Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums

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. Schwede66 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. Schwede66 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? — Hunter Kahn 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? — Hunter Kahn 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 57 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 57 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 57 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:

1. The parties represented in the infobox have at least 3/4 of the seats combined.
2. The parties in the infobox that are part of the governing coalition have at least 1/2 of the seats
3. "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)

Mistakes in USA gubernatorial election results.

Please see the write up at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-04-18/In the news and the comment at the bottom (transcluded talk page). -- Jeandré, 2011-04-19t13:37z

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 57 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.--Nilfanion (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 57 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.--Nilfanion (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)

Naming discussion

Some outside (preferably apolitical) input would be welcomed at Talk:Irish general election, 1918#Requested move concerning how to name the article. Thanks,--Kotniski (talk) 16:07, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

The standard format for this kind of thing is United Kingdom general election in Ireland, 1918 (see here and here for examples from other countries). However, there is no way you will get Irish nationalists to accept the words United Kingdom in the article title, so I suggest it's worth giving up now. Sadly, reasonable arguments simply don't work in that part of Wikipedia. Number 57 22:28, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

If reasonable people give up, the decisions will end up being made by unreasonable people.--Kotniski (talk) 09:54, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

That's been the case for several years in certain topic areas. Attempts to bring in outside voices simply do not work (you can RFC until you're blue in the face, but you will never attract enough neutral editors to get a sensible result). Until admins are brave enough to block nationalists on sight (and others are not stupid enough to unblock them) then there's not much point in editing in these areas. I've been waiting six years for this to happen, and I'm not holding my breath. Number 57 10:12, 3 July 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! — Hunter Kahn 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! — Hunter Kahn 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 57 22:14, 11 December 2011 (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 57 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)

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)