Talk:2015 Danish general election

Why this edit is unacceptable

On April 20 2013 User:Rsloch edited the following text...

The incumbent government is formed by the SRSF coalition, composed of the Social Democrats (S), Social Liberal Party (R), and Socialist People's Party (SF), with outside support from the Red-Green Alliance (Ø) on confidence motions. Helle Thorning-Schmidt (S) is Prime Minister. The cabinet is composed of 11 Social Democratic ministers, 8 Socialist ministers, and 7 Social Liberal ministers.

The government has rocky relations with the Red-Green Alliance, working on a bill-to-bill basis, and occasionally preferring to cooperate with Venstre on their right.[1] Symbolically, Red-Green deputy Frank Aaen told Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon (S) "Happy New Years" on February 28, 2013, because the government had failed to meet with Ø since the beginning of 2013.[1] Ø has threatened to withdraw support from the government if they cooperate with Venstre on the 2013 budget, a prospect which they portray as imminent.[1] This would result in an early election.

... to appear as this...

The incumbent government is formed by the SRSF coalition, composed of the S Social Democrats , R Social Liberal Party, and SF Socialist People's Party, with outside support from the Red-Green Alliance (Ø) on confidence motions. The Prime Minister is Helle Thorning-Schmidt Social Democrats whose cabinet is composed of 11 Social Democratic ministers, 8 Socialist ministers, and 7 Social Liberal ministers.

The government has rocky relations with the Red-Green Alliance, working on a bill-to-bill basis, and occasionally preferring to cooperate with Venstre on their right.[1] Symbolically, Red-Green deputy Frank Aaen told Finance Minister Bjarne Corydon (A) "Happy New Years" on February 28, 2013, because the government had failed to meet with Ø since the beginning of 2013.[1] Ø has threatened to withdraw support from the government if they cooperate with Venstre on the 2013 budget, a prospect which they portray as imminent.[1] This would result in an early election.

... introducing several grammatical errors and inconsistencies. First, including an italicized abbreviation in front of a name does not indicate it is an abbreviation (italicizing means nothing, italics only emphasize, they have no grammatical purpose.)

Rather, this edit represents the names of the political parties as "S Social Democrats", "SF Socialist People's Party", and "R Social Liberal Party" which they most certainly are not (abbreviations are not part of the name.) On some level, this seems to be recognized by the editor as Ø was left in parentheses. Parentheses are used to signal that what is included is not part of the sentence (meaning that the sentence should be legible without parentheses, and what is included is simply additional information. In this case I am using parentheses to provide additional clarification, identical to the parentheses present in the article, which simply clarify which parties are represented by which letters in the phrase "SRSF-coalition" so that the causal viewer does not feel prompted to click through to find its definition. If you do not use parentheses it indicates the text is part of the actual sentence, which is why it represents the abbreviations as being part of the name in the editor's version. To not use parentheses and remain grammatically correct you would have to write something like "Social Democrats, abbreviated to S, ...")

I suspect that this edit may be vandalism as for some entirely illogical reason Bjarne Corydon is referred to as being a member of "A" (which he is, actually, as A is occasionally [although more rarely] used to reference the Social Democrats. However, nowhere in the article is this mentioned! In the previous paragraph the reader is told Social Democrats may be abbreviated to S! The phrase SRSF coalition was defined! And now the reader sees, in the next paragraph, a government minister referred to as belonging to a party abbreviated as A? How could anyone think this was acceptable?)

There is also a space introduced between "S Social Democrats" and the following comma, which is also grammatically incorrect.

Bizarrely, the editor said their edit was consistent with previous election articles. It would appear that a typo or grammatical error in previous Danish election articles may be the source of this misunderstanding. Please be alert for any typos, grammatical errors, inconsistencies, or undefined terms in previous Danish election articles.

