Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/California's 39th congressional district election, 2018

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 no consensus. Sandstein 09:23, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

California's 39th congressional district election, 2018[edit]

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As a general rule, we don't have articles on (non-special) elections to the US House. As a redirect to United States House of Representatives elections in California, 2018 has been reverted, it's worth having a full discussion. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:11, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep. The reason not every U.S. House election gets an article is probably that there are only a handful of U.S. House of Representatives races that are competitive enough to attract a lot of interest. The main question in this year's U.S. House election is whether the blue wave will flip enough Republican-held districts to give Democrats control of the House. According to Cook, CA-39 is one of only six Republican-held "Lean Democratic" districts, so it will be among the top targets. CA-39 is on some top 10 lists of most important elections this year, e.g. WaPo (#10) and Politico ("The most expensive race of 2018"). The New York Times lists it among only 22 tossup elections this year out of a House of 435. There's also an unusual amount of drama in this race, with lawsuits, sexual harassment allegations, etc. going on. I think it's more notable than most U.S. House elections. Tannehilltop (talk) 01:47, 21 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of California-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 05:42, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 05:42, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep while it is true that we do not usually keep articles about an election for a House seat, we can keep when national coverage is extraordinary. As it is in this case. See articles like Washington Post: Will Asian Americans make California even bluer in November?; Bloomberg?Denver Post Democrats see primary land mines, fresh faces and leftward pull in 2018 and many more similar in a gNews search on: California 3tth district primary.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:08, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect. It's not helpful to have a standalone article about every individual district in a 435-seat national legislative election — and even given the argument that this one is somehow a special case of wider media interest than most others because it's more competitive, the problem is that other editors won't see it that way: for thousands of Wikipedia editors both established and new, the existence of this will turn into "my district automatically gets to have one of these too", which is both undesirable and not needed and will create a shitstorm of cleanup wars. This is pure WP:RECENTISM — the test for a standalone article is not does this happen to be temporarily newsy right now, but will people still be looking for this article ten years from now, and the answer to that question is profoundly unlikely to be "yes" here. Bearcat (talk) 23:51, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment I'm somewhat sympathetic to an argument that 53 US House races are too many to describe on a single page; would it be worth splitting the United States House of Representatives elections in California, 2018 page to separate "Northern California" and "Southern California" articles? power~enwiki (π, ν) 23:55, 24 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment We allow an article for every single episode of The Simpsons because people will still probably be watching reruns of those episodes 10 years from now. The average Joe might not read up on a Congressional election 10 years later. But a political scientist, or a journalist writing about the background of a district or of a politician who is now running for the same or another office, might. It's pretty common that one or more of the politicians who run in a federal election will still be involved in politics 10 years later, and at that time some hardcore political junkies might like to review what they said or did 10 years ago, since that's part of their record. Tannehilltop (talk) 00:18, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - And what they said or did ten years ago can be addressed in their BLP. It's not a reason why we need to spin off concept articles about each invididual district's individual election race. Bearcat (talk) 13:38, 26 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I don't buy the initial argument. Yes, most individual U.S. House races don't get their own pages. That doesn't mean they can't. Perhaps we need to set community standards for when can be broken out. – Muboshgu (talk) 13:57, 25 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This has enough, and I would suggest most competitive congressional races are going to have enough, sourcing for pages. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:40, 27 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 07:25, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep -This has enough sourcing to pass the GNG. What percentage of US house races share that same level of notability is an interesting question, but this is not the proper venue to examine that. Tazerdadog (talk) 07:31, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I can't see the justification in articles on races in individual seats and keeping this would set a worrying trend that could lead to the creation of thousands of articles on close races. Number 5 7 11:08, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/Redirect as a case of WP:RECENTISM and borderline WP:CRYSTAL. It being in the news even furthers this as a case of WP:NOTNEWS, and ignoring the slippery slope/ad populum which has been spun both ways, many of the sources are trivial mentions which just mention this particular district but do not go to any depth about it. The Washington Post link above from E.M. Gregory only says "In California’s 39th Congressional District, longtime Republican lawmaker Edward R. Royce recently announced his retirement; 17 candidates are running for his seat." and appends some statistics to this. The Denver Post article similarly only makes a trivial mention of this particular district, saying that "[according] to Kondik, the three likeliest places where that could happen are districts currently held by Republicans: the 39th, based in Fullerton, where Ed Royce is retiring; the 48th, in Orange County, now held by Dana Rohrabacher; and the 49th district in San Diego, where Darrell Issa is also retiring." WP:CRYSTAL also applies since once summarized, the only substantial thing these sources are saying is "these districts, held by Republicans, might be won by the Democrats this autumn".

There is also no precedent for having articles about individual districts simply because they were tossups, much less because they are "expected to be". To confirm this, a look at Category:United States House of Representatives elections in California suffices - of the three non-special elections for individual districts, one involves Richard Nixon (Republican) winning a "safe Democratic district" (major upset), another involves an automated phone call controversy, and the last one is something of a "major upset" too. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 13:39, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Sandstein: as the primary election is in 8 days, would it be possible to close this now? While there isn't a strict rule against deletion banners on pages related to elections occurring in the very near future, I think there should be. power~enwiki (π, ν) 16:24, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Since we don't have clear consensus yet, I'd like to let the discussion continue. Any effect of the AfD on the election is difficult to imagine and, in any case, not our concern. Sandstein 18:07, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Certainly a notable, competitive race; while it breaks the tradition, I think having pages about the individual most notable House races each cycle is worthwhile. Davey2116 (talk) 18:49, 28 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Keep This has received an unusual amount of coverage for a House race. It passes WP:GNG. Smartyllama (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2018 (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.