Talk:2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election

Opinion poll table

We have an opinion polling table with 11 rows, but only 3 actual polls (all from Sep 2017-Feb 2018). There are 5 rows for other elections: the previous Assembly result, two general elections, a European Parl. election and a round of local elections. There are three rows for changes in party leadership (two for the UUP).

The result looks a bit silly to my eyes. I understand why all these other things are listed, but it feels like there's more editorialising/WP:OR than actual content. I would like to propose that we cut this down and just show the three actual polls. Discussion of party leadership changes and other election results can be summarised in prose. Bondegezou (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 9 June 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) ~SS49~ {talk} 13:28, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

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• Next Northern Ireland Assembly election → 2021 Northern Ireland Assembly election
• Next Scottish Parliament election → 2021 Scottish Parliament election

– Per 2021 Senedd election. Unreal7 (talk) 09:34, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as per WP:CRYSTAL and WP:NCELECT. The next Northern Ireland Assembly election can be held up to 2022, and an earlier dissolution of the Scottish Parliament (which is legally possible) would allow an election in Scotland to be held even throughout 2020. For future elections of uncertain date, use a form similar to Next Irish general election. It's not fixed that these elections have to be in 2021, hence the naming convention rule on future elections of uncertain date prevails. Impru20^talk 09:48, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose, too soon to say with any certainty that the next election(s) will be in 2021. Jmorrison230582 (talk) 10:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose, both for NI and Scotland. In regards to Scotland there is three reasons why an early election could be held Next Scottish Parliament election#Date. Considering there is still 6 months left, an election in 2020 is not impossible. In regards to Northern Ireland as mentioned above, it is possible the Assembly sits for the full term which would lead to an election in 2022. Humongous125 (talk) 11:10, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose for NI; no comment on Scotland. NI Assembly politics are too unpredictable! Bondegezou (talk) 13:39, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose as per WP:CRYSTALBALL ~ Amkgp 💬 17:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Per the above, the elections are not definitely happening in the years proposed. Number 57 11:50, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removing minor parties

The goal of an infobox is to "summarize key facts". Now, the current bloated infobox describes 8 parties over 3 rows. Yet there's a clear separation line between the first 5 parties, which have between 8 and 28 seats, and the remaining ones, which have just 1 or 2.

The Northern Ireland agreements provide for power-sharing mechanisms that further reduce these parties' power. Meaning the minor parties are really minor.

Now of course this might change when the next election comes about. But we cannot make those assumptions before the election results transform the status of some of those parties. Kahlores (talk) 15:41, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

For forthcoming elections, we have to be particularly careful about respecting WP:NPOV. I would suggest not having an election box at all, or having a simple election box with no parties listed. This is the approach that has been taken for many UK election articles recently. The facts are that no-one has been elected yet.

If we are to have an election box with parties, while I concur that infoboxes are meant to be short, the cut-off of having won a seat or not is, I suggest, the clearest. We could switch to Template:Infobox legislative election if we want something more compact. That would seem sensible to me too. Bondegezou (talk) 23:33, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

But very keen for other people to input with thoughts! Bondegezou (talk) 14:05, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

In the sequence of party seats {1, 1, 2, 8 ... 28} there's a pretty clear cut-off. There's no way to paint it differently. What is your objective exactly? If you want the compact table why revert to the status quo?

Paradoxically the use of the compact table makes sense in every country where some form of PR is used (including N.I.) but not the UK, because of the well-known laws of election methods. I don't know why it was pushed on the UK page. They could've made a special British variant (no pun intended) that includes the specifics of the 3 smaller nations.

Kahlores (talk) 03:30, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Let's say the UUP had got 8 seats and Alliance 4. There then wouldn't be a clear cut-off. But why would that have changed how significant or not are the Greens' 2 seats? Looking for a gap in a series of numbers is not a good way of determining what parties to include. What the majority of election article infoboxes do is include all parties that won seats and exclude all those that didn't. That is in practice the most important distinction.

I prefer the status quo to your proposal as it follows what most election article infoboxes do and its inclusive, important for a forthcoming election where we have to be careful about WP:NPOV. However, where there is disagreement between editors, sometimes a third option can satisfy both editors' concerns, so I am happy to brainstorm some different ways of achieving the desired goals. Template:Infobox legislative election achieves your desired compactness and my desired inclusion of all parties that won seats, but it was just an idea.

