Talk:2016 Lithuanian parliamentary election

Contested deletion

This article should not be speedy deleted as being recently created, having no relevant page history and duplicating an existing English Wikipedia topic, because... well... it is not about the 2012 election, as seems to be indicated in the deletion notice. It's about the 2016 election that will take place within a year from now. The article is rather barebones now, since it will develop as the elections approach, but it already includes information about changes in electoral system for 2016 that is not covered in 2012 article. The article is already more extensive that the 2012 article was when created. --No longer a penguin (talk) 10:28, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Election vs. elections

It seems that there is a disagreement whether "election" or "elections" should be used to refer to this particular event. I believe that, given the name of the article, the name of every other article on parliamentary election (see Category:2015 elections in Europe) and our article on general election, singular should be used and other articles on LT elections should be fixed, but I would welcome arguments to the contrary.No longer a penguin (talk) 12:49, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

"Elections" should be used as it's the term commonly used. The article titles are a formulaic compilation, and not representative of how elections are actually referred to. Every other article on parliamentary elections in Category:2016 elections in Europe uses the plural (Cypriot legislative election, 2016, Czech Senate election, 2016, Georgian parliamentary election, 2016, Guernsey general election, 2016, Macedonian parliamentary election, 2016, Romanian legislative election, 2016, Slovak parliamentary election, 2016), as does almost every other Lithuanian election article. Number 57 13:00, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Please don't threaten with reports, I'm trying to have a quick discussion here, not a fight. Sorry for the last revert, I made it before you posted I saw your post on the talk page.

Back to the topic, I also had a feeling that "elections" is more usual in speech, especially among those with ESL. However, other articles made me uncertain: the UK General election is consistently referred to in singular and I don't see a substantial difference. This [[1]] book from the European Parliament manages to describe 2009 European Parliamentary Election(s) as elections (five times) and election (once) on the same page, this book ([[2]]) refers to "Parliamentary elections", but the "election", and so on, suggesting it is not as clear-cut case as you make it out to be. Is there an authoritative rule for when "elections" and "election" should be used?No longer a penguin (talk) 13:29, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no rule, and both are used but "elections" is used far more widely than just "election". The plural is not just used in speech, it's also in the media and academic work. See, for example, this, this, this etc from the BBC. The academic source I used to reference 1,000+ articles on European elections (Nohlen & Stöver) also tends to use "elections". Number 57 13:40, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I am leaning towards "elections", as you suggest, but I have to say that I am perplexed by the lack of consistency in the use. Even the first BBC article you refer to manages to squeak in "the election" once. [The Economist], which I usually respect for relative editorial consistency, manages to use both versions at least three times in a single article. [OSCE] seems to be consistent with "elections". I will stick to "elections" and will try to ensure consistency when I edit other articles. That does leave me with a question whether the article titles should be moved as well (which I have no intention to undertake, but I would welcome a discussion), since it looks silly now when the article title and the narrative don't match. After all, we should be using common name for the title and it would not be entirely unprecedented (senate elections in the US use plural).No longer a penguin (talk) 13:56, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

A related question: should singular be used for presidential elections (since only one seat is contested). This seems to be the case for the presidential election articles for 2016 (and other I have looked at) but is not consistent across Lithuanian presidential elections.No longer a penguin (talk) 14:05, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, English can be a frustrating language sometimes... The issue with the article titling is that (a) it's formulaic and not supposed to be representative of the common name of the election (otherwise we might end up with titles like "2015 general election (United Kingdom)" or something) and (b) "elections" is already used to specifically refer to multiple elections being held simultaneously (e.g. United Kingdom local elections, 2015).

With regards to presidential elections, the plural is also the more common usage, although of course there are the exceptions as you've discovered. See (e.g. Burundian presidential election, 2015, Guinean presidential election, 2015, Ivorian presidential election, 2015, Seychellois presidential election, 2015, Togolese presidential election, 2015, Kazakhstani presidential election, 2015, Northern Cyprus presidential election, 2015, Sri Lankan presidential election, 2015, Uzbekistani presidential election, 2015, Haitian presidential election, 2015). Number 57 14:17, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I have to disagree when it comes to presidential elections. I looked through the presidential election articles in categories European elections 2013-2016 (without subcategories) and 6 articles used exclusively singular, 4 used exclusively plural and 8 used a mix. If anything, that suggests singular is slightly more popular. I looked through the articles you pointed out and would just like to note that you have created 4 or 5 of them (great work on election articles, BTW), setting the tone for grammar, and changed one of them from original singular use. That hardly demonstrates consensus for singular, especially since there are few dedicated editors on election articles.

On the other hand, you have a juggernaut of an article that is the presidential election in the US, which relates to an English-speaking country, is heavily edited and receives a lot of attention, uses exclusively singular.

Also, the BBC seems to prefer singular in the context of Lithuania [3], [4], [5], although not exclusively.

