Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums/Archive 6

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Open Election Data

With another round of UK local elections now just four months away, is anyone interested in (or already) working on scripts to pull in candidate lists and results from local authority pages which use Open Election Data, as described on the OpenElectionData project website? I'm in touch with the people behind that project, and would be willing to act as a go-between. Discussion is at WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In what order should political parties in election articles be presented?

I'm having an ongoing discussion with User:Jerzeykydd regarding the ordering of party primaries in Senate election articles (and therefore House and gubernatorial articles as well). Jerzeykydd wants them ordered alphabetically (Democrats before Republicans) in all instances to avoid bias, but I find the choice of alphabetical order to be arbitrary. Since elections concern incumbents and incumbent parties (ie., primary challenges in Maine and Utah, the question of whether or not the Republicans can hold the open seat in Arizona), I believe the incumbent party should always be listed first. This also prevents burying independents, like Bernie Sanders in Vermont, where the Democrats almost certainly won't contest the seat, and Republicans may pass also. Thoughts? --Muboshgu (talk) 22:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The closest real-life analogues to this are which party holds its convention first (the non-incumbent) and which party has the first or top ballot lines in the actual physical election voting ballots, machines, etc (varies a lot, as this recap from the 2008 presidential election indicates). Since people tend to stop reading WP articles as they go along, you could make a case for the more 'important' primary going first. Traditionally that would be the non-incumbent one, but as lately the Republicans have grown fond of nuking their own, it could be decided on a case-by-case basis. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Putting the non-incumbent party first wouldn't make sense where there is only token opposition from the opposing party, like say the United States Senate election in Wyoming, 2012, or in United States Senate election in Utah, 2010, where all the action was on the incumbent side. --Muboshgu (talk) 03:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the best uniform rule would probably be to give the incumbent party/candidate first, and where there are multiple opposition parties/candidates, to order them based on previous vote tally, from most to fewest (so the smallest opposition party/candidate appears last). There are obviously some cases in which a high profile candidate will significantly boost a party from one election to the next, and exceptions to this general rule could certainly be made on a case-by-case basis. cmadler (talk) 13:56, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the best idea here is to place the incumbent party first in all cases, like has been suggested above.

However, what if there is no incumbent party, such as a special election race or a race where an independent is holding the seat? Also, what about races such as the New Orleans mayoral election 2010, where the main candidates are all members of one party and there is no incumbent? Toa Nidhiki05 16:33, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Free election

The usage of free election is under discussion, see Talk:Free election (Polish throne). 65.93.12.101 (talk) 03:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Scope of project

I've come to the project page to find out what the scope of the project is, but it's not stated. Are local elections covered, or does the project concern itself with elections at national level only? I'm working a lot with politics articles in New Zealand and if I knew, I could place the appropriate tag on election articles when I undertake assessment. Schwede 66 04:40, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

All elections, all referendums, everywhere, if I am not mistaken. harej 05:27, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with harej. Student7 (talk) 12:32, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've drafted some words for the project page to reflect that. Please amend this as you see fit. Schwede 66 19:54, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

5% Threshold rule needs a vote

I am all for third parties and vote for them regularly, but there is this thing called clutter that we have to deal with. We have these no-name people with absolute no chance outside the wet dreams of their partisan supporters that are in infoboxes. I disagree with the arbitrary 5% in one poll threshold. What happens when they get 5% in the first poll and never show up in a poll again? Instead, it should be 5% in at least three of the last five polls to determine viability. Anything less is just patently ridiculous. Again, I love third parties and support them strongly, but they are cluttering up the infoboxes that they have no chance of winning. (I can get into a whole thing about their foolish and misguided behavior that keeps them from victory, but thats another story)

The infobox is a summary of the absolute most important and relevant info, not a complete rundown of every possibility. Minor "non"-candidates can go in the main body of the article.

Most important here is this needs a vote because the consensus above was unclear and someone arbitrarily decided there was "no consensus". I propose the following options:

Candidates must have at least 5% support in 3 of the last 5 polls.
Candidates must have at least 5% support in 2 of the last 5 polls.
Candidates must have at least 5% support in 1 of the last 3 polls.

Can we get an agreement on these options and then a vote? You are welcome to propose changes to the options, but this does need a vote. And dont feel rushed by the election on Tuesday. This can be done now for 2012.

(By last 5 polls, I mean 5 different pollsters. If its Rasmussen, Rasmussen, Survey USA, PPP, Survey USA; that wont count.)

Metallurgist (talk) 00:05, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Disagree with all of the above. I don't think inclusion in the polls is an indicator of importance to an election and I don't think the 5% number is useful. Prior to an election, all ballot-listed candidate should be listed in state elections and in the rare case of the well known write-in like Lisa Murkowski in Alaska this year. Even more, what does "last" mean? The infobox should include as many candidates as possible to show an accurate view of an election.--TM 01:15, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely. These candidates from minor parties don't get coverage for a reason: they aren't viable. Wikipedia articles should mirror actual news coverage in terms of how much coverage various candidates get. All candidates on a ballot or who have registered write in campaigns can be listed on the page, but they shouldn't all be in the infobox. --Muboshgu (talk) 02:10, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

We aren't showing "viability", which is an incredibly subjective term. We are giving information. If a reader comes to an election article, he or she shouldn't have to find the election table at the bottom to find out that there were more than two candidates. The infobox should give as much information as possible, even if it only shows a candidate received 4.9% of the vote. Before an election, there is simply no non-partisan way to decide who is "viable" whatever that means.--TM 02:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not subjective. A candidate that can't poll over 5% isn't viable in an election. That candidate isn't going to win, not based on anything WP:CRYSTAL but based on precedent. The non-partisan way to determine who is viable is to see who performs well in polls. 5% is a bit of an arbitrary cutoff, but I think it's arbitrary on the side of being overly inclusive rather than overly exclusive. --Muboshgu (talk) 02:29, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Muboshgu. I edit place articles where spammers insert the equivalent of "Eat at [[Joe's]], Joe's being redlinked. This is spam. However, the fact that the town has a (linked) GM plant is not spam. The difference (to newbies difficult to grasp) is that Joe's needs publicity, therefore we don't give it to him! That is the function of a blog or .com site. Everyone has heard of GM. They don't need and cannot profit from the publicity in Wikipedia.Therefore we (not very generously! :) give them publicity. We don't worry about it since it can't do them any good.