Finally, let me be clear, this edit is not about content. This is about syntax. This edit is not acceptable from a purely grammatical standpoint, and there is nothing that be done to reach consensus. Hopefully User:Rsloch will see this. I will be forced to report this as vandalism and possibly seek protection for this article if this continues. --4idaho (talk) 18:42, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

I do so hate it when a small difference of opinion generates a rant and accusations of vandalism. Now let's put that silliness aside and I'll explain. In this, and previous articles about Danish elections the political parties are given letter codes, in the format 'Party Name (letter code)' eg in the polling data. The present Danish coalition uses the acronym 'SRSF' denoting the parties involved. As the letters in the acronym do not match those in the letter codes readers might be confused between the two. As the format 'Party Name (letter code)' is already in use I used '[i]party letter[/i] Party Name' as a solution. That may not be the best method to use but it is clearly acceptable and not vandalism.Rsloch (talk) 19:23, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

You were not accused of vandalism and I'm sure no one intended to impugn your honor. However, I see you've still not discussed the issue at hand, and have not provided a counterpoint to my explanation of the grammatical errors and inconsistencies introduced by your edit. If you revert again without being willing to discuss the issue (such as a simple black and white issue of grammar can be discussed) I will be forced, unhappily, to report you to the administrator's noticeboard for violating the three revert rule.

I take no issue with you and am happy to assume you are editing in good faith, but your edit contains multiple grammatical flaws and uses an abbreviation not used previously in the article, and contrary to an abbreviation used in the previous paragraph. --4idaho (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

You go to all the effort to update the polling, which is to your credit, then you go and threaten another editor because you don't get your own way. There is an issue as we can not have 'Social Democrats (A)' and 'Social Democrats (S)' etc in the same article and not have confusion. If you can come up with a better solution please do.Rsloch (talk) 19:54, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

We can't hope to reach consensus (such as we can reach consensus on a black and white issue like grammar) if you won't discuss your edit. Once again you are edit warring and still have not attempted to discuss your edit. I left you a thoughtful message explaining the grammar errors in your edit and you have unfortunately failed to post any counterpoints and have continued to unilaterally edit war. You have been reported to WP:AN3.

(In addition, for the record, A is their official election symbol granted by the government, and is thus important for polling and voting purposes but rarely used in reference to the party. And bold also has no grammatical meaning, it is simply a different form of emphasis.) --4idaho (talk) 20:06, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

We can't have an internal contradiction in this article. Letters in brackets after a party name refer to their official symbol on this and past election articles. I have presented two possible solutions the letter at the front in bold or italics. Do you have an alternative? Rsloch (talk) 20:37, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

You seem very confused. Do you, for some reason, believe that parentheses can only be used for one purpose in an entire article? That's like saying we can only use one period in the entire article. We can include different information in different sets of parentheses at different points in the article.

Your edit is grammatically incorrect. The english language can not be used in the way you're attempting to use it. I left you a detailed explanation of why your edit does not do what you think it does in my first comment, I quote:

Rather, this edit represents the names of the political parties as "S Social Democrats", "SF Socialist People's Party", and "R Social Liberal Party" which they most certainly are not (abbreviations are not part of the name.) On some level, this seems to be recognized by the editor as Ø was left in parentheses. Parentheses are used to signal that what is included is not part of the sentence (meaning that the sentence should be legible without parentheses, and what is included is simply additional information. In this case I am using parentheses to provide additional clarification, identical to the parentheses present in the article, which simply clarify which parties are represented by which letters in the phrase "SRSF-coalition" so that the causal viewer does not feel prompted to click through to find its definition. If you do not use parentheses it indicates the text is part of the actual sentence, which is why it represents the abbreviations as being part of the name in the editor's version. To not use parentheses and remain grammatically correct you would have to write something like "Social Democrats, abbreviated to S, ...")

Your edit changes the names of the political parties, it does not at all indicate that the aforementioned letters are abbreviations. This is not proper english and does not belong on wikipedia. --4idaho (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2013 (UTC)

The deadline

The current article and the Danish Wikipedia article both state that 14 September 2015 is the latest date the next election could be held on. However, this is incorrect. The Constitution of Denmark states that the Folketing is elected "for a period of four years", which appears to imply that it sits for up to four years. This would mean that the dissolution of the chamber could happen as late as October 2015. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a source which states the longest period of time the chamber can be dissolved for. The Danske Bank factbook says that the next election is due in "November 2015, at the latest." 131.227.225.94 (talk) 13:37, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Lets do a little OR just for our self here at the talkpage. First lets see the paragraphs of the constitution involved.

