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> The amount of space is tied to the relevance of the party

How is this justified? Bigger parties are already popular enough, why should they get more media exposure than unknown parties? This is basically like giving the winner of one race a time advantage in the next race, making it even more difficult for other contestants to catch up.

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It's a law. The justification is that it's made by democratically elected representatives. It's also not that much of a problem since we have a 5% barrier. Smaller parties usually have less money to spend on TV ads, anyway.

Note that this didn't prevent new parties to become popular. In the last 25 years or so, Germany has seen the rise of the Green party, and the Left party. Today, the Pirate Party seem to be on the rise. It seems to be a rather stable yet permeable system.

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