The analogy here, if I must draw it, is that low "polling" (but see below) groups need publicity. We really should force them on the marketplace and not give them publicity here. The major parties cannot profit from it, therefore, no problem. Student7 (talk) 12:20, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

The top of the article is obviously the most visible part of an article. Why are we removing important information from the infobox based on arbitrary standards? And yes, a candidate receiving 3% is important information. Let me give an example: In New York this year, if any non-ballot qualified parties polls 50,000 votes (a number sure to be far less than 5%), they become ballot qualified. For that party, getting 50,000 votes is very important and those votes will have a long-lasting effect on political process. All ballot qualified candidates in local and state elections (or as many as the infobox can handle, which I believe is at most 6) should be included. In most cases, it is no more than 3 or 4.--TM 02:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

I use a somewhat different criteria -- if the candidate's vote total is greater than or equal to the margin between the winner and the best loser, I'd add it to the infobox. For example:

Tom: 10 votes
Dick: 7 votes
Harry: 4 votes
Jenny: 2 votes

Tom and Dick gets in, then Harry gets in since 4>3. Jenny won't since 2<3. I dunno if this can be applied to polling numbers prior to the election. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 16:53, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

That would all but guarantee that only the top two would included in the infobox. The purpose of the infobox is to give more information quickly, not to make a user search for information on other candidates. Elections are not only about who wins and who loses, but a total situation.--TM 17:55, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

For two-party elections, perhaps yes, but for multiparty elections (specifically when the winner doesn't surpass 50% of the vote) this comes in handy. Infoboxes do not have to show everything anyway. They're a summary. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 18:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

P.S. That was my own personal judgment, but it turns out Wikipedia:Manual of Style (infoboxes)#Purpose of an infobox echoes my thoughts. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 18:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The main problem is confusing polling, which are essentially a WP:SPAM media event, which Wikipedia naively uses. They really should be confined to Wikinews, being currents events (at best). The project is about elections not publicizing tricks used by the media or politicians to gain votes pushing their pov.

If you must use politician and media spam, at least retroactively remove the polls for anyone not actually receiving 5% of the vote. That should help with history if not with current evernt. Student7 (talk) 11:56, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Agree with any and all of them - Infoboxes should not be cluttered with minor candidates that made no impact on the election (see Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 2010, where Jill Stein is up and got less than 2% of the vote); 5% is a decent threshold.Toa Nidhiki<font color="green" face="Mistral" 05

Fwaa I forgot about this. I need to set watch pages. Anywho, I am intrigued by the proposal of HTD and did use that as a basis for removal of the 5th(!) candidate on I think the Maine gubernatorial election, 2010 article. However, this would put Nader in the 2000 election. But perhaps he deserves to be there. He was cited a lot in the media and Democrats claim he spoiled the election. But on the other hand, he only received 2.something%. Now Ive probably triggered a deluge of Nader supporters to go create a consensus to put him there, but thats a separate issue. The consensus here seems 3-1 or 4-1 in favor of any of my proposals. But we still need to pick one.

By last polls, I mean the most recent. This makes the infobox "live". If a 3rd or 4th or whatever candidate suddenly goes from 10% support to 2% support, they should be dropped from the infobox. Jill Stein from Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 2010 was added to the infobox on the basis of a single, months-old poll that put her at 5%. Thats why I said the basis of inclusion should be current polls.--Metallurgist (talk) 18:28, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

My proposal is mostly useful for multiparty systems (or elections where the winner wins by less than 50%+1) -- for a two-party elections, I'd prefer the 5% threshold too (that's pretty low, too). –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 17:44, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

BTW for U.S. presidential elections, I suggest limiting the people in the infobox either on those had ballot access in all 50 states + DC or to anyone who had an electoral vote. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 09:37, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

HTD's suggestions seem fine to me, but I think it should only include those that either won a state or surpassed 5% of the vote in Pres. elections, since some candidates have won electoral votes via faithless electors while getting less than 3% of the vote.

Let's exclude those how had electoral votes via faithless electors, then. As for polls I'd like a 5% threshold too, but that should take into account the margin of error -- e.g. if a candidate a 4% in a poll and there was 2% margin of error, he gets in.

BTW, in a separate perspective, in the United Kingdom general election, 2010 article, they only have the three major parties in the infobox -- the other parties, all of which either had >5% of the vote, or of seats won or both, were not there.

BTW (last), if there are four candidates that should really be in the infobox, and the last two like have a combined >10% of the vote, I'd guess it's not a good idea on listing both of them -- infoboxes with two rows are unwieldy. This works well if there's only 3 of them at least there'll only be 1 row. Now if there are 5 "major" candidates that can be somewhat acceptable (as a rule 4 candidates on a 2x2 grid is bad). –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 20:43, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Cross nomination and electoral fusion election boxes needed

I can't find an election box that handles cross nomination by parties, or electoral fusion. The closest I found was {{Election box candidate for alliance}} (example). But that box is for when parties in an alliance agree to not run candidates against each other. Cross nomination and fusion are different creatures.

So I think templates need to be created for this. The real-world applications include "Oregon gubernatorial election, 2010" (for cross nomination) and "New York gubernatorial election, 2010" (for fusion). The cross nomination box should enable you to enter multiple nominating parties for each candidate. The fusion box should give a line for each party and candidate, and indicate the total votes for each candidate. Could someone tackle this? — Athelwulf ^[T]/_[C] 04:07, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Referring to my real-world example of Oregon for cross nomination, here's how it works: Each candidate can be nominated by up to three parties. On the ballot, the name of each party appears abbreviated under their candidates' names (DEM, REP, WFP, etc.). So at least in Oregon's case (not sure how other jurisdictions do it), we could just tweak the current election box's appearance, like so:

Oregon's 4th congressional district election, 2010
Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	PGP	Mike Beilstein	3,333	33%
	DEM, WFP, PRO	Peter DeFazio	3,333	33%
	REP, IND, CON	Art Robinson	3,333	33%
Total			9,999	100%

One potential problem is which party to choose for the colored band on the left. My guess for Oregon's case (but I can't say for sure) is that the party a candidate affiliates with is treated as the most important nomination, and is listed first. Parties are not listed in simple alphabetical order on the ballot (or else Art Robinson would appear as a Constitution candidate first and foremost).

Electoral fusion is trickier. Not sure how to make that work. — Athelwulf ^[T]/_[C] 04:53, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

I think I figured out a possible way to handle fusion, at least for New York.

The New York State Board of Elections reports the vote for each ballot line — then they give a "recap", or a total vote for each candidate on all their ballot lines, which decides the election. See the 2006 gubernatorial election results for an example. So how about doing something like this for New York:

New York gubernatorial election, 2006
Ballot line		Candidate	Votes	%	Recap	%
	Democratic	Eliot Spitzer	2,740,864	61.77	3,086,709	69.56
	Republican	John Faso	1,105,681	24.92	1,274,335	28.72
	Independence	Eliot Spitzer	190,661	4.30
	Conservative	John Faso	168,654	3.80
	Working Families	Eliot Spitzer	155,184	3.50
	Green	Malachy McCourt	42,166	0.95	42,166	0.95
	Libertarian	John Clifton	14,736	0.33	14,736	0.33
	Rent Is Too High	Jimmy McMillan	13,355	0.33	13,355	0.33
	Socialist Workers	Maura DeLuca	5,919	0.30	5,919	0.30
Invalid			260,647
Total			4,697,867	100%

— Athelwulf ^[T]/_[C] 04:48, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I like; this seems like a practical way to have electoral fusion/cross nomination added. Toa Nidhiki05 16:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Looks beautiful and practical. btw, where are 2010 results?--Metallurgist (talk) 18:32, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"Issues" section?