• § 32 (1) The members of the Folketing shall be elected for a period of four years.
• § 32 (2a) The King may at any time issue writs for a new election, with the effect that the existing seats shall be vacated upon a new election
• § 32 (3) The Prime Minister shall cause a general election to be held before the expiration of the period for which the Folketing has been elected.
• § 32 (4) No seats shall be vacated until a new election has been held.
• § 33 The Folketing shall itself determine the validity of the election of any member and decide whether a member has lost his eligibility or not.
• § 35 (1) A newly elected Folketing shall assemble at twelve o’clock noon on the twelfth weekday after the day of election, unless the King has previously summoned a meeting of its members. (2) Immediately after the proving of the mandates the Folketing shall constitute itself by the election of a President and vice-presidents.

an english version of the constitution can be found here: http://www.eu-oplysningen.dk/upload/application/pdf/0172b719/Constitution%20of%20Denmark.pdf%3Fdownload%3D1

Since the election is not officially finalized before the Folketing itself have proved its own mandate the period of four years is not counted from election day to election day but from the constitution of one Folketing to the constitution of the next. The current Folketing was constituted on September 29, 2011. And since the election mus be held before the expiration of the period of the old the next Folketing must constitute itself no later than September 28, 2015. In other words, the chamber can be dissolved for exactly zero seconds according to paragraph 32 part 3. This is historically important in Denmark since the King could, and did, dissolve the elected bodies, predating the Folketing, at random.

Counting 12 weekdays back (remember that saturday is a weekday too) the election can not be held later than September 14, 2015. This is the date normally used in danish language news sources.

Some would say that as long as the new Folketing constitutes itself one minute before the four year term of the old Folketing expire the Prime Ministers job is done. Making the last day September 15. But would any PM rely on the new Folketing to be more expedient than the old one? According to paragraph 35 part 1b the king (right now it is a queen, but who cares) can summon the newly elected Folketing before the twelfth week day. The department of the interior does normally have the names of the MPs about two days after the election, so a meeting could be called before the twelfth day. But that has never happened.

so even though it might be technically possible to have a later date than the 14th is is not plausible. The sources saying november are simply wrong. Maybe it is old sources referring to the election date in 2011. The election of 2007 was in November. Jack Bornholm (talk)

Sorry I only noticed your reply, but thanks. I'm the same user who posted the original question, but I now have a different IP address. 5.81.48.185 (talk) 19:28, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Abbreviations

Why is the Danish Social Liberal Party here shortened to R while it is shortened to B in the opinion polling article? Social Democrats are here S, there A. Socialist People's Party SF/F. Are any of these abbrevations official? --134.176.204.116 (talk) 16:11, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

In Denmark, all the major political parties choose a letter to represent them when they register. This letter doesn't always match the party name. Because these letters determine the party's position at the ballot, the Social Democrats may have chosen "A" just to be at the top. 131.227.225.94 (talk) 22:51, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

The use of (without any explanation) of the official "party letters" is confusing. Makes the polling tables almost useless. I will admit, that the letters are confusing, but so are the Swedish system of using stylized flowers as the party logos, or for that matter the USA with donkeys and elephants! I mean, why a corn flower for Folkpartiet? At least those of us with a Danish background and some knowledge of history can mentally map the Social Democrats' A to Arbejdernes parti (Workers Party), Social Liberal's B to Bøndernes parti (Farmers Party), Conservative's 'C', etc. But no matter how I twist my brain, I come up short trying to find a trick for remembering that O stands for Danish People Party (Dansk Folkeparti).

That you see the Social Liberals referred to as R has a pretty simple explanation. The Danish party name is actually Radikale_Venstre. MiniMax.DK (talk) 11:45, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I found an Wiki-article explaining a bit about the history of the party letters. It was initially based on the number of seats in the City Council of Copenhagen back in 1936 when the system was introduced, but since then new parties (and old) have requested unused letters from the Department of the Interior. MiniMax.DK (talk) 12:30, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Math is wrong, Greenland results are missing

Clearly, the total for the number of seats in the "results" box is incorrect. There are only 175 seats listed in this box, not 179. The other 4 are supposed to be accounted for by the Faeroe Islands and Greenland. The Greenland results are missing, too.Rasterly (talk) 09:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

The Faroes and Greenland results were added 10 minutes before you posted this comment. Number 57 09:56, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Coalitions

Could someone put a subtotal in the results table so there is a subtotal for the two blocs (as has been done for the opinion polls)? This would make it easier to understand. AndrewRT(Talk) 12:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

I added it for Denmark proper. – Kaihsu (talk) 13:02, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

COLOURS!!!

