power. On occasion, electoral thresholds have resulted in
2805-517: The volatile political situation over recent decades. The number of seats in each electoral district creates a "hidden" natural threshold (also called an effective, or informal threshold). The number of votes that means that a party is guaranteed a seat can be calculated by the formula ( total number of votes number of seats + 1 + ε {\displaystyle {\frac {\mbox{total number of votes}}{{\mbox{number of seats}}+1}}+\varepsilon } ) where ε
SECTION 50
#17327982944432860-423: The vote is not appropriate. However, others argue that in the absence of a ranked ballot or proportional voting system at the district level, supporters of minor parties, barred from top-up seats, are effectively disenfranchised and denied the right to be represented by someone of their choosing. Two boundaries can be defined – a threshold of representation is the minimum vote share that might yield
2915-532: The votes in order to pass the threshold. In 2000, the threshold was raised to 4 percent of the votes. In Sweden, there is a nationwide threshold of 4 percent for the Riksdag , but if a party reaches 12 percent in any electoral constituency, it will take part in the seat allocation for that constituency. As of the 2022 election, nobody has been elected based on the 12 percent rule. In the United States, as
2970-568: Was repealed by a 2023 law intended to reduce the size of the Bundestag . However, after complaints from Die Linke and the Christian Social Union , the Federal Constitutional Court ruled a threshold with no exceptions was unconstitutional. The court provisionally reintroduced the basic mandate clause for the 2025 federal election . In Norway, the nationwide electoral threshold of 4 percent applies only to leveling seats . A party with sufficient local support may still win
3025-448: Was to represent the interests of the middle class, those "stuck between the proletariat and capital". It advocated progressive taxation , reduced government interference and bureaucracy, recognition of employers' organizations and equal pension-rights for businessmen and workers. This table show the MP's results in elections to the House of Representatives and Senate , as well as the party's political leadership. The fractievoorzitter,
#442557