Hey all, a quick question. When working on an election article, is it appropriate to have a section specifically about issues discussed during that election? Like, for example, a section called "Issues" with possible subsections like "Health Care", "Abortion", "Social Security", etc. etc.? Or is it generally better to cover the issues in the "Campaign" sections as they are discussed, without a separate issues section? — Hun ter Ka hn 15:00, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Personally I would say it can be fine - a couple of examples of featured election articles with issues sections are Canadian federal election, 1957 and South Australian state election, 2006. Davewild (talk) 15:07, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Best saved for a properly named "Campaign" article. Any article called "Election" is supposed to be confined to the election not something the media calls "election" which is everything to do with the campaign. The media does not want to focus for whatever reason. Wikipedia must provide that focus and not follow the media in losing focus. Stick to WP:TOPIC. Don't let topics for one article slop over into others. Causes maintenance problems in multiple places and leaves editors wondering what to link to. Student7 (talk) 21:13, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

So, in a case like United States Senate election in Nevada, 2010, where there is no separate "campaign" article, what would the solution be there? — Hun ter Ka hn 21:31, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

My thought would be to start that new article. Student7 (talk) 22:24, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

My feeling is that many election articles are skimpy enough as it is, being barely more than a list of candidates and numbers of votes (plus sometimes a couple of pre-election polls); where an election article isn't already near maximum reasonable length, I think it would be fine to add some issues as they were handled in the campaign. There are other articles which are already reasonably full and which have at least mentioned the issues already in topics such as debates, platforms, press reaction or the factors governing voter opinion; in that case a spin-off article would be welcome and not just spreading sparse material far too thinly. So, instead of following a rigid rule, follow what's already been written, and what more can be easily documented. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:39, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Election infoboxes

For whatever reason, some editors have decided that Israeli elections do not deserve infoboxes, calling it a POV violation. This is despite hundreds of other elections articles across the "world" having them. Most recently, Dutch 2010 elections and Swedish elections, 2010. Both of these articles have infoboxes that list only the top 6 parties, despite 3 and 4 more winning seats. The infobox is a summary of the major facts in the election, not a summary of every single party. There are two options here:

either infoboxes are somehow POV because a user might load the page, look at the infobox, and think "Oh there cant possibly have been a 7th party, so this is all I need to know." OR
The infoboxes are a reasonable, professional, graphic summary that makes the articles look nicer and uniform.

Why do we even have infoboxes available for these types of elections if they would be POV? I am calling for a consensus to be developed in regards to whether infoboxes deserve to be on parliamentary election pages.--Metallurgist (talk) 18:13, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

As one of the editors involved in the Israeli elections (and as previously voiced on this talkpage), my opinion is that these infoboxes should be scrapped, or at least limited to two- or three-horse races where all candidates/parties can easily be included. However, for multi-candidate or party elections they should not be avoided; to avoid NPOV (i.e. missing some parties/candidates out) or OR (who decides what % of the vote is significant?) violations. This is especially a problem in countries where many parties win seats in parliament. For instance, in this article, why do we include a party that won five seats, but not those than won four? In many cases there is a gradual decline in the number of seats and no clear cut-off point. Number 5 7 18:36, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

The infobox only holds up to 6 parties. Thats why the others arent listed. Please look at other countries with parliamentary and proportional elections such as the two I listed above. They are both missing 3 parties. This is not a POV issue. Infoboxes are summaries. Its really easy to scroll down to results and see there are other parties. Also, please read MOS:INFOBOX#Purpose_of_an_infobox.--Metallurgist (talk) 21:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

If it's so easy to scroll down and see the results, why do we need an infobox at all? Number 5 7 21:32, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Then why do we have an infobox template on virtually every election page. Again, look at Dutch and Swedish elections. Im not making this up. Its based on other elections.--Metallurgist (talk) 21:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I can see both sides of this. Number57, I think I might assume why you might think it is POV, but please specify it clearly for this discussion so there is no misunderstanding. --Shuki (talk) 10:55, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Because by limiting the number of parties in the infobox (in order to make it fit), you are excluding others, largely at a whim. I don't believe the infobox can be NPOV if it does not include all of them.

In addition, what is the point of the infobox on this article? It is so big that it finishes below the results table - hardly an effective summary tool when it takes longer to scroll down to read it than the actual full results (which includes far more information). Number 5 7 11:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

I see no good reason why the infobox can't be used or adapted here. The Dutch infobox mentioned above dealt with the issue by including a chart of party percentages as well as the top parties. Also, this problem is no more confusing than the decision involved in the lead. Neither WP:OR nor WP:POV enters into the question of summarizing information (in the Lead or an infobox) within an article that provides all the data.--Carwil (talk) 15:12, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

People seriously bawwed about that on the Dutch infobox? I probably would vote for one of those lower parties, but I cant see any reason to complain about them not being listed. I will work on getting a nice chart up tho as soon as I can. Seems this has been resolved tho anyway.--Metallurgist (talk) 18:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Given the general nature of the argument, shouldn't a guideline of sorts be developed, in order to maintain consistency across election articles? I've thinking something on the lines of the following:

The parties represented in the infobox have at least 3/4 of the seats combined.
The parties in the infobox that are part of the governing coalition have at least 1/2 of the seats
"Historical significance" - if a party was in the infobox the previous elections and hasn't lost seats following the current election, it's listed in the infobox.

These rules-of-thumb would grant a reader a reasonable overview of the legislative body composition, including in terms of coalition building process and historical trends. Thoughts? Rami R 19:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the top 6 vote getting parties should be listed in an infobox - the Israeli legislative election pages for 1949, 1951 and 2009 have them, and I think it gives a clearer sense of the overall result, without simply focusing on a simple 50+1% coalition governing party. Australian Matt (talk) 04:39, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I think Rami's ideas should be addressed. Might be tightened in wording somehow, but including all parties in a ruling coalition sounds almost mandatory. And leaving room for omitting truly insignificant parties seems like a good idea. Otherwise WP:SPAM for them. Student7 (talk) 22:55, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be included as a guide to quickly reference the top parties. The top parties being obviously those with the most seats (its not POV to state who won the most, if other parties didnt then they are minor parties). But perhaps limit it to 2-3 parties. I digress, though, that it is excluding "on a whim" because there is a clear and defined reason for who makes it, the only controversy would be how many?(Lihaas (talk) 13:49, 28 December 2010 (UTC)).

People may hate me for this, but nice as the photos are for simple 2 and 3 person races when we have good free images in the right scale, they're often a hindrance, especially with those forever-begging, rarely-filled and supremely-uninformative "no free image" boxes. [See e.g. this version of Syracuse mayoral election, 2009 before I deleted the never-filled "no free image" boxes.] We had so few good images for Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2011 that we suppressed them during the election to avoid bias, and I moved the three then-mediocre returnees down very soon after the election to a gallery within the article's body. The result is that one easily can see six of the major parties at a glance without scrolling. Since I've seen an info box with a seventh party, perhaps the solution for those classic 1960's and 1970's Italian, Irish, Israeli, Indian and Lebanese type elections where the 7th, 8th or even 9th party can be significant is just to leave the picture lines blank. If you really have to show what the leader of the 8th party (who never hoped to be prime minister or president anyway) looks or looked like, you can put a nice gallery somewhere near the middle or end of the article. —— Shakescene (talk) 10:11, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Merge

I've suggested merging WikiProject Voting systems here - see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Voting systems#Merge. Rd232 ^talk 01:32, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Organising consistency

I think we need some sort of official policy set out here for what sort of consistent organisation we plan for such articles. Right now articles widely differ based largely on popularity (such as the us elections ((and somewhat the anlglosphere of uk/aus, etc)) granted the us elections would never follow this method with the mobs there), but for the rest we can come to some sort of base outline and then with slight deviation for the particularities of respective elections.(Lihaas (talk) 13:55, 28 December 2010 (UTC)).