Contrary to the opinion of eager reverter Number 57, most election articles DO USE colours. It looks much better for the reader. So, either someone skilled please add those, just like they are in these articles Dutch general election, 2012, Norwegian parliamentary election, 2013, Swedish general election, 2014, United Kingdom general election, 2015 or someone with more time finish this template I started, which was also used for the Danish general election, 2011. Here it is. Thanks. --Novis-M (talk) 15:08, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

If you are talking about my recent revert, this is the colours I was removing from the results table. Number 57 15:29, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

{{Danish parliamentary election, 2015}}

Results table

User:Number 57, you have reverted on several occasions the use of a different table for the results. Personally, I like both variations on the table, but marginally prefer the template version you keep reverting. Instead of all this editing back and forth, could you say more about your reasoning? And, everyone, can we reach a consensus on which table to use. Bondegezou (talk) 16:40, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

As stated in the edit summary, I think the simple table is much easier to read (and certainly easier on the eye). It also has the correct party names (the template one has very awkward translations for the Greenlandic parties, which do not match the article locations), and uses "Independent" instead of the awkward "Candidates without parties". Plus I think it is better at displaying the electorate/turnout, rather than having it in brackets on a row for something else. Number 57 16:44, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Incorrect English

This article currently begins "General elections were held in Denmark...". This is simply incorrect English. A general election, singular, was held in Denmark.

"Elections" is often used colloquially in English to refer to a single election (eg, some people would say "There is an election in the UK in May" while others would say "There are elections in the UK in May", even though both sets of people are referring the same thing) - but "general elections" is never used to refer to a single general election. The term general election refers to an election in which all seats are up for grabs, so by definition there cannot be more than one happening at the same time. The plural "general elections" is therefore unambigiously wrong. The article should be amended. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kennethmac2000 (talk • contribs) 18:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

This discussion has happened before elsewhere, with the same untrue claim that "election" is not used in the singular or that it is a colloquialism. There are numerous sources that use the phrase "general elections" to refer to this one:

• Deutsche Welle: "The right-leaning bloc has defeated the ruling leftists in the Danish general elections"
• New York Times: "The writers of the famous Danish TV series “Borgen” couldn’t have concocted a more shocking episode than the one that unfolded during Thursday’s general elections"
• Novinite: "The opposition centre-right group, which is led by former Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen defeated the ruling centre-left coalition in the general elections"
• Wall Street Journal: "A shift to the right has thrust Denmark’s Social Democrats back in the race ahead of Thursday’s general elections"
• Embassy of Denmark in the UK: "In order to vote in the Danish General Elections on 18 June 2015..."

Beyond reference to the Danish elections, "general elections" is widely used to refer to other general elections:

• BBC: "Q&A: Bangladesh general elections"
• Xinhua: "Turkey's general elections start"
• Reuters: "Suu Kyi led the NLD to a sweeping victory in general elections in 1990"

Regarding the claim that "elections" by itself is a colloquialism, this is untrue because it is used in academic publications; opening Nohlen & Stöver, an academic book that is used to source most of the Danish election articles, you can find

1. Page 809: "The Veneizelists were defeated in the 1920 constitutional assembly elections"
2. Page 505: "This phenomenon had annoyed other parties for quite some time who got an excuse for acting when the Liberals' metropolitan branch registered as a separate party before the 1947 elections"
3. Page 891: "In the non-competitive elections of 1949..."
4. Page 652: "The reintroduction of direct presidential elections, as pursued by de Gaulle, broke the taboo dating from the presidential elections of 1848."
5. Page 1768: "In the 1992 elections of the National Assembly"