What we really need, however, is for some other editors to input! Bondegezou (talk) 08:43, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

My experience is that calling for people to come on a talk page, on that same talk page, doesn't really work. I'm not sure about the efficiency of brainstorms either: we're not here to create a unicorn, but to pick one of three options. In our case, I wouldn't mind if you were using the party list infobox.

Full inclusivity on election infoboxes is not a rule: see the 2000 United States presidential election for instance, not mentioning Spoiler Nader. Other examples I can think of derive from the fact that the usual template has a cap on the number of parties.

In your UUP scenario the question we should be asking is whether the UUP is then part or not of the executive. I argued above, that the Good Friday Agreement mandates for a power-sharing executive where portfolios are allocated proportionally to the results. The Alliance has been appointed to head the Department of Justice but no longer has a ministry of its own. With 2+8 ministers currently, and 2+11 previously, a party needs to have 1/10 of the seats to be entitled a portfolio. This makes for an objective, fair cut-off threshold.

Kahlores (talk) 03:45, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I have never argued for full inclusivity as that is usually inappropriate or impossible. Including all parties that won seats obviously excludes some parties. Elections to a single position, like 2000 United States presidential election, are different to elections to a legislature. Including all parties that won seats is not a hard and fast rule: different articles do different things for a variety of reasons. (There's an example where the main opposition boycotted an election, didn't stand, didn't win any seats, but they're included in the infobox because they were clearly part of the story of that (not very democratic) election.) However, including all parties that won seats is the commonest approach I see.

So, presuming no-one else jumps in (and I take your point there), let's switch to a party list infobox for now. I'll make the change when I have time if you or someone else hasn't. I am happy for that to be reviewed once the election has happened. Infoboxes for forthcoming elections have different requirements to infoboxes for elections that have happened. Bondegezou (talk) 12:04, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

You don't need to find a slot. I just did it and it took me just a few minutes to move from one template to another: the parameters work on both templates, except there are one or two things to check.

There is a problem, though: the names are not always abbreviated. The template uses the "shortnames" referenced in "template:[party name]/meta/shortname". One example is Template:People Before Profit/meta/shortname which is used on over 30 articles, including tables for the Republic of Ireland (STV counts and other lists) where it makes sense to use the complete name, in harmony with "Fianna Fail", "Fine Gael", etc. However, in Northern Ireland it is an exception. Either UUP, DUP, SDLP should be in full, or we should write PBP. I am neutral for Alliance and Green. Kahlores (talk) 04:56, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

People Before Profit?

Hello all! PBP's Wikipage states that it believes in Irish reunification, and I verified that through the parties website, is this party a nationalist one? Or should it remain under the category of "other"? B. M. L. Peters (talk) 00:04, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

The Assembly requires parties to designate as "nationalist", "unionist" or "other", as part of the consociationalist power-sharing. PBP choose to designate as "other". So, we can say the party is nationalist in terms of what they want to happen, but, separately, we need to say they designate as "other". They do not designate as "nationalist". Bondegezou (talk) 14:04, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Infobox form

There's been some back and forth editing on the infobox between the election template and the legislative election template.

I favour the legislative election template: it is more compact and, thus, in keeping with MOS:INFOBOX. The non-legislative template is a behemoth given the number of parties represented, contains tons of info that is fairly trivial (like leader's constituency -- something never discussed in the article, so why is it in the infobox?) and overwhelms the rest of the article (violating the Manual of Style). Bondegezou (talk) 08:54, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed this change made such a drastic change to the infobox, such as removing all the photos. All the other assembly elections at {{Northern Ireland elections}} use the election template, it makes no sense to me to have this one use a different one. FDW777 (talk) 09:21, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

There's no need for things like leader's constituency to be included anyway, 2014 Northern Ireland local elections uses the election infobox and managed just fine without it. FDW777 (talk) 09:28, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I'd be happy for all the other Assembly elections to be switched to the legislative election template. The massive infoboxes produced by the non-legislative templates when we have lots of parties are not in keeping with MOS:INFOBOX. If others aren't keen on that, I would also note that the "Next..." election is inherently a different case to articles on elections that have happened and we've often done something different for forthcoming elections. So, I don't think this article has to be consistent with past articles because of that.