Open Election Data

With another round of UK local elections now just four months away, is anyone interested in (or already) working on scripts to pull in candidate lists and results from local authority pages which use Open Election Data, as described on the OpenElectionData project website? I'm in touch with the people behind that project, and would be willing to act as a go-between. Discussion is at WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:02, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In what order should political parties in election articles be presented?

I'm having an ongoing discussion with User:Jerzeykydd regarding the ordering of party primaries in Senate election articles (and therefore House and gubernatorial articles as well). Jerzeykydd wants them ordered alphabetically (Democrats before Republicans) in all instances to avoid bias, but I find the choice of alphabetical order to be arbitrary. Since elections concern incumbents and incumbent parties (ie., primary challenges in Maine and Utah, the question of whether or not the Republicans can hold the open seat in Arizona), I believe the incumbent party should always be listed first. This also prevents burying independents, like Bernie Sanders in Vermont, where the Democrats almost certainly won't contest the seat, and Republicans may pass also. Thoughts? --Muboshgu (talk) 22:28, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

The closest real-life analogues to this are which party holds its convention first (the non-incumbent) and which party has the first or top ballot lines in the actual physical election voting ballots, machines, etc (varies a lot, as this recap from the 2008 presidential election indicates). Since people tend to stop reading WP articles as they go along, you could make a case for the more 'important' primary going first. Traditionally that would be the non-incumbent one, but as lately the Republicans have grown fond of nuking their own, it could be decided on a case-by-case basis. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Putting the non-incumbent party first wouldn't make sense where there is only token opposition from the opposing party, like say the United States Senate election in Wyoming, 2012, or in United States Senate election in Utah, 2010, where all the action was on the incumbent side. --Muboshgu (talk) 03:37, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the best uniform rule would probably be to give the incumbent party/candidate first, and where there are multiple opposition parties/candidates, to order them based on previous vote tally, from most to fewest (so the smallest opposition party/candidate appears last). There are obviously some cases in which a high profile candidate will significantly boost a party from one election to the next, and exceptions to this general rule could certainly be made on a case-by-case basis. cmadler (talk) 13:56, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think the best idea here is to place the incumbent party first in all cases, like has been suggested above.

However, what if there is no incumbent party, such as a special election race or a race where an independent is holding the seat? Also, what about races such as the New Orleans mayoral election 2010, where the main candidates are all members of one party and there is no incumbent? Toa Nidhiki05 16:33, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

The best thing to do is to sort the primaries by alphabetical order. Democratic primary goes first, then Republican always. In this case, we don't have to worry about who the incumbent is, that is if there is an incumbent. Not to mention that in every other historical election article, Democratic primary always goes first (I would know I created most of these articles).--Jerzeykydd (talk) 18:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I come into this from a British perspective. Through consensus - I doubt there is anything written down but it hasn't stopped the consensus from being the "done thing" - election articles prior to polling day have candidates/ballot papers listed in standard, alphabetical order by surname of candidate. Not by party, not by previous result, but by strict alphabetical order by surname of candidate. It is very well known and recognised, very straight forward. I understand that the Amercian system is (very) different, though it does strike this brain of mine to be highly illogical (and somewhat unfair) to list candidates by party or previous result before a vote has been cast doktorb _words^deeds 18:45, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

It used to vary in various districts in the US. Candidates were listed alphabetically. Then they started to list them randomly to avoid the "earliest getting the most votes" syndrome.

Why not present the winners first in descending order? Wouldn't that make more sense? Student7 (talk) 18:38, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

That doesn't mean a thing before the votes have been cast. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:08, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I suppose people have articles clear out to 2096, I haven't checked. I had thought that most elections were done and over with. The US has had a hundred or more biannual and quadrennial elections. Many democracies have as well. Student7 (talk) 02:23, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Free election

The usage of free election is under discussion, see Talk:Free election (Polish throne). 65.93.12.101 (talk) 03:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

All election article and catefories roll up into Politics?

I was told that all articles on elections roll up into "Politics" at the top. Is this so? The problem here is that Americans tend to think that campaigning and elections = (are identical to) "politics." If this is true, please note that this causes problems in the US. Campaign and election articles "bleed over" into articles on politics. Most Americans cannot tell the difference. We need help here. The categorization isn't helping. Can't the categories roll up into "Government" or something? Or, for that matter, roll up into "Elections" forever until the top category? Student7 (talk) 18:49, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Renaming Instant-runoff voting

Instant-runoff voting has been proposed to be renamed Alternative Vote (apparently, the British term), see Talk:Instant-runoff voting. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 03:46, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Standardizing referendum names

Does this WikiProject have any sort of standard on how to name referendums? I was just discussing with the editor who created Maine Question 1 how little I like referring to things like "Question 1" and HR676 without saying which election. Would Maine Question 1 (2009) be better? Or something else? Thanks. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

All the ones I am aware of (several hundred) use the format "Fooian subject referendum, XXXX" (e.g. Turkish constitutional referendum, 2007 or Tasmanian casino referendum, 1968). For the one you are asking about, I suppose the solution would be Mainer same-sex marriage referendum, 2009, although based on the existing election articles for Maine, it would be Maine same-sex marriage referendum, 2009 (as they don't seem to use the demonym). Number 5 7 15:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that, Number 57.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 12:58, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Page move discussion

Please comment at Talk:Rod_Blagojevich_corruption_charges#Requested_move on moving Rod Blagojevich corruption charges → United States v. Blagojevich.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

A couple issues with {{Infobox Referendum}}

I've got a couple issues with this template and the maps it uses:

The UK has strongly rejected AV in its referendum this week, so a simple yes/no map is not really informative. A map showing the strength of the yes/no vote would be more helpful. However the map's legend is hard-coded into the template - which fixes the colours. It would more useful IMO, if the caption could be customized (defaulting to the current of course).

Secondly, is intense red / intense green a good idea for accessibility with respect to colour blindness? People with deuteranopia cannot tell the two apart see File:Rainbow Deuteranopia.svg. Red/green may be a natural scheme, but is about the worst possible choice for colour blind users.--Nilf anion (talk) 17:43, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally I would just scrap the infobox. All the information that is in it will be duplicated elsewhere in the article (it seems particularly ridiculous having the full results in the box). Number 5 7 17:50, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

That probably is true for the UK referendum, where the result is so uniform as to be uninteresting - though retaining the box as a quick summary is still helpful. However the second point about accesibility will apply to all uses of the template - the one in Oregon Ballot Measure 57 (2008) is not good for colour blind users.--Nilf anion (talk) 18:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

A good infobox would be to imitate the FA Cup Final infobox: two columns for percentages for yes and no, and at the bottom the turnout, as those are the only important figures in referendums (the total number of votes is usually not that important, the key is, in a two-choice referendum, the higher number wins.

