Netherlands stuck in log-jammed coalition building -- a de-fragmented party system might address that issue - Netherlands could adopt districts to produce higher "effective thresholds" and thin rep.
- Tom Monto
- Jun 3
- 4 min read
According to an article
some in the Netherlands are contemplating converting elections to first past the post or instant-runoff voting.
I have studied election systems and believe Netherlands should not go to IRV,
but should just bring in districts and keep its voting as is.
Currently Netherlands elects using country as one big district, electing 150 people, and any party with .67 percent of the votes is due a seat.
if Netherlands used 6 multi-member districts dividing country,
the effective threshold of having only about 25 seats in each district would likely drop out five parties that currently have representation.
(three of them do not have 4 percent of the vote in any province;
the Christian Union does get more than 4 percent in the Caribbean, but its number of votes is too small to give it a seat in a defragmented chamber.)*
That would leave "just" 10 parties in the chamber, of which five would have the lion's share of seats - 74 percent of votes.
These 10 parties would take a combined 92 percent of the votes.
Five parties tht currently have seats -- Party for animals, Socialist party, 50+, Volt, Christian Union -- would get no seats at all (depending on how provinces are mashed to make districts)
Negotiation of coalition would be easier with 10, not 15 parties.
But perhaps political defragmentation should be taken farther. It might be thought that party support of 7 percent of votes is actually the proper boundary between "extreme" and mainstream parties.
Perhaps parties with less than 7 percent should not get seats -- that Ja21 with 6 percent of votes, and four parties with less than 6 percent that currently have seats (Forum, Farmer, Denk, Reformed) should be kept out of the chamber.
That could be done if 30 districts, on average each covering half a province, were used.
Using 30 districts, each of 5 members, may see the number of parties in the chamber decrease to four or five parties, none with less than 11 percent of the vote,
and still 74 percent of voters would see someone elected of a party that they voted for.
And even a higher percentage would be effective if voters could mark back-up preferences. This defragmentation would be a big jolt to the Dutch party system.
Hopefully back-up preferences would be used so that massive amounts of votes (perhaps a quarter) are not wasted.
so such a result would be both democratic and would produce a workable government.
(In Canada we are lucky to have half our cast votes count to elect someone under FPTP.)
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*The Christian Union party takes 13 percent of votes in the Caribbean
but that whole population of that province is not actually due a seat as it only has 31,000 residents together.
and thus the Christian Union would not be due a seat in a defragmented chamber.
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Percentages of party support in each province is shown in Wiki "2025 Dutch general election"
This can be taken only as rough guide to how votes might be distributed if districts are used.
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my thinking and research etc. on this question:
IRV (single-winer ranked ballot), which could give majority of seats toa party with less than half the votes.
results under IRV can be just as dis-proportional as FPTP, which Netherlands does not want
divide Netherlands into MMDs
I first thought 15 districts with average of ten seats each.
that would reduce chance for a thinly spread extremist party to get rep.
the district's effective threshold/ informal threshold would means that a party would need to get 9 percent of the vote in the district to elect someone.
the number of votes to be elected would be same as under at-large PR --
about 70,000 (1/10th of 700,000 votes per district)
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VOLT NETHERLANDS
while in 2025 election under at-large PR, the least-pop. party to get a seat (VOLT NETHERLANDS (perhaps the epitome of the far-right parties)) had 116,000 votes.
and took no more than 1.6 percent of the votes cast in any province.
that was Zeeland where total of 391,000 people live
so perhaps had 230,000 votes cast and Volt took just 3600 votes.
in North Holland, Volt took perhaps 24,000 votes. not enough to win a seat under district voting.
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with each province as district, and informal threshold of 10 percent (on average) or 4 percent with DM-25
instances of party effective votes (over ten percent) in a province add up to 60 instances, (and only 6 parties),
so that would mean considerable defragmenting of the representation
(now 16 parties have rep.)
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6 Districts of 25 seats would deeply defragment party system
6 districts of 25 seats with district informal threshold of 4 percent would be good to moderately defragment representation.
that adds another 30 party/provinces instances, plus of course gives more seats to popular parties in provinces
Party for animals, socialist party, 50+, Volt would be denied seats,
still 11 parties would have rep.
five parties would take combined 73 percent of the votes and seats.
This defragmentation would be big jolt to the Dutch party system -
- hopefully use of back-up preferences so that massive amounts of votes are not thrown out.
party percentage of support per province is shown in Wiki: 2025 Netherlands election
(not vote totals unfortunately, but at least percentages)
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Netherlands has 13 provinces (including Carib. Dutch islands as a province)
some are small some are large
15 is likely number of districts.
DM would vary according to varying number of voters per province
don't know how many votes cast by province but here's rough calculation:
total pop. 18M
13.5M eligible voters
10.6M voted in 2025
perc. of votes per pop. == 59 percent
North Holland 3 M pop. so at 59 percent turnout, 1.7M votes would be cast there, making district eligible for something like 1/6th of seats so 25 DM
so perhaps that province might have two districts.
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