Talk:2015 Spanish general election/Archive 1

Archive 1

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved Mike Cline (talk) 19:24, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

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Spanish general election, 2015 → Next Spanish general election – Since there is no certainty that the election will be actually held in 2015, I propose to move the article under the new title. However, there's already an existing page with that name; the result of a previous moving of this very same article and which is just an "empty" article which redirects here. Impru20 (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose. While there may be no certainty that the next election will be held in 2015, it is a reasonable title given the scheduling. It can be changed if necessary to follow developments. The proposed title is marred by presentism; and unlike "Spanish", "next" is not a natural term under which readers will search for an article on a Spanish election. Think of the suggestions that appear progressively as one types into the search box (top right of the screen). Noetica^Tea? 00:46, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

On the search box, even if moved the redirect will still appear when readers are searching. Jenks24 (talk) 02:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

The very same thing is applied to the next United Kingdom general election, which under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 should be held in 2015. However, the chance of the government falling and the calling of snap elections, while minimal, is there, and that's why the article is named "Next United Kingdom general election". Something similar happens here, with the difference that the next election date in Spain is not fixed by any law; Mariano Rajoy can just call elections earlier if he wishes to do so, or if his government suddenly collapses. Moreover, in the recent story of Spain, most general elections where called earlier than originally anticipated (1982, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1996 and 2011). With the current situation of economical and political crisis, it wouldn't be weird to see Rajoy's government falling before 2015, even with their current absolute majority (see what happened to Papandreou).

About the search box, most people would just access to this article through the link in the 2011 election page (since many of them wouldn't expect this article to exist just 6 months after the previous election), so I don't regard it as a problem. Again, see the example of the "Next United Kingdom general election". Impru20 (talk) 13:51, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

• Support per Next United Kingdom general election, Next Australian federal election, etc. There is no guarantee that this election will be held in 2015, so we shouldn't assume it will be. Jenks24 (talk) 02:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose, as it currently stands, there will be an election in 2015, believing that it will not be held would be speculation. Secondly, the proposed title is not a good idea at all, and I'm worried that its format is already used elsewhere. "Next" is a term depending on time, which will have a different meaning at different timepoints, and we should avoid for pretty much the same reasons we avoid such relative terms in prose. Suppose someone links to the article "Next Spanish general election" now and someone reads it in 2016 (we now assume that the election really takes place as scheduled), then they'll be led to a wrong article. If it's really necessary to remove the year from the title, then please use the format "n-th Spanish general election", like "51st Spanish general election", as these article titles are absolute and unambigious (see e.g. similarly named articles Super Bowl XLIII) and can be moved to use a year once the election takes place. --The Evil IP address (talk) 16:38, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

As it currently stands, the current PM, Mariano Rajoy, may very well don't wait until 2015 to hold a new election, seeing how his party's support in opinion polls is rapidly declining. With the current title, we're assuming the election will be held in 2015 when it's not written anywhere that it must be so. As I previously stated, most recent Spanish elections were called earlier than originally expected. Just think of the people who wanted to create a "Spanish general election, 2012" article just to see the election being called earlier. As for the problematic of someone linking to the article "Next Spanish general election", we can safely assume that, since it is still a long way off until we know something about a possible future election, there will be no need for linking it to the article until it happens. By then, the article would have been already moved to the correct location, so I don't see it as problematic.

Also, using the format "n-th Spanish general election" is not accurate either, nor is it absolute and unambigious, since it doesn't specify for which period of time of Spanish history it's the "n-th" election. Are we including the Restoration elections into it? Just the recent history ones? And what about the 2nd Republic elections? Spain has a complicated history regarding that. I think that the term "Next Spanish general election" is really unambigious and absolute, and will do the job until we know for sure when the election will be actually held. Impru20 (talk) 17:32, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Public defender

I don't know the term "public defender" except in the context of ancient history (we don't have this office in the UK), but there is a WP article explaining that in the US and Brazil they are defending lawyers, and that in various hispanophone jurisdictions they are ombudsmen. Hence I've no idea what it is supposed to mean in this article, and have asked for someone who does to explain it in the text. Diomedea Exulans (talk) 09:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Podemos

Isn't it strange that the article barely makes mention of Podemos, which is the highest ranking party according to Opinion polling for the Spanish general election, 2015?

It was more widely mentioned in a previous version, but the background was too long and has been condensed (with many things being removed). It may be appropiate now, however, seeing how Podemos has maintained its lead (and that it has not been a spontaneous or momentary event), to make a reference to them topping the opinion polls after Púnica. Impru20 (talk) 11:09, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Change infobox to four people

Its clear from the results and media narrative that there are really only four major players in this election and all the others aren't really all that significant - can the infobox be updated to a four person infobox to illustrate this Guyb123321 (talk) 17:07, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

When there were only two main parties the infobox was not left so as to show just two parties. I see no change here. Customary practice for election infoboxes is to show at least 6 parties unless the fifth and sixth parties are very irrelevant in terms of votes and seats. Here, the fifth party still has almost 1 million votes and 4% of the vote, while the sixth party has more than half a million votes, above 2% and 9 seats.

Furthermore, given that only PP+PSOE add up to an absolute majority and that neither PP+C's nor PSOE+Podemos come even close to that, you can't say all other parties are not significant. Impru20 (talk) 18:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

PP+Podemos has an absolute majority (but will not form a coalition anyway :-)) Otto (talk) 20:06, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

That would be really funny and curious to see, indeed. xD Impru20 (talk) 20:18, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Moreover, in most elections wikipedia pages, the consensus is that parties are ranked by seats won. ERC should be before IU-UP. Wykx 21:49, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

All elections in Spain (at all levels) have parties ranked by number of votes done. That is mainly because otherwise, national parties winning a lot of votes could be left outside the infobox, while giving nationalist and regionalist parties an undue weight in proportion to their votes. But also because of what established sourced said: in Spanish media IU was regarded as the traditional "third party" (until now, obviously), despite CiU winning, at many times, more seats. From 2011 until just recently UPyD was regarded as the fourth political force in the country, despite being sixth in number of seats won (because it won over 1 million votes).

Surely, the fact of parties ranking in the infobox seems to be done on a country-by-country basis, also depending on the country's electoral system (FPTP systems usually order parties by seat count, while more proportional-oriented systems tend to rank by vote count instead). Germany, as an example, also shows parties ordered by number of votes won. This is also reflected in the full results tables shown in the articles; infoboxes just mirror what they say. Impru20 (talk) 22:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Just to double check, to which German election do you refer? I haven't found any example yet. Wykx 06:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

German federal election, 1990, for example. Impru20 (talk) 07:57, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Wykx 08:09, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

With proportional systems, ordering by seats won and by votes won is usually the same thing. With FPTP, it's not and we go by seats won. In those rare instances where ordering by seats or votes makes a difference under a proportional system, I would suggest we go by seats won because ultimately the point of an election is to elect seats. The outcome of the election is how many seats each party won, ergo that should be the main determinant. Bondegezou (talk) 11:26, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed this system you suggest is the one that is used in many elections such as Turkish general election, November 2015, European Parliament election, 2014, Belgian federal election, 2014, Bulgarian parliamentary election, 2014, Finnish parliamentary election, 2015, United Kingdom general election, 2015.. Actually almost all elections I know across Europe+Turkey where the issue arose. Spain is the only page with a counter-example that I have found in the recent years. Wykx 12:53, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The point is that ordering by seats won in Spain has little sense since media does not usually take into account the number of seats won, but rahter, the number of votes, in order to cover each party. Taking as an example the previous 2011-2015 parliamentary term, PP, PSOE, IU and UPyD were the four main national parties, and were treated in the media as such. However, by number of seats, the order would be PP, PSOE, CiU, IU, Amaiur and UPyD (leaving UPyD nearly out with more than 1 million votes). This, despite media and (more significantly) opinion polls usually centering mainly on PP, PSOE, IU and UPyD (with Amaiur and even CiU, as regional-only parties, being left out of significant media coverage or even from some opinion polls despite them having more seats than IU and/or UPyD). And this coupled with the fact that the media regarded IU and UPyD as the third and fourth national parties in Spain, with IU being historically regarded as Spain's "third party" (until now).

