OK, if you’re dismissing a source just because it doesn’t fit your preconceived notions, even though it’s written by someone who’s literal job is to research the subject, and provides the numbers to back it up, then I’m not sure what we’re doing here.

The question then is: why did you vote for those very small parties? Why not just vote VVD? Then you’re basically sure that they’ll make the coalition, and your vote contributes to a nice and quick coalition process.

(That said, I also strongly disagree that being in opposition means you can’t achieve anything. Look at the PVV, and how much they were able to make the other parties when they weren’t even part of the government. Looks at what Union is planning to do now because of AfD, without AfD having to be part of the coalition.)

Edit: oh, and I forgot maybe the most convincing argument, for you: it doesn’t work. Reasonable thresholds do not lead to fewer parties.

I mean, you could just not vote for the fringe parties then?

(Oh, you already don’t do that? So it’s other people’s votes you want to cancel? See what I mean - arguing for a threshold is essentially arguing for less democracy.)

My day would have been just fine without that mental image.

I mean, CDU/CSU and SPD have a majority with 45% of the votes, and 14% of the votes did not result in seats. That doesn’t sound like an improvement to me. (Compared to the Netherlands - still beter than FPTP systems.)

Would it not be possible for a 3-party coalition to be perfectly stable? We’ve had many of those in the Netherlands that went just fine, I believe. Though I guess given the lack of a threshold, those parties might differ less than they do in Germany?