Number 57 19:33, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I could equally find many articles which support my position. The key point though is that in the English language, "s" is a plural marker for the overwhelming majority of nouns. By definition, there is only one general election to a particular legislature/house of a legislature at any given point in time. I therefore don't see why, when we have the option of both "general election" and "general elections", we would choose to use the latter. Even if you disagree with me that "elections" is a fairly awful affectation, it seems unnecessarily confusing to non-native English speakers. Kennethmac2000 (talk) 18:00, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Your position was that (a) it's incorrect and (b) it's a colloquialism, so providing sources that use only "election" does not disprove your claim – it just proves that both methods are used. "Elections" is used because it's the common word used to describing such an event. Number 57 21:17, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

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Other type of infobox

Danish general election, 2015

18 June 2015
All 179 seats in the Folketing 90 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	85.89%,
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Social Democrats Helle Thorning-Schmidt 26.3% 47 DPP Kristian Thulesen Dahl 21.1% 37 Venstre Lars Løkke Rasmussen 19.5% 34 Red–Green Collective leadership 7.8% 14 Liberal Alliance Anders Samuelsen 7.5% 13 The Alternative Uffe Elbæk 4.8% 9 Social Liberals Morten Østergaard 4.6% 8 SF Pia Olsen Dyhr 4.2% 7 Conservative People's Søren Pape Poulsen 3.4% 6 Republic Høgni Hoydal 24.5% 1 Social Democratic Sjúrður Skaale 24.3% 1 Inuit Ataqatigiit Aaja Chemnitz Larsen 38.5% 1 Siumut Aleqa Hammond 38.2% 1 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Helle Thorning-Schmidt Social Democrats Lars Løkke Rasmussen Venstre

Hi. As I was editing the 2019-article, I had problems with the infobox Template:Infobox election did not support enough parties, and it was suggested to me that I use Template:Infobox legislative election. I have tried implementing it here, and would like some feedback on it. I suggest the same infobox is used among all the DK-elections

My own issues:

• The lack of the leader's pictures are a major drawback in my view
• It is not possible to write a start-text like "179 seats up for grabs" as there is in the one currently used.
• It should be considered if the north atlantic mandates belongs in this infobox, and/or how they are best represented. They aren't in the one currently used.
• Not really good for coming elections (not relevant here, but for the 2019-article).

― Heb the best (talk) 02:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I have updated the template, so now issue 2 has been solved. ― Heb the best (talk) 04:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I have done some more work, and now images are supported. I would say that we should change to this format now, for all Danish elections, though the template could use a few more improvements. Concerning the north atlantic mandates, I am inclined to not showing them in the infobox, as they are their own election, in a way. For people in Denmark, they are only rarely mentioned. ― Heb the best (talk) 09:08, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

The whole point of this infobox (separate to {{Infobox election}}) was to avoid using images, as they hugely expand the infobox. I've therefore undone the changes to it. I've made a few tweaks to the above to avoid linebreaks, so it's now one row per party, and a much more compact and succinct summary of the results. The Faroese and Greenlandic seats should definitely be included as they are real seats in the Folketing. Number 57 10:02, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Putting the question of images aside, then there need to be some kind of remark that the last four mandates are reserved for the Faroe Islands and Greenland, otherwise the percentages don't make any sense. Also, the party names are very weird. In reality, half of them have "party" as an integrated part of their name, and the other does not, but right now there is not way to tell who has and who hasn't. We cannot just cut short their names, because we want them all to fit on a single line. ― Heb the best (talk) 12:31, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

With regards to the Faroese/Greenlandic parties, it's fairly unique that the votes aren't included in the national total in terms of the percentages. Perhaps it would be more realistic to recalculate the percentages of the votes from all three territories as a whole. An alternative is to add a note to the percentages in question (as I've done as an example above).

I agree that the party names are odd – this is specifically an issue with the shortname meta templates for Danish parties (e.g. {{Danish People's Party/meta/shortname}}). For virtually every other country, either the party acronym or a very short version are used (the Danish People's Party would normally have the shortname "DF"). Number 57 12:41, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

I have adjusted the party-names in the infobox though the shortname-templates. It should be considered if the Danish People's Party should be abbreviated DPP or DF (see here).

I still think the current infobox is better, due to the missing images. ― Heb the best (talk) 17:15, 21 February 2019 (UTC)