I acknowledge that, in other countries, ranking by number of seats won could be more significant (specially in FPTP systems where differences can indeed be significant), and maybe the media in those countries do reflect that and that is appropiate. But each country is an unique subject in itself, so while generally there may be some common guidelines between countries, other issues should try to reflect each country's social reality. Impru20 (talk) 17:30, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I think what you are saying makes sense because we must keep in mind that in Spain there are regionalist parties, which do not contest at national level. --B.Lameira (talk) 19:20, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Can we have some examples of how the Spanish media treat the situation? Are there Spanish RSs that list the parties by votes won? Because, this example lists by seats won. Bondegezou (talk) 12:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I note the Spanish-language article only puts the top 4 parties in the infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 12:57, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The infobox used in the Spanish Wikipedia is radically different than the one used here, so I can't say it is comparable. Leaving it as four here would also:

1. Make this the only Spanish election article in which less than 6 parties are added, and there were no issues for previous election articles in having six parties shown.

2. Entirely distort the infobox, as the map width is thought for a table with 6 parties. Having just 4 would either make the infobox look weird or require a smaller width for the map (the problem being that a smaller width would make the map too small to even look at it).

Plus the fact that I can't see a reason why this should be limited to four parties. Just as when PP and PSOE where strong the infobox was not limited to just two parties, now that there are four medium-sized main parties (or one relatively large-sized, two medium-sized and one small-sized, as you prefer) accounting for roughly the strength PP and PSOE used to have before, this should not be limited to just four. There are still several parties polling more than 2% of the vote (and some even polling above 10-15% in their respective areas), so not that irrelevant.

Six is enough, in my opinion, neither too many nor too few. Impru20 (talk) 13:11, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

We are at the English-language Wikipedia, therefore it's actually more relevant how English-language media and scholarly publications present election results. --PanchoS (talk) 15:41, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't generally see polling 2% of the vote as being sufficiently notable under WP:UNDUE. Many UK election infoboxes use a 5% cut-off. However, I'm happy for infoboxes to be inclusive; I just felt it was worth noting that the Spanish-language article goes with 4 parties. But I can't yet see a good justification for ordering by votes rather than by seats...? Bondegezou (talk) 16:23, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

The cutoff is done at six parties, not at percentage. I just used the argument of 2% just to point out that there are still relevant enough forces at a small level to just be let out. You can see that the current scenario is actually pretty similar to the 2008 election (PSOE+Podemos roughly account for 2008 PSOE's %, while PP+C's account for a little more than 2008 PP+UPyD's data back then, and with a similar distribution for minor parties) and there was little to no reason to just show two parties back then, nor just four currently.

For ordering votes rather than by seats, it would be because of media coverage, and because of Spanish custom of differentiating between national parties and regional ones. Ordering by seats would leave a national party with roughly 1 million votes out of the infobox, while having regionalist parties with 300,000 votes and no option to choose a Prime Minister of their own within. I understand the reasoning behind why for some cases it is best to do the ranking by seat number; for example, this has been done for the United Kingdom general election, 2015 (not without strong discussion, anyway), leaving UKIP out despite it having nearly 4 million votes just because it has 1 seat, and having the SNP in because it has 57 seats. Ok, but that's for a country that uses a FPTP system, and where these kinds of situations happening (a national party winning just one seat with millions of votes (being left out of the infobox as a result) and a single regionalist party winning a lot of seats) are the exception, not the norm. This, contrarily to what happens in Spain, where it is pretty common for third national parties to get more than 1 million votes but fewer seats, but where there are a lot of regionalist parties winning a sizeable amount of seats with a small amount of votes because of the district-based "proportional" system.

To put an example, doing the ranking by seat count would leave CiU as the third national party of Spain in many elections, despite it being never considered as the third political force of the country by the media (a post that went to IU throughout most of its history until the 2015 election). Or, for example, the media saying that it was Podemos that won the Basque Country (because it scored the most votes) despite the PNV having 1 more seat.

Also, the Spanish Government's official page orders them by votes rather than by seats when showing definitive results (as an example, the 2011 results page here). Impru20 (talk) 16:49, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

There's just been an election. I presume the Spanish media is full of summaries of the election. How do they order parties in those reports? The first one I found ordered by seats won (link given above). That's what we should be looking at. Are there examples where the Spanish media order parties by votes? Bondegezou (talk) 16:57, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

So, El Pais order by seats, and El Correo also order by seats. As does ABC. So, I've checked three of the main Spanish newspapers. Their election summaries all order by seats, not votes.

So, as far as I can see, the Spanish media report using seat order, so Wikipedia should too. Bondegezou (talk) 17:02, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Each newspaper does its own ordering independently of others, that's not what I'm saying. For example. El Periódico de Catalunya orders by votes, and it means nothing. Those are automatic systems that automatically order by seats rather than by votes, but when definitive results are shown, preference goes to votes instead. What I was refering to before, too, is media coverage of each party throughout each parliamentary term.

The Government's page itself tends to order by votes when showing definitive results. I can see no reason to order them by seats.

Btw, I also explained a detailed reasoning for ordering them by votes and not seats and you just skipped it altogether. Impru20 (talk) 17:18, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

My apologies if I have missed parts of your reasoning, Impru20. I respect your editing and contributions to Wikipedia enormously. However, I feel you are mistaken on this point.

A basic principle of Wikipedia is that it follows reliable secondary sources. If nearly all the Spanish media report the election results in seats order (and here's El Mundo's election page doing the same as well), then it is strange indeed for a Wikipedia article on the same topic to do something differently.

WP:PRIMARY is clear that we look to secondary sources before primary sources, so I think it's more relevant what the Spanish media do than what a Spanish Government election page does.

Media coverage of parties through the parliamentary term is much less relevant here: this is an article on the election, not on Spanish politics in general. If you want to give more weight to parties like the IU-UP in articles discussing current Spanish political events, go for it. But when we report on the election, we should follow how reliable secondary sources report the election. Our infobox/results table should look like reliable secondary sources' results presentations.

Just about every election article I've seen on Wikipedia orders by seats. I haven't, however, studied past Spanish election articles. However, WP:LOCALCONSENSUS cannot override basic policies like WP:RS.

And in terms of WP:CONSENSUS, I don't see much support here for your view.

I hope I have now addressed all your points and that you will consider the matter. And, of course, I hope others will share their views too. Bondegezou (talk) 17:34, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

There is Spanish media that orders by votes and not by seats, thus contradicting your view. But, in any case, the links you post show outdated data (i.e. showing PP data as 7,215,530 when it is already reported at 7,215,752, and it will increase once abroad vote (CERA) is counted), and, in any event, those pages will not register total results once the CERA vote is counted. Thus, the Government's page seems the only reliable source for data; unless do you mean that we have to leave the data outdated as the media shows it just because it does it. Again, those are automatic systems gathering information from the Election centre, not the media presentation of the results. You use WP:PRIMARY when it can't be applied here, because otherwise we could never show the correct data, and because those are provisional numbers, not opinions on an event. Also this page, from a guy who has been collecting information for Spanish elections at all levels through history, and which has gained fame because of his accurate and strong depiction of results, also orders by votes.