However, yes, you're right, we can have a non-legislative template without including the leader's consistuency field, so let's remove them. Bondegezou (talk) 09:58, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I note the "Leader since" field is also information that is never discussed in the article and, therefore, should not be in the infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 10:00, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

2021 Senedd election and 2021 Scottish Parliament election both use the standard election infobox too. It would appear to be an issue needing wider discussion than this article if the legislative election infobox is to be used instead. Removed the "Leader since" field. FDW777 (talk) 12:01, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Next United Kingdom general election uses the Template: Infobox Legislative Election (TILE), but prior general elections use Template: Infobox Election (TIE). This is an agreed consensus reflecting the different context of covering something forthcoming versus something that has happened. Next Irish general election and earlier articles reflect the same pattern. More broadly, UK election articles mostly use TIE, but sometimes have used TILE. Wider afield, it's a mix. If I look at recent election articles I'm following, I see 2021 Albanian parliamentary election, 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2021 Dutch general election and 2021 Israeli legislative election all use TILE, but 2021 Czech legislative election uses TIE. TILE tends to be more popular when the number of parties is higher.

Wikipedia doesn't require consistency: indeed, it focuses more on what works for the individual article. I don't see a problem with this article using TILE if we have consensus for that. I'm not saying we do have consensus: just offering my own view. My own view remains that large TIE infoboxes (a) violate MOS:INFOBOX and (b) are utterly pointless when most people read Wikipedia articles on their smartphone. Having a large, comprehensive table in an infobox misses the point of an infobox, as laid out in the Manual of Style. Bondegezou (talk) 12:57, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting consistency for the sake of consistency. But, if the argument is that eight parties in the infobox is too large for this article then it must logically follow that a similarly sized infobox on other election articles is also too large, thus it's in need of a far wider discussion than just on this page. FDW777 (talk) 18:44, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

"There's no need for things like leader's constituency to be included anyway", well, aside from the Assembly being the level of Government that these leaders have their seats (and indeed Eastwood not being in the Assembly despite being SDLP is worth noting, no?). If having Constituency and Leadership information is fine for every other devolved legislature in the UK, and for the Dáil in the Republic, why would it be wrong to note something as basic as Constituencies or when said Leader took office? BitterGiant (talk) 00:04, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

We should follow the Manual of Style. MOS:INFOBOX says, When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article (an article should remain complete with its summary infobox ignored, with exceptions noted below). The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content. Or, put another way, the infobox should only contain information that is in the article. If the infobox contains when a party leader took office, but the article text does not, then the article would not be complete with its summary infobox ignored.

Either when a party leader took office and their seat is important information, in which case it should be in the article proper, or its not, when it shouldn't be in the infobox. The infobox is not meant to be more comprehensive than the article. Our goal should not be an infobox that contains everything with the article like some sort of an appendix. If you want a large table including lots of different bits of information about the parties, fine, put that in the article, says the Manual of Style. But that's not the purpose of an infobox.

If other articles do not follow the Manual of Style, change them so they do. Bondegezou (talk) 08:34, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

To put this in the most diplomatic way I can, I'm not going to massively alter potentially hundreds of articles so you can prove a point of literalism. BitterGiant (talk) 17:24, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

Different election articles do different things. I'm not suggesting we should enforce a rigid consistency over everything: my point is that bad practice elsewhere is not a reason for bad practice here. My concern here is this article. We can make decisions on this article, applying policy, guidelines and common sense. (I have noted that we disagree on what is following a community-wide agreed guideline and what is "a point of literalism".) My first choice would be for this article to follow the model of Next Irish general election and Next United Kingdom general election and use the TILE infobox. If we are using the TIE infobox, it makes sense to me to just use the most relevant fields.

The thing that really strikes me is that most people look at Wikipedia articles on mobile devices. Checking the stats for this page, it was about 50/50 yesterday for desktop versus mobile. When you look at this article through a browser on a smartphone, you get a different experience than looking at it on a desktop with a big screen. (The Wikipedia app gives a different experience again, although that accounts for only a small proportion of views.) Part of the reason to avoid bloated infoboxes is because they work poorly on small screens. We need to serve our readers. We do that best with good article content and MOS-compliant, smaller infoboxes. Bondegezou (talk) 10:15, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Arlene Foster

I have removed Arlene Foster from the infobox. While she may currently be the DUP's leader, she will not be at the time of the assembly election. Thus there is no need to keep her in the infobox. FDW777 (talk) 21:17, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Polling graph wrong?

