Talk:2020 United States presidential election

Skip to table of contents

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the 2020 United States presidential election article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30: 15 days

Warning: active arbitration remedies

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article is related to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing this article:

You may not make more than 1 revert within 24 hours on this article (except in limited circumstances)
Changes challenged by reversion may not be reinstated without affirmative consensus on the talk page

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

Further information

Enforcement procedures:

Violations of any of these restrictions should be reported immediately to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard.
Editors who are aware of this topic being designated a contentious topic and who violate these restrictions may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.

With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:

Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions.
Edits made which remove or otherwise change any material placed by clearly established consensus, without first obtaining consensus to do so, may be treated in the same manner as obvious vandalism.
In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
Reverts of edits made by anonymous (IP) editors are exempt from the 1RR but are subject to the usual rules on edit warring. If you are in doubt, contact an administrator for assistance.
Whenever you are relying on one of these exemptions, you should refer to it in your edit summary and, if applicable, link to the discussion where consensus was clearly established.

The contentious topics procedure can be used against any editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process. Contentious topics sanctions can include blocks, topic-bans, or other restrictions.

If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. Remember: When in doubt, don't revert!

While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.

Template:WikiProject Donald Trump

Elections and Referendums Unassessed

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Elections and Referendums, an ongoing effort to improve the quality of, expand upon and create new articles relating to elections, electoral reform and other aspects of democratic decision-making. For more information, visit our project page.Elections and ReferendumsWikipedia:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsTemplate:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsElections and Referendums articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.

Politics: American Unassessed High‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by American politics task force (assessed as Top-importance).

United States: Presidential elections / Government Unassessed Mid‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject U.S. presidential elections (assessed as Mid-importance).
	This article is supported by WikiProject U.S. Government (assessed as High-importance).

2020 United States presidential election was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 2, 2006	Articles for deletion	Deleted
October 30, 2015	Articles for deletion	Kept
November 1, 2015	Good article nominee	Not listed
March 1, 2017	Articles for deletion	Kept
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 22, 2015. The text of the entry was: Did you know that potential candidates in the United States presidential election of 2020* include Tom Cotton, Hillary Clinton, and Kanye West?*
Current status: Former good article nominee

Consensuses reached for the 2012 and 2016 elections apply for the 2020 election as well, unless these consensuses are reversed. Regarding the infobox: A consensus has been reached to make it so that the political parties that earned at least one electoral vote in the previous election are to, by default, be included in the infobox of the article about the next election This means that, as of right now, only the Republican and Democratic parties are to be included in the infobox. In order for a third party to be included, they need to have ballot acces in the 2020 election to at least 270 electoral votes, per this consensus.

Consensus on the order of candidates in the infobox:

Parties that got at least one electoral vote in the 2016 election will be the first to appear in the infobox and will be ordered by how many electoral votes they got in 2016. Since the Republicans Party got 306 electoral votes and the Democratic Party got 232, the Republican Party will be the first to appear in the infobox and the Democratic Party will be the second.
Some political parties that are qualified to appear in the infobox did not get any electoral votes in 2016. They will be ordered by the total amount of electoral votes in the states that have ballot access. Write-in access counts too.
- If two or more parties have access to the same amount of electoral votes, they will be sorted by how many popular votes they got in 2016. If one of the parties did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be be ordered after the parties (with the access to the same amount of electoral votes) that did. If two or more parties both have access to the same amount of electoral votes and did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be sorted alphabetically by the candidates' names.

Consensus on the criteria for a potential candidate to be included in the article:

The "Publicly expressed interest" section requires only one source from the last six months where the individual is quoted as being interested in running in 2020. Social media posts do not count as public expressions of interest.
The "Potential candidates" section requires at least two sources speculating that an individual may run or where an individual talks about the 2020 election from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). The sources must not be a list of several potential candidates nor a persuasive article about why a candidate should run.
The "Declined candidates" section requires at least two sources from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). One source must be speculative in the same vein as the "Potential candidates" section, while the second must be a quoted denial from the individual in question.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Daily pageviews of this article

A graph should have been displayed here but graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at pageviews.wmcloud.org

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the 2020 United States presidential election article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30: 15 days

Revert of Darcy Richardson entry

@David O. Johnson: I vehemently oppose you reverting the page back to blanking Richardson's section. As a bare minimum, the title should be amended to "Withdrawn candidate," not just blanked outright. If I wasn't editing on my phone, I would do it myself. Additionally, the source that you and Liberaltarian12345 linked to in your respective edit summaries here and here is a source that has long been considered to be unreliable per established consensus at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive 125#The "Independent Political Report", and I wasn't able to find an additional source to suggest otherwise. That's why I reverted Liberaltarian12345's edit in the first place. OhKayeSierra (talk) 00:40, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention that your "source" is an article comment, as opposed to an article itself. OhKayeSierra (talk) 00:45, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@David O. Johnson: Since it's been a few hours without a response, I went ahead and reverted your changes and amended the table accordingly. I opted to keep this as the citation, although I did tag it as unreliable. OhKayeSierra (talk) 04:34, 14 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Separate page for minor parties?