Media coverage is relevant. I'm thinking on all Spanish election articles as a whole, because obviously the same system must be used for all of them. And historically, ordering has been done by votes and not by seats. Btw, media coverage of parties throughout a parliamentary term could be regarded, indeed, as WP:PRIMARY and WP:RS. So we can't use those policies for some things and not for others.

Not every election article orders by seats: German federal election, 1990 (as a notable example of a proportional-based country where things can go wrong if a party does not overcome the 5% barrier) does not do it. And, if we do not count the whole amounts of countries using proportional systems where ordering by seats and votes is just the same and you can't really tell the difference, you would notice that ordering by seat count is limited to Anglophone countries or countries using FPTP systems. While there are some common points to all elections, each country is a world in itself. You can't use the very exact system for all of them because each one works differently. So if there is consensus for ordering by seats and not votes in other countries such as the UK, ok, that's it, but that can't be brought as an argument here because this is another country with a different situation.

On WP:CONSENSUS, I should remind you that this section goes on whether there should be four parties or more in the infobox; we are talking on the party order because it has just been mentioned. There has not been any requirement for a consensus to be reached in this issue because it hasn't even been asked for. That you don't agree with me doesn't mean that you can just come and say that I'm wrong just for the sake of it, that your view is the one that counts and that you "hope that I reconsider". I don't know if you know the Spanish situation, but I do and I can tell you that I can't reconsider unless you give me a strong reasoning (and I mean strong, not just hiding behind Wikipedia policies which, in any case, can always be ignored through WP:IGNORE if they prevent us from improving Wikipedia). Ordering parties by seats in Spain would result in a situation of WP:UNDUE, giving undue weight to regionalist parties above national ones when that's not done in Spain. Impru20 (talk) 17:55, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

I can create a new sub-section of talk about the ranking choice if you agree. Today the regionalist parties don't have too much weight, but if a coalition is reached including some seats of the nationalists and regionalists, I'm sure the number of seats will be a very important criteria to follow (and also for each subsequent votes)! As for the number of parties displayed in the infobox, I agree with you (for the same reasons as you mentioned) that 6 is necessary. Wykx 22:58, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

But we can't have infobox ordered differently depending on whether a coalition is formed or not. When there are absolute majorities, seats for the rest of parties are mostly irrelevant. For this occasion, maybe a new election is required and, then, number of seats would have been irrelevant too. Pacts and coalitions should be separated from results' display, as the seat-count has not the same importance for each election. I won't elaborate again on the reasons explained above (because they have been already explained), but ordering by seats would definitely give too much weight to nationalist/regionalist parties even if they are entirely irrelevant in a given Parliament, when they are not given such a weight in reality (they do not even stand candidates to Prime Minister, only the nationwide parties do). As well as, for years, the criteria used was to order by votes, and it has been done so in all Spanish election articles at all levels without causing any issue until now, somehow. Impru20 (talk) 23:24, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

In France also, the Front National was mentioned as the 3rd party by the media and generally across the country by popular vote in the French legislative election, 2012, but the party gained only 2 seats. Then the party was ranked fifth party because his real power is very weak to influence laws when voting at the National Assembly. By applying a Regional d'Hondt system Spain is similar and is ranking among the countries with the most distortions between popular votes and seats won (see page #46 of [1]). Wykx 00:19, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Several differences:

1. You put as an example a country where real power lies within the President of France, and the legislative power has not so much power (not comparable to Spain, where the Congress has near-absolute power). This is, French legislative elections are not usually the ones where you would rank each party's strength, so this issue has less relevance.

2. France is a country which uses a two-round FPTP system (also not comparable, since Spain's electoral system is more proportionally-based). Differences are not so aggressive in Spain, specially if a party manages to get a decent amount of votes; indeed, in Spain, a party such as C's, winning as many votes as the FN did in the legislative election of 2012 (13% and 3,5 million) has got 40 seats and not just 2.

3. Also worth noting that France's political system is mainly built to damage the FN as much as possible. The two-round system increases the difficulty for the FN to win seats by polarizing the vote between a right-wing and a left-wing candidate. And even in those cases where the FN gets to the second round, tactical voting to the alternative candidate render the chances of the FN electing seats to nigh-impossible.

4. And most importantly: France uses a system of national coalitions. That is, there is a major left-wing coalition composed of several parties, and a major right-wing coalition composed of other parties. This helps to simplify the infobox so much, so, even if you order parties by seats, and taking the 2012 legislative election as a reference, you don't leave the FN out of the infobox, as there are only five parties listed. In Spain, if you order parties by seat-count, you would leave IU out from several election infoboxes despite it having being historically considered as the "third national party". This, at the cost of giving a disproportionately large weight to regionalist parties. And this could lead to weird things: for example, for the 2015 election, IU's 2 seats could be even more relevant for the formation of a left-wing coalition than Catalan independentist ERC and DiL 9 and 8 seats, since those two parties may not even support a "Spanish" government at all. Impru20 (talk) 01:02, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

1. The French president has some power but when the Parliament will be hung, you'll see that he doesn't has so much power.

2. I agree that Spain electoral system is not so aggressive than France's one but nonetheless a party like IU-UP (3.7%) still doesn't have more than 2 seats (0,6%). 4. EELV is listed separately in the French legislative election, 2012 infobox even if the party was part of the coalition-government. Wykx 12:05, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Yet still, French Parliament has not so much power as the Spanish one. 2. Yes, but it still accounts for nearly 1 million votes, and it's the only other party with seats that have stood a Prime Ministerial candidate (all others are regionalist parties which didn't do so). 4. But you'll see that EELV still has its own space in the infobox, right? Then you also have French legislative election, 2007, where parties with 3 or 4 seats (out of a Parliament of nearly 600) are within the infobox, and even the FN which has 0 seats, is there. We're talking here of a change that would remove IU from the infobox.

Also, from what I'm now seeing, French infoboxes do not include all parties. That is, I was wrong: I assumed alliances were shown in the infoboxes to simplify, but now I realize that those are the results of the PS and the UMP only. Thus, parties such as the Radical Party of the Left and New Centre are deliberately left outside the infobox despite having more seats than EELV or the FN (or MoDem in the 2007 election).

It seems that for France, dependant-parties of the PS and UMP have been discarded in favour of the more nationally relevant EELV, MoDem and FN (even if winning less seats). This seems a clear case of country-specific engineering to prevent giving undue weight to parties which do not have it, and seems to prove my point that each country is a world in itself, differently of each other. Can I ask why can't this be done too in Spain, as it has been done for years now? Impru20 (talk) 12:40, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually I'm probably a bit too logical, and when almost everywhere the logic of an election is to count the number of seats gained, I tend to follow the same rule everywhere no matter the electoral system because seats are proportional to the number of votes necessary to influence the laws. Outside of the parliament, and talking about weight in the global debate, I would favor a ranking per popular votes but full proportionnal system is not the system in Spain. I can understand that this is not representative of the global votes but that's the system in place.Wykx 22:30, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

But what you say does not give a solution to the issue at hand. One thing is to consider the representativeness of seats, and another one is to entirely discard national parties with representation that would be in the infobox if a vote criteria was used but not if a seat criteria is. Specially in this case, for a party that was the third political force in the country for decades before this election, and the only other party in Congress (aside from PP, PSOE, Podemos and C's) which did stood a PM candidate. The seat criteria would displace it in favour of two regionalist, outrightly independentist parties, with nearly half the votes.