Also referendums either go yes or no everywhere so perhaps an customizable caption. As for colors, I say some sporting maps use yellows for yes and blues for no, and those probably won't affect people w/ color blindness, at least except for some rare forms. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 04:05, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Who should be listed as a party's leader?

There's a potential problem with the listings in Template:Infobox election. The entry for a party's "leader" can potentially be:

The person holding the official position of leader of the overall party
The person who leads the party in the parliament
The person whom the party is presenting at the election as their candidate to be chief minister

In some countries & systems all three are the same person, but there are various elections where the posts are split including:

In Germany the "Chancellor candidate" is a specific position in its own right, and the party leader another, with lander premiers often holding one or the other - e.g. in the 1998 election the SPD's candidate for Chancellor was Gerhard Schröder, the premier of Lower Saxony, whilst the party leader was Oskar Lafontaine, the premier of Saarland, and I'm not sure who had been leading the SPD in the Bundestag up to the election.
A lot of Canadian federal and provincial parties have elected leaders who are not yet in the relevant parliament. Some have entered via immediate by-elections but others have waited until the next general election with a separate parliamentary leader in the interim.
Next Queensland state election. The Liberal National Party of Queensland has recently selected a non-MP to lead it into the election and be their candidate for Premier, whilst another MP has been elected as the party's parliamentary leader and is (I think) nominally the official leader. Who should be in the box?

It can also be messy if a party structure puts the leader in a different body altogether, including

Prior to 2011 the all-Ireland party Sinn Féin had its leader in the United Kingdom Parliament (albeit abstenionist) and the Northern Ireland Assembly and the members of the Republic's Dail had a separate parliamentary leader. In 2007, confusingly, the party was represented in the Republic's leaders' debates by its Northern based leader.
From this year the party has gone to the south and now sits in the Dail. There is a separate leader in the Assembly who is also the deputy First Minister?
Confusingly between 2007 & 2011 Sinn Féin had a separate DFM from its leader/Assembly leader.

And there are no doubt others. This is creating some discussion on individual articles over who should be listed; a centralised steer would be helpful. Timrollpickering (talk) 00:53, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

You can't have a "centralised steer", there is no one size fits all solution because the examples are occurring in different countries with different legislatures. Why tar it all with the one brush when that would be blatantly misleading? Timeshift (talk) 06:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anyone wants to force anything into a box; the question is what the non-expert reader will think a "leader" is. The question arose from Talk:Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2011, where it's not clear whether Gerry Adams (who now serves in a different parliament entirely, the Republic's Dáil Éireann) or Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness should be listed as the "leader" of Sinn Féin. I'm a pretty passionate champion of pluralism and permissivism on Wikipedia myself, and a long-time opponent of uniformity for its own sake. I guess the question is whether there should be multiple optional lines for something on the order of "legislative caucus leader", "party leader", "party administrator", "party spokesperson", "executive candidate", etc. (not that I'd want to use those titles if better ones can be devised), so that a reader (who may come from a very different political system) can grasp what that line means. —— Shakescene (talk) 07:20, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Too many articles

Shakescene kind of touched on this above. In the US, we have on average, over 200+ years, 30 states. They mostly held general elections every two years. In the 20th century, they started to hold primary elections to replace party nominees. So maybe 4000 potential articles at the top level in each state. Times each office, say five officers average at the state level = 20,000 articles. Not even counting the legislature. Just for the U.S. We have maybe 500 or so today? Most of these are dedicated to WP:SOAPBOX pushing that my candidate was better than your candidate. Hard to keep that enthusiasm up as we go backwards into time. Whigs? Democratic-Republicans? Hard to identify. Maybe the articles will improve?

We need a tighter structure. Having one article dedicated to proving my one candidate is better than your one candidate needs to be jettisoned in favor of something more inclusive and more objective.

We have abandoned articles because my candidate may have been "better than" yours, but he didn't win, so the editor went on to other matters! There are 2008 elections in Vermont still worded in the future tense!

Polls need to be jettisoned. We already have more maintenance than we can handle even with the few hundred abandoned articles. What the hell do polls matter after the election? What a futile waste of editor power!

And BTW, we have no election in Vermont that is completely covered with each state office and both branches of the legislature covered. Mercifully we have no county government! At least we don't have to worry about that!

We either need to abandon elections as they now stand or change drastically. We are not even keeping up with elections as we encounter them, never mind documenting past ones.

We need to cover parties that garner 3% (or some other cutoff) of the vote. We probably need a lot of other shortcuts as well.

Without drastic changes, these articles will only continue to slide into the abyss and fail as a reference for anyone serious about elections. Student7 (talk) 02:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Need input at election-related FAC

I have nominated the article United States Senate Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania, 2010 for featured article, but so far it has received no actual comments or either support or oppose votes. I really do not want it to fail for lack of input, so could anybody spare the time to weigh in there? Thanks! — Hun ter Ka hn 15:23, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Swedish elections 2010: Mention Nazi party?

A far-right party received 2.8% in one community, and now there is a section in the article on the 2010 election in Sweden. Please comment at Talk:Swedish_general_election,_2010#Municipal_elections_and_National_Socialism:_Expo.

Thanks! Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:31, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Help

Still really need help at the featured article nomination for United States Senate Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania, 2010. There have been no oppose votes but very little input at all, and I don't want to see it fail for lack of participation. Any help would be very much appreciated! — Hun ter Ka hn 21:09, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Project Vote Smart

Please see the discussion at WikiProject Politics Talk page concerning questions about Project Vote Smart. Any info and help would be appreciated. Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 02:10, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Polls during election campaigns

At Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Polls on Wikipedia? there is a discussion about whether WP:NOT should make provision regarding "daily polls". It has been suggested as an alternative that a style guideline is developed as part of this WikiProject. Your input at the discussion would be welcome, although detailed discussion about a style guide will be better on this page. Thryduulf (talk) 20:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Changing reporting of ranked choice voting elections

I would like to suggest changing some of the format and content of how results of ranked choice voting elections are described. This would involve changing/adding/replacing templates. A prototype of changes to San Francisco mayoral election, 2011#Results is currently available at User:DCary/SampleRcvResults. The templates being used in this prototype are in the User: namespace. Links to the templates can be found at User:DCary/Wip/RCV_Results.

The prototype illustrates some improved ways of reporting ranked choice voting results such as:

Using standard and most commonly used terminology for ranked choice voting, especially as used in California
Avoiding misleading terminology.
Separating aggregations of basic ballot accounting.
Giving a summary of votes in terms of the maximum votes counted for each candidate, which recognizes all transfers and is consistent with the elections infobox high-level presentation, rather than just first-choice or first round votes.
Providing a graphical representation of key vote count components for quicker and more intuitive understanding of the overall contest, integrated with supporting text quantities.

The numbers used in this sample are the latest numbers (November 30) published by the San Francisco Department of Elections.

