The electoral threshold, or election threshold, 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 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. It is also a common occurrence to see someone elected with less than the quota in STV.