As per France, we have one country where parties are entirely discarded at will in order to make fit for others in the infobox, no matter the seats gained. And there is at least one example in Germany where, in a non-proportional situation (the 1990 election, where the electoral system prevented one party from gaining proportional seats but it did gained FPTP seats), preference was to order parties by votes. Impru20 (talk) 23:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but I totally agree with Wykx, Bondegezou and others: within parliamentary context only one thing counts, and that is the number of seats a party achieved. I'm personally sorry that IU failed big time at the elections, but by any objective measure it just isn't "Spain's third party" anymore, and not even the fourth. Everybody knows that electoral rules in Spain are far from proportional (and that's why IU desperately wanted to form a joint list with Podemos). Now we all know how it turned out, and the result is that even several regional parties gained more seats. Period.
If the electoral system is considered unfair in regard to proportionality, then that's bad luck or a reason to change it. But until then, all the gibberish about undue weight, tradition and bla bla – sorry – is bullshit. The ultimate goal at elections is to win as many seats as possible, just like Olympic Games are there to win medals. Plus: now that absolute majorities are no more, I can't see a single convincing reason why regionalist parties wouldn't play as much a row in coalition-building as small national parties do.
You found a few other examples that seem to confirm your decision. Nice, but other stuff exists, and there may be various good or not so good reasons why someone ordered it that way. In the case of the 1990 German election it is outright wrong, too. After the Greens failed the 5% threshold in the Western Germany constituency, they played a minor role until 1994.
Finally, I think your feeling of ownership of this article goes to far, Impru20. Even if you contribute a lot and do great work, it is not in the interest of Wikipedia if articles get monopolized and other contributors are deterred. Probably it even isn't in your interest, as it leads to others leaving you alone with the work. Don't know about the others, but I got deterred from interfering with "your show" only to get reverted again or to have pagelong discussions with you who would defend every tidbit and every single colon of "your" article.
Hope you can take it easy as I didn't intend to hurt your feelings or your well-earned pride about being an important contributor to our common project. I just had to tell this to you this time. Cheers, --PanchoS (talk) 00:49, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey, don't just think I'm taking this emotionally or personally. I've no connection to IU, so I don't know why you should feel sorry about them when talking to me, nor why did you feel it was important to highlight that. I actually don't like IU too much (so, in principle, the more reason I'd have to get them out from the infobox) but I'm trying to think on an objective, impartial and constructive way to address this issue.

Then, you go out half your comment accusing me of... ownership of this article? What? I'll address this later, but I don't like the tone of this at all.

I've put up a lot of reasons about why vote count is more important in the case of Spain. Objective and reasonable reasons. And it annoyes me that the only thing people does is to tell me that I'm wrong because they just say I'm wrong, and then you, coming here and accusing me of things. I've said it many times: I understand the reasoning behind why someone can think ordering parties by seats could be good, but I am also explaining why, for the case of Spain, it shouldn't be done that way.

You are just coming here, trying to break up a practice that has been done for years without no one complaining or saying anything until now (because it happened to be a general election, but not even with the regional elections there were this issue), and that has already been done to dozens of articles for Spanish elections. That's the reason I think this should not be done, because not only would it break with already established practice in Spanish election articles, but it would also make little sense in a Spanish context. I'm just defending why it should not be done the way you say here. I've seen people even putting examples from other Wikipedias in order to make a point, when, in fact, other Wikipedias do the order by vote count and not by seats in the case of Spain.

I'm not the owner of this article. I'm not the owner at all. But there is something in Wikipedia called WP:BOLD, which allow users to contribute to this project the best way they think they can. And under WP:BOLD, I've been editing this article, as well as others. I'm not the owner, and in that we'll everyone agree, but (and it's a noticeable "but") I'm also the main contributor by far. Does that give me some preference from Wikipedia? Of course not, nor have I even suggested that. BUT, under that perspective, you should, at least, try to understand my point: I've been editing these articles for years with no complain on this issue, and even with agreements in the past with other users on this way of doing things. Then, you all come this time because a general election has just happened in Spain, and say that the way things have been done here for years is wrong, want to try to change it radically, and then go, probably without even contributing again in these pages. And this, without a strong argument for making the change. Yes, the maximum I have heard is that "in other countries it is done so". Well, in Germany it was not done for 1990. In France election articles infoboxes are an absolute craziness, with a lot of parties missing from the infoboxes to make room for the FN, MoDem and EELV. And in most countries where this rule is noticeable are those using a FPTP electoral system, as well as Anglophone countries mainly. But there are countries where exceptions to that general rule of "ordering by seats" are present (which, btw, I don't know if it's an established rule or just a custom). So you can't just discard them as if them did not exist.

And I'm really sorry to be repetitive on this, but I'm not going to accept your accusation. Use arguments, not personal attacks, no matter how well-mannered they are written. I don't think I've been rude or offensive to anyone, so I don't know why I have to go through this, and I won't. If you are going to keep on this mood, this is all I'm going to discuss with you, and I'd prefer to continue the discussion with Wykx and Bondegezou in a good way, thank you. Impru20 (talk) 01:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

"In other countries it is done so" neither is the single nor the primary argument brought forward by those adding the results to be ordered by seats. I think there is a case for taking this question to a well prepared WP:RfC. --PanchoS (talk) 10:09, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

May not be the single, but it is indeed the primary argument. That it should be applied here because it is done for other countries. Then there's a few explanations telling about why it is done so for other countries, but we go back to the same thing: to say that this is done like that in other countries and to explain why it is done so in other countries, but without entering to discuss on the country itself. I said that I understand those reasons yet do not share them for the case of Spain, and I try to give reasons on why seats should not be taken into account. But all you do is to refer again to what is done in other countries without even considering my own arguments. Have a WP:RfC if it is needed to solve the issue, because this seems rather bogged down right now. Impru20 (talk) 11:57, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Regarding UI, it may have been a major party and may have stood for PM but as you wrote it, it was in the past elections. The results are different for this one.

I'm sorry if I'm quite new to Wikipedia (my account was existing long time before but I'm mostly very active since this year) so I cannot challenge how it was done in the past for Spain before or for Germany in 1990.

For France 2012 I agree that PRG, NC and PRV should have been added before FN. I don't understand why they don't appear because the are in separate groups as the PS and LR in the National Assembly. I will update it because this legislation is still ongoing.

The rule is only discussed in countries with FPTP because this is THE drawback of the FPTP system. In proportional system, the results is the same in seats and popular votes.Wykx 08:29, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, I can say that this has been done like this for Spain for years without arousing any issues nor causing any problem, and only now seems that a change is suddenly needed. I'm just saying that, for a second, don't think on this as if this was just another FPTP country, because it isn't. I don't think other countries (or many, at least) have so many regionalist/nationalist parties such as Spain. I don't even think other countries have three outrightly regional independentist parties within its parliament, two of them would displace a national party from the infobox if a seat criteria was used.

I think that only the UK 2015 election article does leave a national party winning more votes than other regional parties out from the infobox, and that only because for that election a four-party criteria was followed (here we have six). I also notice that for UK, reaching the conclusion they reached was a truly nightmare, and the discussion about what to do with the infobox was ongoing for years throughout several articles (including local election articles). That for a country using a FPTP system where, seemingly, the criteria used was seemingly "obvious". So things are obviously not as clear.

Making the change here would leave IU out and have DiL in from the infobox as the most noticeable change. Funny thing is that none of them meet the criteria for having a parliamentary group of its own (IU does not reach 5 seats nor the 5% threshold, and DiL does not reaches the 15% threshold in Barcelona).

As far as I see, it is done for all French elections since, at least, 1986. So 2012 doesn't seem to be an isolated case.