Finally, I would like to point out that singular "election" makes sense for presidential elections grammatically. There is, after all, a single process to select a single representative, whereas parliamentary elections in Lithuania could actually be seen as 72 separate elections.

I thus propose to keep "elections" for all elections to Seimas, but settle on "election" for presidential elections in LithuaniaNo longer a penguin (talk) 19:41, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

You have considered only a small sample (European elections over four years); there are thousands more, and having seen most of them, I can say with confidence that "elections" is far more widely used – you can browse them all here; just amongst the As, the results are:

Country	Plural	Singular
Abkhazia	5	2
Afghanistan	2	1
Albania	1	2
Algeria	8	2
Argentina	0	2
Armenia	4	3
Austria	9	4
Azerbaijan	7	1

Also, in reference to the allusion that I am the one creating the plural articles, note that many of these were created by other users in the plural (e.g. [6][7][8][9][10][11]; this edit way back in 2004 is particularly telling as it was made by Adam Carr, a well-known psephologist)

I disagree over the BBC's use in respect to Lithuania; it looks like a roughly 50/50 split – see other examples [12][13][14], and I also disagree about the grammar – "elections" is commonly used to refer to a singular election. All but one of the Lithuanian articles use the plural, and we need to keep consistency between different articles (including between different countries). Number 57 22:20, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

I will not push this further, but I believe that at the very least we can agree that there is no universal agreement on singular vs. plural, especially for presidential elections: some publishers prefer one, some the other, while most of them use both with little consideration. While it might be true that plural is used more often outside Wikipedia (I don't agree), it is definitely not universal. With that in mind, I don't think its fair that you eradicate the usage of singular by original editors citing it as "grammatically incorrect" when its essentially a stylistic choice. Consistency across articles is a laudable goal but it has to either be agreed upon across the board (and that means taking the fight to US Presidential Election and UK General Election) or left to the discretion of individual editors (as is done with date formats, for example). That's my 0.02€. As I said before, I appreciate your contributions in keeping election articles in shape and I hope we can keep improving the Lithuanian ones. No longer a penguin (talk) 12:25, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I do agree that usage is inconsistent. I think you might have misunderstood why I said it was gramatically incorrect – there is nothing incorrect about saying that "A parliamentary election will be held...", but the text you reverted to was simply "Parliamentary election will be held...". But, yes, here's to some productive working in future. Cheers, Number 57 13:26, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Opinion polls

I am unsure how much sense it makes to compare opinion polls which include undecided people/people without desire to vote with an election result which does not include non-voters. I would suggest to either calculate percentages for the polls in relation to the undecided/will not vote ones or to include non-voters in the election result. In case someone could come up with some sort of "hybrid", this might be even better. Currently, without use of mathematics it is impossible for a reader to see if a party is likely to for example pass the 5%/7% hurdle or if it has improved compared to last election. --Vogone (talk) 18:56, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

I agree; I think the polls should be recalculated, excluding don't know/won't vote/no answer (which I think is fairly standard for opinion poll listings elsewhere on Wikipedia). Number 57 21:37, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Disagree. I understand the intuition, but I think we should report it exactly the way it is reported in independent sources, and it happens to be reported this way. Any other approach will have to decide how to interpret (hence OR) the "don't know" and "No answer" options, since these people indicate that they might vote and constitute a large undecided part of the electorate.No longer a penguin (talk) 09:10, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't believe it would constitute OR as basic calculations (which this would fall under) are explicitly allowed. However, there are some editors who focus much more on opinion polling on Wikipedia, so perhaps @Impru20: might like to advise? Number 57 09:34, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I don't think the calculation itself would be OR, since it is very basic division. However, I deciding what should the denominator be (those with an opinion or those intending to vote) might be OR unless there are very clear guidelines.No longer a penguin (talk) 10:27, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

@Number 57:@Vogone: Would it be helpful to include a derivative graph, such as the one attached, while keeping the data as presented by reliable sources? No longer a penguin (talk) 09:27, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Opinion polls for Lithuanian Parliamentary Elections 2016, Spinter Tyrimai

The graph would be a good addition to the article. Number 57 11:12, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it would solve the main issue. However, what speaks against adding a column including non-voters (2012 election) to the table? The current column can continue to exist, but adding a second one would increase comparability to the election result enormously (and for the share of non-voters surely sources can be found). --Vogone (talk) 17:29, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Would it really improve comparability, though? The "non-voters" in the polls and the "non-voters" in the elections are very different. Usually only 10-15% indicate to the pollsters that they will not vote, but at the end only around 50% actually vote. I think everything useful is already in the graph. No longer a penguin (talk) 07:20, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

2nd Round Forecast

So, not perfectly relevant, but I'm guessing the 2nd round will produce 23 Homeland Union seats, 40 Green & Peasant Union, 1 Polish, 1 Liberal, 2 Social Democrat & 1 Order & Justice. Call me next week! Gabrielthursday (talk) 04:38, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

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