Feedback is welcome, including if there is a better place than here to discuss this. DCary (talk) 04:19, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Requested move

Contributions welcome at Talk:Greek head of state referendum, 1862#Requested move. Cheers, Number 5 7 22:14, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Minor candidates and blanket primaries

I had some concerns which I see have been discussed in part. I do agree that "minor candidates" could be left out of the infobox. However, of the articles I read and contribute to, there appears to be a concerted effort to ghettoize every candidate who didn't intend to spend as much money as possible on their campaign. Yes, I do have a problem with that. First off, based upon my own experiences running for elected office, not to mention just plain common sense, the corporate media will choose to give coverage to a candidate usually in equal proportion to how much money that candidate spends on advertising. Second, I've been using the Internet for 22 years. You may be able to figure out from that statement that I'm perfectly capable of finding my way around the web. Taking these two items into consideration, if the information found on Wikipedia is too much of a mirror of information found elsewhere, then what do I need Wikipedia for? I've been asking that question for years and don't believe I've gotten an answer, much less a good answer. If the corporate media's coverage of elections is skewed in any way for reasons usually having to do with the bottom line, then fine, that's their prerogative. However, when I see incessant parroting of the corporate media and their agendas on here, I realize that most contributors don't get the reasons why Wikipedia is non-commercial and ad-free.

Also, I'm in Alaska, which used a blanket primary for all but a handful of elections from 1948 to 1998. I see a number of articles for Alaska elections from the latter part of that era which portray a "Democratic primary" and a "Republican primary." That's funny, considering there was one ballot and any voter could vote for any candidate, regardless of the party affiliation of either. I don't believe it to be an accurate statement that there were Democratic and Republican primaries in this instance. Why sure, there were the Democratic and Republican nominations at stake, but if the ballots weren't formatted to that effect, then that's an internal matter to the political parties rather than anything having to do with the election. Am I off-base in thinking this? I played around in the sandbox recently and tried to come up with a way to format election boxes to accurately portray a blanket primary. Please take a look and offer some input or suggestions. Thanks.RadioKAOS (talk) 19:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

British local elections and "thirds"

You should see from my recent contributions that I 'corrected' the vote share change in Manchester and Liverpool council elections. In these instances, the 2011 election was the end of the 4-year term for those councillors elected in 2007. The elections in 2012 for all those authorities who elect 'in thirds' will be the end of the 2008-2012 cycle. I think everyone who deals with UK elections know that the vote share should be compared like-for-like, so in these instances, 2011 should be compared with 2007, 2012 with 2008, and so on.

We all know that the media tend to compare year-by-year, and not like-by-like. If we can ensure that Wikipedia does it right, then the media can just play catchup. I'll do what I can (currently on with Salford 2007-2011). doktorb _words^deeds 03:50, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

AfD

Input is welcome at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Israeli Agricultural Labour Union election, 1968. Cheers, Number 5 7 15:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Police commissioner elections - query

Afternoon.

I am typing this question in a number of different locations to help measure opinion. As you may know, next year should see the England and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner elections, 2012. There will be over 40 concurrent elections in each of the Constabulary areas, with the potential for numerous candidates and the fun and games associated with using STV as a voting system.

I want to know how people feel about the election coverage. I have two options in my mind, and want to ask people how we should work on the forthcoming elections.

Option A would be keeping ALL 40+ election results on the same page. This would reduce the amount space used for British elections, reduce the likelihood of AfD discussions amongst the wider community on notability grounds, enable a co-ordination effort for the elections project, and enable editors to enhance their working knowledge on how to election results boxes, source material etc. It would be a very long article, require intense concentration to reduce confusion and enhance clarity, be open to sidetracking conversations about article splitting.

Option B would be starting individual articles for each Constabulary election. These would be easy to watch via bookmarks and watchlist, enable editors to focus on areas they know better than others, enhance the space available for each candidate's profile etc if required, and allow for a greater coverage for the contests in specific electoral areas. However they would be very difficult to watch all 40 at the height of the election period. It would also attract coordinated vandalism.

We have just under a year to decide, though in real terms, the May election period is going to be a nightmare anyway (and that's without tying to keep up to date with the Boundary changes).

Any feedback or ideas?

doktorb _words^deeds 12:33, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Interesting ideas. I don't know that the length of the article would really be too over-burdensome, but, then again, since this is a new election, I'm not sure how it will really play out. I'm not completely opposed to it an article for each Constabulary. Depends on how notable it is. The main article would list them all, then we'd have separate articles for the more notable elections. That would be kind of standard procedure here on WP, seems like. I'm more likely to support Option A.

Option C Perhaps we could split it up into two? The EWPCC elections, 2012 would highlight the most notable (however that's determined) and then we'd have more detailed listings in either England Police and Crime Commissioner elections, 2012 and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner elections, 2012. Or would that be forking it out too much, also? Thank you. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 16:31, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

I would go for a single article (option A) to start with, and see how we go. If it gets too large, then it would be split. The suggestion by JoannaSerah is probably the best first way to split if we need to. Number 5 7 19:11, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Cheers for that. The feedback seems to be attracted to an Option C. It certainly seems to make sense. I'll keep the question open and see what other feedback might come doktorb _words^deeds 20:50, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Id support option a. If its too large then we can split it off later. How would you determine in an npov manner which one warrants importance and which is marginal (this was before i read Number57, btw)Lihaas (talk) 07:21, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Guidelines for Listing Endorsements for Office

Wikipedia articles describing election campaigns could use some general guidelines for deciding which political endorsements are appropriate for inclusion in the articles.

First, there is the issue of what constitutes a political endorsement.

There are some statements that nearly everyone, if not everyone, would accept as clear endorsements. An example would be when the editorial board of a newspaper publishes an article shortly before an election stating that of the candidates seeking office, the board prefers Candidate X and urges readers to vote for Candidate X; or when a retiring elected official holds a press conference together with his chosen successor and urges voters to cast their votes for that person.

There are many other situations in which it is not so clear that a formal endorsement is being made. These are the sorts of cases that can be problematic for WP editors.

Is casually saying "I agree with a lot of what Candidate X says" an endorsement for office?

Is it an endorsement if the person only makes the statement in question with reluctance (for example, during an interview that is not primarily about the interviewed subject's opinion of the candidates and in which the interviewer must ask repeatedly to extricate that specific information)?

Is saying "I support Candidate X" while simultaneously saying "I support Candidate Y" and "I support Candidate Z" — all of whom are competing for the same seat — an endorsement suitable for inclusion among the endorsements listed in a WP article about a campaign? Or should exclusivity be a requirement for inclusion?

Second, there is the issue of whether a person who has some formal connection to the campaign (eg, someone who is described as a "senior adviser" to the campaign) should be listed among individuals making an endorsement for a candidate — or whether the connection is exclusionary due to the conflict of interest. And what are the boundaries, if any, for deciding to exclude an endorser on the basis of being connected to the campaign? Would major financial contributors be acceptable for inclusion, or should they be excluded, or will it vary case by case?

Third, what are the guidelines for deciding whether a particular endorsement is noteworthy enough (or whether the endorser is notable enough) for inclusion? For example, in the United States, the endorsement that a local schoolboard member makes for a candidate seeking to be the nation's president would not seem to be noteworthy enough for inclusion in a WP article, even though local newspapers might report on the endorsement.

Fourth, what should the convention be for handling endorsements made by individuals or groups with whom the candidate or party does not wish to be associated?