And finally, again I say: I know that this system may work for other countries, but not for Spain. Because of the particularities that should be taken into account, but also because the Spanish electoral system does not cause enormous disproportionalities such as the FPTP does (you will not see a regionalist party with nearly 60 seats, such as in the UK, nor a party with nearly 4 million votes winning just 1 seat). It does harm minor national parties winning less than 10-15% of the vote in benefit of the largest ones, that's true, but it's still "proportionally"-based according to the Constitution itself. And it should not result in entirely discarding national parties with enough votes in favour of regionalist ones with less votes, because that would be giving them undue weight, in my opinion. Impru20 (talk) 11:57, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't see the point why, if regionalists parties obtain more seats than a nationally-candidate party, it is a problem to enlight this fact? You have also the same situation in Turkey with the Kurdish party (which now has enlarged his audience but which is primarily advocacing a minority). Wykx 17:22, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

I've opened a sub-section below to better discuss the issue, but I'll answer this here. Anyway, this is not what I'm telling and, as far as I know, the HDP in Turkish is now constituted as a national party~(no matter that it primarily advocates a minority; each political party in the world primarily advocates a minority, be it based on regional origin, economic status or whatever). Not comparable, so. In any case, for Turkey, as a four-slotted infobox, the order doesn't matter as the parties shown would be the same, but in Spain, IU, a national party, would be expelled from the infobox in favour of a regional party if that was to be done. In Spain order does matter. No one has ever considered CiU as the third political force in Spain, yet it would have been for years under this definition of party ordering. That would be giving undue weight to regional parties. Impru20 (talk) 17:37, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Infobox: Seats vs. Votes

I think this issue should get a section of its own instead of just keeping discussing in a section that is not for this, as well as to keep an order to content and to "start anew" so that content is not spread out throughout a lot of comments. Ok, so, there has been a suggestion to change the order of parties of infobox, keeping in mind seats and not votes as it has been done on Spanish election articles for years. Arguments for this change would be that this is what was done for other countries, on the grounds that for those countries it was done because of an higher consideration to seat representativeness as opposed to vote representativeness. While I understand that, for some countries, there may be some sense on this, I don't agree that the same applies to Spain. I'll try to sum up the arguments I exposed before, and please, complete or give other arguments if needed:

• Seat ranking is a notable feature in countries using FPTP systems, or countries having systems which mix FPTP with another kind of system yet still result in disproportionate differences as a result of that, and also for Anglophone countries as a general rule. For countries using a proportional system, this is negligible, as usually ordering by seats and votes is the same. Spain is a different country; so far, I think it is the only of its class using a system like the one it uses while also mixing a culture of nationwide parties and regionalist ones (i.e. Portugal uses a similar electoral system, but it doesn't have regional parties). This results in minor national parties usually having less seats than regional parties despite winning more votes (in the case of IU, for this election, it nearly doubles the next regional parties, ERC and DiL).
• There has been some examples of other countries working differently to others in order to make fit for a best representation of their political systems:
  • Germany: The 1990 election shows The Greens ahead of the PDS in the infobox despite having less seats, as a result of it doubling it in votes. 2013 election also shows the FDP within the infobox despite it having no seats. The reason given for this later case in the talk page was that "the FDP was voted out of parliament and is therefore significant enough to be displayed in the infobox as a former government party that failed to return". So, it's obvious that a criteria different than that of seats was used in order to justify that, namely that of the role of the party before the election, which was also taken into account despite it winning 0 seats.
  • France: So far, I've seen that all French legislative election articles use a peculiar criteria for their infoboxes. They do rank by seats the parties they show in the infobox, but some parties are deliberately left out when they should be in, in order to make room for EELV, MoDem or the FN (this one rarely winning many seats at all but getting a lot of votes). Reason was that the parties left out were "minor parties of their respective alliances".
• On these grounds, IU was an important player in Spanish politics up until this election. Still having nearly 1 million votes, we can't just say it is entirely irrelevant. Yes, ERC and DiL have more seats, but on seat representativeness that doesn't mean much, as none of the three fulfill the requirements to have a parliamentary group of their own. IU is still the only other nationwide party, aside from the main four, to gain representation in Congress; ERC and DiL are regional parties (and independentist ones, indeed) that do not even made a campaign to elect a Prime Minister candidate of their own (Alberto Garzón, on the other hand, was a Prime Ministerial candidate). The change of ordering system would leave out from the infobox. We are not talking that it would be re-legated to a lesser position in the infobox, but that it would be expelled, in favour of regionalist parties which, so far, have a limited influence in national politics.
• A lack of necessity to make the change. Why now? The current system is the one that best fits the Spanish political system, as it avoids WP:UNDUE in regards to regionalist parties (otherwise, for some cases you could have a regionalist party as the third political force of the country when they never had been considered as such). It has also caused no issues or problems for years, and I can't see now the sudden urge to make the change, specially now that, with the current four-party system in place, regionalist parties are more irrelevant than ever.
• There was a very heated and long discussion for several years in the UK elections article about whether UKIP should have been added to the election infoboxes or not. Being a FPTP system, the dicussion was finally to order by seats instead of votes, thus ensuring that UKIP would be left out. Ok, that was the decision for the UK, but was a very problematic one to take, so I guess this issue is not as obvious as it is wanted it to look like. It's obviously a country-by-country decision, and Spain has not the fault that for other countries the decision was made to order parties by seats. Someone made a reference earlier on this talk page to a Spanish Wikipedia article in order to defend a four-slotted infobox. Using the same argument, in the Spanish Wiki parties are ordered by votes for the Spanish elections. Obviously not an argument to say that it must be done like this here, but surely something to be taken into account.

I hope to have covered everything so that discussion can be resumed here. Impru20 (talk) 17:28, 27 December 2015 (UTC) One remark about the Spanish electoral system: It combines mostly small constituencies/disctricts and the d'Hondt formula of proportional representation. There are quite a number of other European countries with very similar systems: Belgium, Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey. Differencies between order by seats and by votes can occur there too, but do only occasionally and not regularly as in Spain. Stustnop (talk) 17:50, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

So let's focus on the spanish situation.

1. Why is it a problem if IU disappear ? The order would be PP, PSOE, Podemos, C's, ERC-Cat Sí, DiL reflecting the results.

2. IU was an important player but we have to consider this particular result.

3. IU doesn't fulfill neither the requirements for a parliamentary group.

4. What is it important for the result to be national rather than regional if you perform worse in seats in the end?

5. Do IU has more influence on national politics than ERC-Cat Sí? I don't see any source for that.

6. Why did I asked the question now? Because it's the first time I was looking at this page and could'nt understand the logic behind. Wykx 18:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

1. The order of PP, PSOE, Podemos, C's, IU and ERC also does reflect the results. Just in another way than the one proposed.

2. Same as above; votes also consider this particular result. Again, the case of Germany in 2013: FDP was an important player, and that is the reason it is maintained in the infobox despite having 0 seats. It was at that election that the FDP stopped being an important player, and as such, its demise is not left out because it is notable. So, for IU to not being as an important player as before, it would be more of an argument to defend its inclusion.

3. I already pointed out this.

4. Because nationals contest the election to access the office of Prime Minister; regionals not. Nationals are able to win the 176 required seats for majority, while regionals are limited to their areas. And because nationals have way more coverage on media than regionals.

5. In two ways:

5.1. There were talks for a possible Podemos-IU nationwide coalition in order to contest this election. Those didn't come to fruition, and both parties did stood separately. An outsider observer may wish to quickly check both parties' results, and check how the sum of both of them is far superior to the PSOE. IU's votes are very influential by themselves, in the sense that their sole presence deprive Podemos from dozens of seats.