Would it make sense to move the possible candidates for parties with too little ballot access for electing a president to a separate page, and just list those parties with a link to their respetive page on here to make the article more concise? TheFIST (talk) 16:14, 25 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it would make a lot of sense. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the standard previously - to include on only the third-parties and independent candidates that have secured enough state ballots to have at least a mathematical possibility of getting the minimum number of electoral votes needed to win the election. Not sure when or why we got away from that. Previously, there was a separate page for the 2020 3rd party and independent candidates (as there have been for recent past elections) but it got redirected to this page. Now this page is getting over-long and unwieldy. So I definitely agree that it's time to restore the separate page as suggested by the OP. ---A. Randomdude0000 (talk) 22:49, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lincoln Chafee

Chafee is running for Libertarian nomination. [1] JJARichardson (talk) 21:23, 29 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I searched it up and couldn't find any other sources. I find it odd that a former senator and governor announcing a presidential bid would not be covered in the news. Unless we can find another source to confirm, I think we should hold off on adding him.—Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 03:26, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wayne Messam

I would like to gauge consensus for a merge at Talk:Wayne Messam. Messam has never participated in a televised debate and he has never beat 1% in a national poll. He is not included as a major candidate by FiveThirtyEight.—Naddruf (talk ~ contribs) 03:19, 30 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive listing of non-notable people

Whatever happened to the requirement that candidates must be notable to be listed? We've got a huge WP:UNDUE weight problem with the transclusion of candidate lists at 2020_United_States_presidential_election#Libertarian_Party, 2020_United_States_presidential_election#Green_Party, and [[2020_United_States_presidential_election#Other nominations: that's 27 people with big table rows, 14 of which are true nobodies without Wikipedia articles, and none of which have gotten any modicum of media coverage with sources being just their own websites and FEC filing. These need to go rather than take up half the article. I have removed the even worse withdrawn and speculative "candidates" to start. Reywas92^Talk 22:42, 7 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I am not an expert on the relevant Wikipedia policies that govern pages covering political subjects such as these presidential elections. But my personal opinion on this is that if someone has qualified to be listed as a candidate at any point, then the fact that they are in the running at all for the highest political office in the United States means that their campaigns are significant. And since Wikipedia is also by its very nature not censored, if there is significant coverage of these individuals to the point where they were originally listed on this page in any capacity, it should not be the prerogative of a single independent editor to unilaterally remove this information without first seeking consensus to support that action. For that reason, I am reverting your unilateral removal of material on this page, and based on Wikipedia policies about consensus and reliable sourcing, those entries should not be removed again unless and until the consensus concurs with that action in this matter. Thank you. --Jgstokes (talk) 03:13, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No, there was never significant coverage of these individuals. We actually do have a consensus on this matter, which requires multiple sources independent of the subject covering them. They were listed in the Libertarian subpage but not here originally. It is not censorship to establish that Wikipedia has a standard that one must have media coverage of a campaign to be listed, and these people do not have that. Merely filing with the FEC does not mean that your so-called campaign is significant. Moreso, the sections I removed are not of the people actually running, rather the people who aren't running! In their case, none of your statement holds, since none of them are actually involved in this election! We rely on independent sources, while these are sources only to their personal websites and Facebook pages. Reywas92^Talk 05:41, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with Reywas92. I'm Ok with some non-notable candidates being included on the sub-articles (within reasonable parameters) but the main article should have higher standards.---A. Randomdude0000 (talk) 22:48, 8 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think the current requirements are reasonable, perhaps a few candidates may be removed but culling everyone who is not notable does not seem right, I don’t think it’s fair to give, say, Kim Ruff’s campaign for the nomination of the Libertarian Party less weight than Vermin Supreme’s just because he has a page and she does not. Devonian Wombat 01:31, 9 October 2019 (UTC) Devonian Wombat (talk) 01:31, 9 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 13 October 2019

It is requested that an edit be made to the semi-protected article at 2020 United States presidential election. (edit · history · last · links · protection log)

This template must be followed by a complete and specific description of the request, that is, specify what text should be removed and a verbatim copy of the text that should replace it. "Please change X" is not acceptable and will be rejected; the request must be of the form "please change X to Y".

The edit may be made by any autoconfirmed user. Remember to change the |answered=no parameter to "yes" when the request has been accepted, rejected or on hold awaiting user input. This is so that inactive or completed requests don't needlessly fill up the edit requests category. You may also wish to use the {{ESp}} template in the response. To request that a page be protected or unprotected, make a protection request.

My request is that Andrew Yang's photo gets updated. I noticed that many 2020 candidates got updated photos, but he didn't. 66.190.209.69 (talk) 00:10, 13 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]