The table of poll results has 6 polls. The graph has 10 data points. Something is wrong here! Bondegezou (talk) 11:31, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

I think the graph was including, for example, the general election result. I have removed everything except the previous result and the 6 polls. Bondegezou (talk) 07:56, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Opinion polls

Since an IP editor from Turkey doesn't understand, I'll explain here. Edwin Poots becoming leader remains in the table because there was an opinion poll conducted from 14–17 May 2021, straight after he became leader. That's the whole point of including events like changes of leadership in the table, so it can be seen if those changes have any effect on opinion polls. That Poots stepped down as leader after the poll is completely irrelevant. FDW777 (talk) 10:05, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

For reference 176.234.231.89 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) made two attempts to remove the Poots leadership details from the table. 176.234.228.122 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) made one attempt, 176.234.230.216 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) made one attempt, 176.234.230.217 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) made one attempt. FDW777 (talk) 12:22, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Our standard approach is to note when new party leaders start, so you've done the right thing, FDW777. Presumably the IP editor's concern is that we are missing a similar line for when Steve Aiken came to the UUP leadership, on 9 Nov 2019. I don't see any reason why that should be missing. Will add now. Bondegezou (talk) 13:38, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

14 February poll

As seen in the bar graph and illustration below it in this source - https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/02/14/news/exclusive-michelle-o-neill-on-course-to-be-first-minister-as-poll-suggests-sinn-fe-in-will-top-may-5-election-2588064/ - the Northern Ireland Conservatives (NI Con) and Aontú are specifically polled and included in this poll. However, I can't seem to find the exact figures for either party. The same is the case in respects to the figure for others. This source - https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/02/14/news/new-opinion-poll-puts-sinn-fe-in-in-pole-position-2588053/ - states that People Before Profit (PBP) polled at 2.3% and the figures for "others", Northern Ireland Conservatives and Aontú are all below that, so we can safely assume the figure for each of these is less than 2.3%. We could either add a note giving the figure for Aontú or give the party a place on the graph with its figure. If anyone can find the figures for "others", the Northern Ireland Conservatives and Aontú please add them into the graph AND provide the source where these exact figures are specifically stated. The "others" section should probably remain blank until these figures are provided and sourced, as it’s not simply a case of the remaining vote share once the parties on the graph are added together, as we don't yet have the figure for the NI Con's and Aontú is not currently part of the table of figures.

I also think we should include a section in the figures table for "undecided", especially since in the latest poll from this date it ranked higher than many of the parties at 19.1%, per - https://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2022/02/14/news/survey-finds-one-fifth-of-voters-are-still-undecided-2588059/

Thoughts and help with this would be much appreciated. Cheers. Helper201 (talk) 09:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Unreal7:, @Bondegezou:, @FDW777:, @BitterGiant:, @Kahlores:, @SS49:, @Number 57:, @Humongous125:, @Impru20:, @BrownHairedGirl:, @JArmstrong95:, @Eagleash:, @Oculi:. Helper201 (talk) 09:13, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I presume exact figures will appear in due course. Until then, we can put a "not available" or a "?" in the unknown columns. As for undecideds, we haven't done that with the other polls, we've just gone with the headline figures. We could put something in the text based on that Irish News article? Bondegezou (talk) 09:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Gerard Irvine

There's zero real world evidence that Gerard Irvine is a member of Reform UK. His Gettr profile lists him as being former UKIP MEP for Northern Ireland, Former UKIP in Northern Ireland Leader. Even ignoring that there's never been a UKIP MEP for Northern IReland, there a similar lack of evidence he's anything to do with UKIP (and I even tried "UK Independence Party" too). In the absence of proper references, this claimed candidate should be treated as a hoax. FDW777 (talk) 00:21, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Obvious vandalism. User's profile picture looks like this. Cilidus (talk) 09:24, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Reform UK not, as far as I can tell, registered in Northern Ireland, so unable to stand candidates. Bondegezou (talk) 11:04, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

See also this edit, and discussion at Talk:List of political parties in Northern Ireland#Reform UK. Not their first attempt at adding a hoax based on the Gerard Irvine social media accounts. FDW777 (talk) 11:52, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Sourcing for candidates

There's a lot candidates listed based on sourcing to personal or party social media accounts. These do not generally meet WP:RS. In Westminster by-election articles, we don't allow such sourcing, in part because there's often quite a few people who say they'll stand but then fail to do so. Are we confident that the candidates listed here based on a Facebook or Twitter post will actually appear on the ballot paper? Bondegezou (talk) 09:21, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

The official list of candidates will be published on 8th April, I think the page can be cleaned up then using that source. Conghaileach (talk) 08:47, 29 March 2022 (UTC)