5.2. IU can add up to a possible left-wing coalition, or influence it in some way, the same as could other parties. But with an advantage in comparison to ERC. ERC is an outrightly independentist party that would require a Catalan referendum from any PSOE government (at the very least). The PSOE opposes any referendum in Catalonia (mostly because accepting it would make the party implode in the few strongholds it still has). So that ERC has 9 seats doesn't mean it has more capacity to influence than IU, specially after the 2011-2015 legislature. And IU's 900,000 votes are surely much more influential to Podemos than ERC or DiL.

6. Well, the logic has been explained. A logic that has been maintained for years without causing issues. So it seems that this does not cause any problem at all, but is more of an aesthetical issue to those wanting to change it. Impru20 (talk) 18:50, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

1. You didn't answer 'Why is it a problem if IU disappear ?'

2. FDP was the fifth party whether considering seats or votes. So it is not a relevant comparison.

3. So it is not a discriminating criteria for IU in comparison with DiL or ERC-Cat Sí.

4. IU was perhaps "able" to gain 176 seats but he didn't do it and this party won less seats than two other parties. For media coverage should it be the relevant criteria to measure the outcome of an election? I doubt about it.

5.1 So your first point is about negative power against Podemos. Isn't it more Podemos that has taken votes to UI? UI has lost 700.000 votes.

5.2 So influence should be measured to the influence on Podemos. But how can you assume that without knowing which coalition will be formed? Podemos is not the only party that matters (actually it is the third one) even if it is the fastest growing one.

6 Exceptions should have solid reasons, so we should agree on them. I just try to understand. I don't say I won't agree with you but I want to be clear and if the issue occurs in other countries, we will have clear criteria to justify our choices. Wykx 23:30, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

1. That IU disappears in itself is not a problem. Is that it is substituted by a regional party with less political relevance.

2. Considering seats, the FDP should be out. So it is a relevant comparison. Same for the French cases. A lot of articles where parties are just banished in favour of more politically relevant ones, even if winning less seats.

3. Neither it does give IU less importance than DiL or ERC.

4. Yet IU was able, since it did contest in enough districts to do so. ERC and DiL no. They are at a different level. Won less seats, but won more votes. IU was also within En Comú Podem (which won in Catalonia) and En Marea (second force in Galicia). Another reason not to remove IU.

5.1. My first point is about the interest of the comparison between both national parties, as well as their relative comparison to PSOE in terms of votes. Also IU (not UI) has lost about 300,000 measurable votes; we can't account how many votes would it have lost in Catalonia or Galicia, since it ran within Podemos' coalitions there.

5.2. Influence on Podemos, I mean, should had a pre-electoral coalition have been formed with IU. Podemos fell short of a handful votes in many provinces of winning aditional seats, up until 10-15, which could have been grabbed should IU votes hadn't been wasted in so many provinces. We may not know. But people may definitely want to look for it, so IU arises much interest here. On the issue of an alternative government, it's obviously impossible without Podemos. And probably without IU, too (definitely, without IU they would not be able to reach an absolute majority).

6. In Spain there's a clear and deep historical distinction between national and regional parties, one of a kind that I don't know if does exist in another country in the world. Only in the UK this has begun to happen through the SNP in the recent 2015 election, but that in a country used to FPTP and without a tradition for minoritary yet still relevant national parties. The reason for using votes instead of seats is mostly because of WP:UNDUE, as ordering by seats would mean treating regional parties in a much-favoured way compared to other national parties, in stark contrast with what is done in Spanish media outlets, opinion polls, etc were national parties are given more relevance. Also, because if you look at opinion polls in Spain, you'll see that those focuse mostly on national parties, with only few pollsters also showing results for regional ones (for example, it would look weird having IU out from the infobox but present in all opinion polls published thereafter, while the contrary would be true for ERC and DiL. And I'm talking about the impact on Wikipedia articles themselves. Check this as an example). Impru20 (talk) 00:13, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Then this point is linked to #4.

2. FDP is the fifth party because among parties with 0 seat it is the one which obtained the most votes. In France, as I told you I will challenge the current 2012 results page.

4. and 5.1. What is more important for the result of such election? Seats or votes? The representation is divided by seats, not by votes. Do you know if some IU MPs have been elected in Catalonia or Galicia?

5.2 'Should' and 'probably' are not options in considering a factual result.

6. History is history. We have to take the new results and consider them for what they are. Opinion polls are neither election results. Wykx 23:31, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

2. But that's not the reason argued to maintain the FDP in. AfD could have been added as a sixth party, since it also lingers near 5% in 2013 (and there is space for it in the infobox) but it has been left out. Historical relevance has been considered for the inclusion of the FDP. Seats gained were entirely discarded there. The issue in France is with all election articles, it's not just a thing of the 2012 article. It also happens for 2007, 2002, etc, at least until 1986 (previous to that, infobox uses only four party slots). It's not an isolated case.

4. and 5.1. Regionally? Votes, definitely. And yes, IU has elected MPs within the Podemos' alliances (1/2 in Galicia and 2/3 in Catalonia, don't recall exactly the number), though technically those are not "IU's" because they have owed allegiance to each alliance (which is counted within Podemos). But they are party members. But IU has more relevance than just the 2 seats it won independently, that's why seats are not indicative of influence.

5.2. "Votes" are also a factual result. Remember that we're talking on measure a result on seats or votes, but both are results. And, if anything, votes would be a more valid result than seats, since seats are highly dependant on an electoral system which may distort election results to a great degree. Under this premise, I've explained you how IU's votes may have much more relevance and may arise more interest than ERC and DiL results.

6. I'm just noting how Spanish sources do give more relevance to national parties than to regional ones. Here you have the issue that opinion polls will show IU's results, and most of them will not show regional parties results. Yet we would have IU out from the infobox and two regional parties in. For a reader looking at pre-election and post-election opinion polls, wouldn't he feel that IU has been underrepresented in the infobox while regional parties have been overrepresented, given the different treatment given in comparison with opinion polls where regional parties are almost absent? Probably. Thus, this would WP:UNDUE for regional parties. "We have to take the new results and consider them for what they are." Absolutely agree. But votes are also "results", and this is what matters in Spain. I don't understand, however, the reasoning as to why votes can't be considered "results". And I'm not inventing anything here: results are results. Impru20 (talk) 00:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

2. For Germany I have no objection since the result is the same. For France I won't challenge all past elections, only the current constituency.

4 and 5.1 What do you mean by 'more relevance'?

5.2 Both votes and seats are factual. My view is that the measure of an election result on an assembly is based on the votes on the assembly and the votes on the assembly are based on seats won, no matter the system that led to this result if we talk about "power". If we talk about "popular representativity" it is another story since you can have the majority of seats with less than 50% of popular votes. Nonetheless you'll be considered as the winner.

6. I think WP should be more fair than 'opinion polls' and bring the reader with an impartial view of the results. This would be WP:UNDUE for IU to be ahead when obtained less seats than two others parties and sub-performed. As for your comments about results, see my answer 5.2 above.

7. Would you consider to have 7 parties in the infobox if you really want IU included? (or maybe we can discuss that only when this first discussion is closed)Wykx 00:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

2. The result is not the same. FDP in or out from the infobox. If we take seats into account, it should be out. If it's in, it's because we are considering votes for that case too. For France, all articles function like that, so it's pointless to contest the 2012 one only. By the way, I used it as an example of a country using . Yeah, you can now go and contest it, but the fact is that it uses a differen system that seat-count only and takes into consideration other factors, same for Germany. I can't comprehend, however, the need for this perfection of keeping strictly to a seat-rank system, and why it is needed for Spain when the current system has functioned perfectly for years here. Can't specific-country singularities be taken into account? There is a rule that forces ALL election articles of ALL countries to abide to a seat-rank system? So as you seemingly did not understand why votes were taken into consideration here, I don't understand why it can't be taken into consideration.