Fifth, it may be helpful to spell out what specific rules apply to choosing citations for endorsements, given that they often are made nowadays on blogs, social media sites (eg Facebook), or personal websites. WP:SELFPUB requires that the material involved does not involve claims about a third party, yet political endorsements almost always involve claims about third parties (usually the preferred candidate, and often the rival candidates). For a couple of examples see the citations for Barbara Ehrenreich's and Garrison Keillor's endorsements at List of Barack Obama presidential campaign endorsements, 2008. 06:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)Dezastru (talk) 06:19, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

1. Agreed that we need a criterion, problem is we often times wont know the whole context by just getting info from the oft-distorted view of the media. As for the media explicit support, that is an obvious notable inclusion if the outlet is notable. For multiple supports i would say we could add it with due caveat.

2. obviously when linked to the campaign officially they shouldnt be added as its given you support your boss. That said financial contributions should be included as that is a sign of an endorsement (you wont contribute heavily to opposing candisdates (even though large corporations and unions give to both parties in the USA to hedge, one is overwhelmingly larger))

3. If the person is generally notable to be on WP i think thats notable enough for inclusion. As for school board members for president i would disagree, BUT for parliamentary or local/state elections it would hold more water.

4. We dont cater to the whims of the candidate so its irrelevant if they want it or not. If its RS supported it should be added, with possible note that it was rejected)

5. RS sources first. the rest can be taken on case-by-case basis.Lihaas (talk) 07:31, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

ITNR for elections

Due to recurrent discussions that lead nowhere, an open-ended discussion and proposals are invited Wikipedia talk:In the news/Recurring items/Elections for ITN on the main page as to what should be recurrent without ITNC discussionsLihaas (talk) 07:24, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Mauritanian parliamentary election, 2012

The article Mauritanian parliamentary election, 2012 has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Its not true at all according to RS sources (as opposed to the individual's website). Election was in 2011 and 2013 [1]. Nor is it n the news. ([2][3][4])

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Lihaas (talk) 21:45, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Please see this discussion about election article titles. Thanks. Lugnuts (talk) 09:07, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Polling order

In Talk:United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2012#Polling_order, we are having a dispute concerning whether polls should be listed in chronological or reverse-chronological order. I would appreciate any outside input from the broader group of editors who contribute to these articles. Thanks! johnpseudo 16:21, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Referendum vs Referenda

I had a bit of a debate on this issue at Template:British Columbia elections and I think we should choose a policy, either requiring one spelling across the encyclopedia or requiring MOS:ENGVAR and using the spelling preferred by the elections-organizing body of each referendum. In my opinion, the quote by the Oxford Dictionary at Referendum#Terminology suggests that we should use the -a spelling, but some people are strongly opposed to it, so the ENGVAR solution might be better. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:24, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

As noted in the discussion, I do not believe this is a WP:ENGVAR issue, so would support the first solution. I also think it's quite clear that Referendum#Terminology supports "referendums" as it points out that "the use of referenda is deprecated by the Oxford English Dictionary". Also note a previous discussion here. Number 5 7 07:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Even though it's not quite the same as an ENGVAR case, I think it would be pretty weird if the government and media in a jurisdiction were mostly using one spelling and we were using the other. I think the argument that one spelling is depreciated is pretty weak. Google gives 3M hits for one spelling and 4M for the other, and there are several jurisdictions whose election-organizing bodies use the -a spelling. If the OED said that the -a spelling is depreciated (that isn't actually part of their quote), I'm curious about how they came to that conclusion; did they only look at whether it was depreciated in England? If the OED said that one spelling was outright wrong for linguistic reasons, it would be a different matter (like in the case of octopuses/octopi). —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:43, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read previous discussions on this topic, but I think we have bigger fish to fry at WP. Editors should be free to use whichever term they prefer. Everyone will understand what is intended. To promote uniformity for cosmetic purposes, I might be willing to support a guideline, but I oppose imposition of a restrictive policy. (And yes, I studied Latin and have a passing familiarity with the history of modern English.) Dezastru (talk) 17:06, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Section headings - "Results" vs "Result"

In order to try to bring to a close a long-running dispute, what are fellow editors in favour of the heading title for this section of election and referendum articles? Personally I am in favour of the "Results" based on common (e.g. BBC) and formal (IFES and the IPU) English usage, and this is currently widespread across such articles. However, one editor has been attempting to change headings in several articles to "Result". Attempts at reverting have been met by claims that there is no consensus for the use of "Results". Thoughts please? Thanks, Number 5 7 14:28, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Presumably you mean that you're in favour of the former? Results should normally be used since they are a collection of results for individual parties or candidates. Result would be used when we simply state who has been elected or the election is uncontested. Valenciano (talk) 14:38, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I was just editing that when I saw your comment! Number 5 7 14:39, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

1. there is not consensus YET.

2. see Talk: Next Israeli legislative election, no consensus there iehter. Need to get consensus THEN change not per IDONTLIKEIT

If we are to change it then we need to change the tiltle for consistency . An election doesnt yield elections/results.

An admn doenst war/canvass selected editors!...not to mention after being told "for the nth time" ths conversation just comes up while accussing me of a "blind revert" + deceptive use of BRD when there is NO consensus whatsoevr fo the change. [5] (and instead of warring you can add content to that page!Lihaas (talk) 16:15, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

If I was canvassing, I wouldn't have notified you about the discussion (the editors I did invite had either previously commented on the result/results issue or had reverted changes to this heading). As for linking to this edit, can you explain to me how this a BRD violation when I am reverting to the original title. Also, edits like this just leave articles with grammatically incorrect sentences. Number 5 7 17:23, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I have this page on my watchlist, I would have probably reached this discussion anyway. Question: does anybody other than Lihaas support the singular "Result"? Preferably someone who speaks English as a native language. Rami R 16:31, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia usage should be based on common usage. It also depends on the type of election. A presidential election normally has a result, while legislative elections are a combination of constituency elections in which a number of results may be meaningful. Aridd (talk) 16:38, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

But in a presidential election there are several results as each candidate has a different one. I think it may be fairer to say there is one outcome but several results. I think we also need to have consistency between articles on the headings. Number 5 7 17:23, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

My intuition would be to use Results. —Nightstallion 14:05, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Aridd has the right theory. The simplest of elections, say a presidential election, or a referendum, has a single result. There is not one result per candidate, there is one result per election. So in theory, Obama vs McCain, or Hollande vs Sarkozy, has a result (singular). But in practice an article will list results (plural). Obama vs McCain in each state, or popular vote as well as electoral vote. Hollande vs Sarkozy in the first and second rounds. Very rarely will an article contain only one result (one single-column table of figures). So for consistency Results is overwhelmingly going to be the correct word. Sussexonian (talk) 21:56, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

US presidential elections are far more complicated, and I would suggest 'results' based on the following hypothetical: X voters in 50 states and 5 areas voted; 3 states had to wait two weeks for absentee ballot to clarify their winner, and another is conducting a mandatory recount; court cases in two challenge the outcome, and one state's secretary of state cannot be found. While the winner of the popular vote will never be known (3 million absentee ballots are in states not close enough to open them let alone count them) which renders the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact moot, but would have been its first legal challenge, a single faithless elector has thrown the decision to the House of Representatives, which is unlikely to choose the independent candidate, who won 30 % of the vote but not a single elector. While a worst case nightmare, this is not 'a result'. Dru of Id (talk) 05:27, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

