How many votes does a list need to enter the Knesset?
At the Knesset 25 election (2022) the threshold was 3.25% of the valid votes, 154,855 votes. 30 lists finished below it, and 417,400 votes (8.8%) elected no one.
More on the same subject: How votes become seats · Surplus-vote agreements · Ballot letters
A list that does not clear the electoral threshold gets no seats — even if it won hundreds of thousands of votes. The threshold is not a given: it is set in law, and it has changed three times.
You can also skip straight to the simulator and move one list above and below the threshold, and see what that does to the whole Knesset.
What the law says
Every value here is taken from the amending law itself, with its Reshumot reference and the link that was actually read. That is not excess caution: the value for Knesset 16 was once recorded here as 1% from memory, and a test was then written that confirmed 1% — so circular checking turned a wrong claim into something that looked verified.
| Threshold | Knessets | Amending law | Reshumot | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5% | 13, 14, 15, 16 | Knesset Elections Law (Amendment No. 23), 5752-1991 חוק הבחירות לכנסת (תיקון מס' 23), התשנ"ב-1991 | ס"ח תשנ"ב מס' 1369, עמ' 2 | read at the source |
| 2% | 17, 18, 19 | Knesset Elections Law (Amendment No. 51), 5764-2004 חוק הבחירות לכנסת (תיקון מס' 51), התשס"ד-2004 | ס"ח תשס"ד מס' 1940, עמ' 384 | read at the source |
| 3.25% | 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 | Knesset Elections Law (Amendment No. 62), 5774-2014 חוק הבחירות לכנסת (תיקון מס' 62), התשע"ד-2014 | ס"ח תשע"ד מס' 2440, עמ' 347 | read at the source |
What actually applied, election by election
The threshold each election was measured against, as recorded in the snapshot from which every other page on the site is calculated — so that this page and the data cannot disagree.
| Knesset | Year | Threshold | Valid votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Knesset 25 | 2022 | 3.25% | 4,764,742 |
| Knesset 24 | 2021 | 3.25% | 4,410,052 |
| Knesset 23 | 2020 | 3.25% | 4,590,062 |
| Knesset 22 | 2019 | 3.25% | 4,436,806 |
| Knesset 21 | 2019 | 3.25% | 4,309,270 |
| Knesset 20 | 2015 | 3.25% | 4,210,884 |
| Knesset 19 | 2013 | 2.0% | 3,792,742 |
| Knesset 18 | 2009 | 2.0% | 3,373,490 |
| Knesset 17 | 2006 | 2.0% | 3,137,064 |
| Knesset 16 | 2003 | 1.5% | 3,148,364 |
What it cost — Knesset 25
What happened to these votes
| List | Votes | Seats it would have had with no threshold |
|---|---|---|
| מרצ מרצ | 150,793 | 4 |
| בל"ד ד | 138,617 | 3 |
| הבית היהודי ב | 56,775 | 1 |
Not one of these votes elected a member. The largest of these lists fell 4,062 votes short of the threshold.
Another 27 lists were below the threshold, but were too small to win a seat even without it.
The threshold at this election stood at 3.25% of the valid votes — 154,855 votes. A list that got one vote fewer than that got zero seats; a list that got one vote more entered the full allocation. The threshold is a step, not a slope.
All the votes for lists that did not clear the threshold, together.
Calculated by the site's Bader-Ofer engine, on exactly the same votes.
What would have happened — try it yourself
The threshold is not a slope but a step, and that is easy to say and hard to feel. Here you can move one list that finished near the threshold and see what happens to the whole Knesset — not just to it. Every result here was calculated in advance by the same Bader-Ofer engine that reproduces the official result exactly; there is no estimate and no model here.
The numbers here are calculated, not quoted: the site's seat engine runs the Bader-Ofer method on the Elections Committee's votes and reproduces the official seat allocation exactly, then runs it again without the threshold. The difference between the two runs is what is shown above. The seat engine · How it is built