4 and 5.1. In the sense that it has presence in all of the country and in two parliamentary groups, aside from its own grouping (which would be the Mixed Group). ERC and DiL have presence in just one region, and we shall see if they're even able to attain parliamentary groups of their own, yet entirely discard if they have influence in others.

5.2. And my view is that, for the case of Spain, votes matter more than seats. In Spain "popular representativeness", or "vote representativeness", matter most than "seat representativeness" or "assembly power", because of the already explained distinction between "national parties" on one side, and "regional parties" on the other. It depends on which of the two, seat-representativeness or vote-representativeness, is more important. And I think that each country would have its reasons for considering one or the other.

6. Factually, when the readers go down into the article and check the full result table, they would see that it is ordered by... votes. And this is something that happens in most election articles, independently of the criteria used for the infobox. Logic would say that the infobox goes the same way than the full-results table. But this is something I find really curious on this system you propose, because it seemingly only works for infoboxes. Then you check election articles where this system is applied and see that, in the fully detailed results table, parties are ordered by votes. It is a quite remarkable infobox/full table distortion, and may be absurd in some cases. If for other countries that was decided, OK for them, but here it makes little sense.

IU obtained nearly double the votes than ERC or DiL. Factually, it can't be said it is sub-performing, and it would correspond to the country's reality more than a seat-ranking solution, because of the explained reasons. Arguably, it isn't wrong. In your view, it would be sub-performing in seats. In my view, it over-performed in votes in comparison to those parties.

And, as I asked earlier, what is the necessity of considering seats instead of votes? There are reasons supporting both visions, but there are country-specific reasons that, it some cases, may require one system to be used, and in other cases, a different one. This is being applied in Wikipedia for years in several countries, and in specific election articles for specific reasons. Even in other Wikipedias, seat-ranking is not a rule, but rather, an option.

7. More than 6 parties in the infobox it's horrible. I actually would kill the one who had the idea of allowing up to nine slots there. They're almost never used, and when they do, the infobox just looks incredibly long and cramped. And, by the way, if we order by seats, IU wouldn't be seventh, it'd be eighth. Again, this brings us to the above: is seat-ranking so important for every country that we must resort to adding a 7th or 8th slot in order to make fit for a party that is 5th in number of votes, nearly doubling the 6th? Why is it so important? Impru20 (talk) 01:12, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for starting a new section on this, Impru20; very sensible. I hope more people will join in with their views; perhaps after the New Year, more people will be around.

I feel that we should present results in infoboxes and elsewhere, in this article and in general, by number of seats won for the following reasons:

A. The point of an election is to elect seats, irrespective of what electoral system is used. The principal outcome of the election is how many seats were won. That should, therefore, take priority over other criteria. There is nothing, as far as I am aware, in the Spanish constitution that works off the national vote share.

B. Wikipedia should follow what reliable secondary sources do. That's a basic principle of Wikipedia. As discussed in the previous section, most (but not all) of the relevant reliable Spanish secondary sources have reported the election results in seat order. We should therefore do the same. I find Impru20's arguments about national and regional parties in Spain much less persuasive when the Spanish media are mostly (but not entirely) using seat order. Such an WP:UNDUE argument needs to be based on what reliable sources say and I don't see strong evidence for that being made. (I note the point about how polling results are presented in Spain, and I think that's an important point for an article on polling results, but this is an article about the election results, so we should follow how election results are presented.)

C. Most (but not all) election articles on Wikipedia use seat order for infoboxes (when it differs from vote order). We don't have to do everything the same, but we do need good reasons to do things differently.

Our conversation here is focused on the infobox. There is also the issue of the full results table within the article. The solution there, I feel, is to make that table sortable on both votes and seats, but we can't do that for the infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 13:32, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Straight to the point:

A. That does not prevent a different interpretation for each country if it should. That argument is not incompatible with mine. The point of an election is to elect seats. But there may be cases where votes may reflect reality better than seats. Again, I do understand the reasons behind ordering by seat, buy I haven't yet seen a reason as to why the ordering can't be done by votes. It has been the customary practice for Spanish election for years. It is wrong to done sone? No. Because it does reflect election results. That the point of an election is to elect seats does not prevent other Wikipedias, or even some countries in this Wikipedia, to work differently. Obviously we can't apply the same generic model to all countries, because that'd be assuming that all countries' elections function the same way, when they don't. As I already told, considering seats over votes would theoretically make CiU the third political force in Spain in most elections, but... it has been never considered as such in Spain. Vote ordering helps Spanish article's workability, in the sense that everything else (ranging from opinion polls to media coverage for parties) is done considering votes. This is the problem of national parties vs. regional parties. They do not compete on the same hypothetical levels.

Also, we could consider if the point of an election is really to "win seats". For some countries, such as France, there are parties such as the FN whose objetives are, actually, to win votes, knowing that the electoral system will harm them no matter how many votes do they get. In the last regional elections, the FN was the first political force in the country in the first round, but won no regional government. In an hypothetical scenario where, in the next French legislative election, the FN became the first political force of the country in terms of votes but won very little seats, should it be left out from the infobox on the grounds that the purpose of an election is "to elect seats", and treating the FN as its result had no trascendence? While it may be a bit early right now, it is a good example of why seats may not always be a good indicator.

B. WP:PRIMARY refers to analysis, summaries, media information and such, and the interpretation of those that is done in Wikipedia, that should be supported by secondary sources. This is not the case here. No opinion. No analysis. Just election data. We can't just ignore the primary source here, because secondary sources may not be reliable at reflecting all election data (and, indeed, they are not reliable when they will not show definitive results and only the main Government's source will do it, and we will be forced to rely on the main primary source). And the custom practice for the Government's source for decades, once it comes to present definitive results, is to sort by votes, not seats.

C. This is what has been mentioned earlier: we're assuming all countries are all alike when they aren't. I'd also like to ask something: In how many of those countries there was a discussion about the prefered system to be used? And how many of those were a result of someone just jumping in and just making the infobox to order parties by seats without discussion? This is another difference: of all election articles ordering parties by seats, just a little proportion of them have even discussed the issue. Or from another viewpoint: I could very well go and change all Wikipedia election infoboxes to show vote-ranking instead of seat-ranking, and in most of them, surely, no one would notice. Point is: there's not an established rule requiring (and I mean a forceful obligation) to order parties by seats in infoboxes, and I'm pretty sure that, should the issue arise on each country, it could be discussed, and it could very well by adapted for each case if the need arose, as there's actually no limitation is the point is to improve Wikipedia. As I said earlier, I remember seeing a long discussion in UK articles over UKIP inclusion in election infoboxes, both on general and local elections, due to it usually winning more votes than seats. And specially for the 2015 general election it was problematic, because it was the third political force in the country, yet happened to win just 1 seat. It was finally decided to maintain the seat-ranking system because it was the one used customarily in the UK, and because the 2015 UK election was rather unique. But surely, this would be more deeply discussed if these things keep repeating themselves. In Spain these kind of situations are not the exception, but the norm.

So, since one of the arguments used is this one, that in other countries it is done by seats, I then propose than, for Spain, let it be done by votes, as it has been done for years without causing issues. There are arguments in favour of both proposals, so then, the point should be to use the best that could reflect the factual reality of the country and the best that would help improve Wikipedia. And seats wouldn't be a wrong alternative, in principle, because, as you say, point of an election would be to "elect seats". But from another viewpoint, votes help better to differentiate between national parties and regional ones, something which is a common issue in Spain. And, in my opinion, issues arising from using a seat-ranking system rather than the current vote-ranking system would be greater, because of all explained until now. Impru20 (talk) 14:31, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I accept that there may be reasons to do things differently for different articles, but we need a good argument why that should be. 'We've always done it this way' isn't the strongest argument available. So your core point comes down to two things: it would be a misleading description of Spanish politics, and the Spanish government's election site orders by votes (although I can't see a citation for that...?). My argument remains that the Spanish media mainly (but not entirely) are presenting the results in seat order, therefore we should follow that. Whether to use seat or vote order is a matter of interpretation, ergo WP:PRIMARY applies and secondary sources should be preferred.