There is only one situation in which the singular form "result" is appropriate, and that is an election in which a single post was filled unopposed (e.g. St Albans by-election, 1943). In every other situation, the outcome consists of multiple results (plural), in the shape of vote counts for the various candidates. For consistency, it is best to use the plural form for headings. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:29, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Indian presidential election, 2012

This article, which is rather far outside my area of competence, is in a rather sorry state. I wonder if anyone with a working knowledge of Indian politics and government would care to take a look. Semi-protection just expired, but there hasn't been any major recent unpleasantness that I can see. Rivertorch (talk) 17:45, 29 June 2012 (UTC)

Stand in Candidates for President of the United States

I recall hearing in an AFD a while back that third party candidates for President of the United States who will be on the ballot in at least one state meet the notability guidelines. If this is correct, then what about stand-in candidates? And would it be any different if the stand-in candidates were chosen not on merit, but because they have the same name as the main nominee, who was blocked from the ballot? It appears such a thing might happen with former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson and a Texas businessman of the same name, in Michigan this year. Should the other Gary Johnson receive his own article, a section in the main article about the original Johnson's campaign, or nothing? I'll provide cites if/when needed. Smartyllama (talk) 01:42, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Another new election box

I didn't think there were enough Election Box formats (!) so I made one for the Supplementary Vote counting system used for English mayoral elections and the forthcoming England and Wales Police and Crime Commissioner elections, 2012. The template is based on the one created for San Francisco mayoral election, 2011 and you can see it on Mansfield mayoral election, 2011. I have some more features in mind but any comments welcome. Sussexonian (talk) 11:15, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Comparative Politics Textbook

Hello all! I’m working with the Saylor foundation to create a series of original, crowd-sourced textbooks that will be openly licensed and freely available on the web and within Saylor’s free, self-paced courses at Saylor.org. We are using Wikibooks as a platform to host this project and hope to garner the interest of existing members of the Wikibooks and Wikipedia community, as well as bring in new members! We thought that some of your members may be interested in contributing to our book Saylor.org's Comparative Politics. (talk)--Thomas Simpson (talk) 16:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Referendum naming convention

A discussion regarding the appropriate naming convention for articles on referendums is taking place here. Should it be "Irish constitutional referendum, November 2012", "Children's rights referendum, 2012" or "Thirty-First Amendment of the Constitution (Children) Bill 2012"? — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 09:45, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Parliamentary versus legislative, redux

I've noticed that the articles in Category:Elections in Georgia (country) are not consistently named. The article on the latest election for its legislature is titled "parliamentary", whereas the previous ones are all titled "legislative". Since the Parliament of Georgia has only held that name since 1995, I guess it makes sense to use "legislative" for elections prior to then. But shouldn't the articles on post-1995 elections be consistently titled? As far as I can tell, the general issue of "parliamentary" versus "legislative" was discussed here, but it seems as if no firm conclusions were reached. Has some sort of naming conventions or guidelines been developed since? Or is it just "use common sense"? Gabbe (talk) 15:38, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

It seems to go along with how it is called in the local language. The elections to the Parliament of France should be named as French parliamentary election, 2012 at first glance but in French, it's called as "Élections législatives françaises de 2012" hence the its English Wikipedia article is called as "French legislative election, 2012". Same for Parliament of Portugal: it's "Eleições legislativas portuguesas de 2011", which becomes "Portuguese legislative election, 2011". –H T D 14:47, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

U.S. Election editnotice

I've created {{U.S. Election notice}} as an editnotice template for use on articles affected by the U.S. general election. Since the election is in early November and many of those elected don't take office until mid-to-late January, we tend to have a lot of jump-the-gun updating. This editnotice is intended to prevent some of that editing by reminding editors that there is a difference between editing and inauguration. I'm not mass-implementing it generally, but if you see that an article is drawing a lot of good faith errors, this is available. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 20:56, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not against mass implementation and if this Iowa watchlist shows too many changes, I'll go ahead and mass implement there. I just don't want to step on anyone's toes with preemptive implementation. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 09:14, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm a lot more worried about the insertion of vote totals, which I've noticed in quite a few articles on my watchlist. At the time I'm writing this, the polls closed approximately 24 to 30 hours ago, depending on time zone. I'm guessing that as of right now, not a single state has finished counting ballots or certified their results. Based upon existing examples of past election articles, in which preliminary results are still found in the article years later because they were never updated after election night, how does it help to allow these numbers to remain when they are only preliminary and not official results? RadioKAOS – Talk to me, Billy 07:09, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, but that's much more of a temporary problem than the one the editnotice was created for - it should be a relatively short period of time before official results are available for most states. As for the utility of the preliminary results, I think they are valuable in election articles because a) they are reliable information about the election and b) they are part of the documented history of the election. I don't edit actual election articles much, but my personal preference would be to include both numbers in the election articles for historical reference. As for personal articles, you may have a point - ideally, I'd like to see preliminary numbers put into the articles, but eventually replaced with final numbers, but I don't know if people will actually do that. Perhaps the appropriate result would be to set up a squad of folks to systematically check/update the articles in, say, early December? I'd be willing to be part of such a patrol - at least for the national House and Senate. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 08:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure it's only a temporary problem when I've come across articles pertaining to 2006 and 2008 elections that were never updated after election night. There were a few articles which caught my attention this week. My poster child, however, is Electoral history of the Libertarian Party (United States). I've been working on this article here and there. It needs A LOT of work, particularly in regards to elections which are over and done with and have been certified. In light of that, the number one priority for that article does not need to be to tell me how Gary Johnson did, when a million other websites can do a better job of that. The vote total added to the article was incorrect per the cited source two days later. Surely similar problems exist in other articles, too. The only appropriate conclusion would be "Whoopee, X candidate knew how to find/hire a social media consultant". It isn't anything which moves the encyclopedia forward. RadioKAOS – Talk to me, Billy 06:08, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

By temporary, I meant as far as the risk of new bad edits went - after the official results are released, I would expect that the frequency of the addition of new, bad, numbers would go down. The persistence of existing bad edits is, as you note, anything but temporary. I would be reluctant to address this via a banner or an editnotice, though the usage of tracking categories (e.g. Category:Articles that need to be checked for accuracy and for use of official (final) election results and Category:Articles checked for accurate official (final) election results) could be useful leading up to a "let's fix it" campaign. The obvious catch is while we could apply the "needs to be checked" to a wide range of existing articles, it wouldn't be on new articles and they wouldn't get checked. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:18, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Presidential elections in 2004

2004 Presidential Election presently redirects to United States presidential election, 2004, but 2004 Presidential election redirects to a dab page at 2004 presidential election. I think that all three capitalisations should lead to the same place, so I have nominated both redirects at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 November 19#2004 Presidential election. Your comments in that discussion would be welcome. Thryduulf (talk) 12:45, 19 November 2012 (UTC)