Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of landslide victories

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Delete. Not on votecount (which is pretty evenly divided), but on strength of arguments. Yes, many elections results are described as "landslide victories", but there is nothing even resembling a single definition of it (being based on percentage is completely different to being based on change), and many differences inside the conflicting definitions as well. Fram (talk) 08:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

List of landslide victories[edit]

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"Landslide" is an undefinable and, for encyclopaedic purposes, meaningless term. My own definition would involve swing size and size of victory, but as is clear from this page there are many different interpretations of the word. In my own editing area I see at least three where I outright disagree. But the larger point is this: this article is, and can only ever be, original research. A similar page with electoral records would be quite justified, but this one is not. Frickeg (talk) 05:18, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A quick search on the term finds several thousand references for political landslide within Wikipedia. As noted, we have this list of such events numbering well over a hundred from 32 different nations. It seems to be a customary usage, commonplace amongst the sources we use and the only question is how much of a swing makes it a landslide? Other fields have their own accepted jargon terms, such as hat trick in cricket, bugs in computing, bugs in espionage. "Landslide" is commonplace in political articles - I'd like to see a consensus develop before we delete this list and blanketly editing all these thousands of articles.--Pete (talk) 06:10, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A clarification: this is not an attempt to have the term "landslide" banned from Wikipedia. I am merely contending that the article itself serves no purpose as its criteria are impossible to define. Frickeg (talk) 06:33, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep The term landslide is certainly definable. For example, this source defines it as 58% or more in the context of US Presidential elections. Other sources may have a different view but this is normal for most topics. Warden (talk) 10:37, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's the thing though - whose definitions are we using? This source uses 60% as the cutoff; this one claims a ten point difference is the usual definition, but other sources don't seem to disagree. And this is all just for elections of one country. It's a term that different authors define to suit their purposes - which is completely fine, just not something we can really do here. A similar page on electoral records would be interesting and verifiable, but a list of elections arbitrarily described as being "landslides" isn't useful to anyone. Frickeg (talk) 11:14, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. The term is notable, but it isn't quantifiable and this is doomed to be a mess of original research. The Drover's Wife (talk) 11:46, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep but revise. The elections we list should be described as landslide victories by the same sources we use in the articles describing them. For example, the Queensland state election, 2012, where the Liberal National Party went from holding 34 seats to 78 in the 87 seat unicameral legislature, reducing the previous government to a rump of just seven. The ABC - and every other news outlet - described the result as a landslide: 6:48pm: LNP landslide. Election analyst Antony Green says "we've definitively given away the election" [1] - one of the sources used in our article. Clearly, some elections are landslides, but others, with a more modest swing, are less so. We really need to quantify what qualifies as a landslide victory before we make a list of them. I raised this question on the article talk page yesterday, thereby sparking this discussion. --Pete (talk) 19:32, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete There is no clear definition of what is a "landslide," which the article just calls "an overwhelming margin," so the list is an arbitrary collection of election outcomes chosen via original research. The list also omits elections which were not really freely contested and honestly counted, such as elections in various totalitarian states and dictatorships where Fearless Leader gets 100% of the votes, and elections in the Jim Crow South in the US from the 1890's into the 1950's where Democrat candidates for state office got about 100 % of the votes. We are thus left with an arbitrary and varying criterion for the "landslide" and exclusion of elections which seem too unfair. Such an arbitrary collection of electoral results is not an encyclopedic list. Edison (talk) 21:21, 22 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding of "landslide" (and I accept that this may differ to that of others, particularly in other nations) is that there is a significant "slide" of votes or seats from one side to another, hence the image of movement. Where there is a continuing imbalance, as you have noted, no such movement from one side to another exists. The election results in the USSR were essentially static because there was only one party contesting. So I'd also exclude lopsided results such as a popular government slightly increasing its majority; the government might hold 75% of the seats before and 76% afterwards, but there has been no "landslide". --Pete (talk) 01:35, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Which is exactly the problem. Different publications use different definitions to suit their purposes. My definition of "landslide" aligns broadly with yours, unsurprisingly, but that's clearly not the way it's used in an international context or even exclusively in our own country. Frickeg (talk) 01:47, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The definition that a landslide is a big shift of seats from one party to another is quite different from US usage, where they commonly call a presidential, gubernatorial or mayoral victory a landslide, with no consideration of seats in an assembly. And recurring such lopsided victories are still landslides. Without any clear definition, it is all opinion and original research. Edison (talk) 19:28, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:26, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. Unverifiable original research. This is better suited a blog post than an encyclopedia article. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:37, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Media will generally note when a landslide victory occurs, and it is of interest and verifiable. Deathlibrarian (talk) 11:41, 23 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – The term "landslide victory" is a mere literary cliché, and lacks the necessary precision and clarity to make an encyclopedic list. SteveStrummer (talk) 04:05, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 00:55, 30 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per SteveStrummer. "Just what margin is needed for a victory to be 'in [or by] a landslide' has not been precisely defined, and has varied from time to time." Yep. --BDD (talk) 20:53, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - difficult to quantify and undefinable are not the same. Bearian (talk) 22:47, 7 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.