We have however been around these arguments already. I think we understand each other's positions -- we just don't agree! I hope others will wade in with some different viewpoints to us and Wykx. I will seek input at the elections WikiProject. Bondegezou (talk) 17:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

For reference, Wikipedia lists the following newspapers with circulations over 90,000 at Template:Spain newspapers, so I will take these as the main ones.

Present election results in seat order:

• ABC
• El Correo
• El País
• La Voz de Galicia

Present election results in votes order:

• El Periódico de Catalunya

I couldn't find a relevant page:

• El Mundo
• La Razón
• La Vanguardia

The main Spanish TV station also uses seats order: RTVE Bondegezou (talk) 18:08, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

It could be explained more in depth, but yes those would be the main reasons (specially the one regarding a probably "misleading description of Spanish politics" when using a seat criteria). The Spanish government's election site link is this. Though they have not yet updated the page with the definitive 2015 general election results (and it may still take some weeks as they are a bit slow in this, but anyway, previous elections are there to corroborate it).

My argument to disregard Spanish media in this occasion is that they are not making an official presentation of definitive results, but are rather ad hoc sites intended for a live coverage of election night. It's not that the results come in and then the media build each site with the info, but rather, they build the sites intended for showing election results and then let the data come in. Still, those are provisional pages showing provisional results, and when it comes to media coverage later on, they mainly follow a criteria of votes. I understand what do you mean on this, but seeing it globally, I see this more of a technicity on the part of some media. Also, as you say, there's not a common criteria for all media when showing provisional results (neither regarding seat vs. votes ranking nor with the showing of Podemos's alliance system, for example, which some show separately, some show together). So another reason to be very cautious with that, since a closer look reveals that each one uses its own criteria.

I agree. Let's see if different arguments can be made here, since both sides seem to have good reasons to defend their positions. Impru20 (talk) 18:13, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I also leave a link to El País' analysis on IU's result, dated on 21 December, and where it refers to IU as the fifth party in Spain. Impru20 (talk) 18:22, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Some minor comments first:

• In your latest El Pais article, IU is qualified as "fifth national force" by... Alberto Garzón.. who is the party leader so this is biaised. And anyway it is true because it is referring to 'national forces' and then he obviously doesn't include the regional ones who thus have obtained more seats.
• For the Interior minister page, it is explained in [2] that it is displayed for all elections first by the total number of votes received by each candidacy proclaimed in every electoral process, it means also for Referendum where there is no seat to win. Then the added column depends on who is elected (Consellor, European Parliamentary, etc.) So it is a site that is adapted to all elections and not specific to seats elections.
• I would be interested to Spanish media pages after provisional results because I always find the same sources already provided by Bondegezou. No other future updates.
• For FDP in Germany, even with 0 seat, I maintain there are party number fifth. I didn't tell we have to remove parties with 0 seat.
• For FN in France, it is true that this party hasn't won any region but is the second party by number of seats won, and it is before the PS (Socialist Party).

For the rest, I think we have already shared our views. I still can't understand on which base votes would be so important in Spain for a seats election, maybe because I'm not Spanish! Wykx 22:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Read the entire article. I know Garzón's reference, but the rest of the article also refers to it as the fifth party, and it is not Garzón the one doing it there, but the own newspaper's analysis. Specifically: "In this way, although in vote percentage and own seats the photo is similar to 2008, in reality it is a lesser defeat. At the same time, it is not the same to be the third national force than the fifth."

What you say only proves the Interior Ministry's preference on using votes rather than seats. It wouldn't have issues in doing it otherwise for elections using seats, yet it uses the same system for all elections. Why? Because it doesn't regards seats in such an importance as it is wanted to be given here. The "www.congreso.es" page (the Congress of Deputies' official page) also does it: check the 2011 and 2008 election results pages, as examples.

The issue is that those media won't show definitive results. So the only reference for definitive results will be the Government's page (or the Congress one). Which values votes over seats. That's why I said that considering those ad hoc media pages as secondary sources would be absurd, since they will only show provisional results and their purpose is just that: to show provisional results.

You didn't tell that, but following a seat criteria, it shouldn't be there. Because the only way to determine the FDP is the fifth party would be to use a vote-criteria. So you would be using votes, not seats, to justify the FDP's inclusion, because other way, there are a lot of other parties with 0 seats.

Where are you seeing the FN is second in seats? In the French regional elections, 2015 it is third in the infobox (though that can be argued on it finishing third on the second round). And in the French legislative election, 2012 it is fifth (though it shouldn't be there according to a seat-criteria, yet if we choose a vote-criteria it should be third). Same for previous French election articles.

The fact that you should know to start to understand why, in Spain, votes would have more importance is the dicotomy of national vs. regional parties. I understand this may be difficult to comprehend for foreigners, since it is something really unique in the world (in other countries, either there is not a culture for regional parties, or they are irrelevant or, in very specific cases, there's a very strong regional party with a nationwide scope (Italy I can think of, but they don't have these "seat/vote" issues in their articles thanks to their coalition system)). I understand what you say on seats being more relevant, on average, if the point of an election is to elect seats, but in the countries that this does happen it's more of a matter of national vs. other national parties, really. Impru20 (talk) 23:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Like Wykx, I don't see that it is fair to describe the media sites given as "provisional". We don't expect any significant shift in seat numbers now, do we? Those websites are how Spanish people see this election being reported. Those websites reflect the considered editorial choices of the Spanish media. They should be our guide.

I will avoid the detailed discussion of the French and German cases. It is clear most Wikipedia election articles go with seat order. If anyone feels specific other articles should be changed, those discussions should happen on the relevant Talk pages.

However, I would like to note that this dichotomy between regional and national parties is hardly unique to Spain. We see the same in the UK and Canada, and election articles for those countries uses seat order. We see the same in Italy and I think their articles all use seat order too. Bondegezou (talk) 23:39, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Not in seats, but yes in votes. You can't use those as sources indefinitely, because votes are going to change, and going to need to be updated, thus referencing us to the Government's page. Btw, I have also pointed now to the Congress' page itself, which also sorts by votes and not seats.

'We've always done it this way' isn't the strongest argument available. That was your call, remember. Not mine. That in other countries it is done so isn't a necessary justification for it to be done here too. Still, the French and German cases show that there are different ways to the seat-only criteria that, in any case, I still can't see where it is established as a forceful rule.

• In the UK there is only one election in which a regional party overcame a national party in seat terms (well, two national parties), and it is the last one in May 2015. And we're talking of one election on a period of several centuries worth of elections; surely not enough to force a change of criteria for the whole set, because it's not the norm, but the exception.
• In Canada there's only one relevant regional party (the Bloc Quebecois), and in the country's history it hasn't been until recently that this regional party overcame a national one in terms of seats (and even in those cases, it didn't push the national, most-voted party out of the infobox).

In Spain there are several regional parties that do frequently overcome national parties in terms of seats, but almost never in votes (only CiU did it in 1986. And maybe the PNV with UPyD in 2008, but that's rare in terms of votes). Thus the norm, not the exception. And a country where, if following a seat-criteria, national parties would be pushed out of the infobox in favour of regional ones. If you can find another country where this happens as the norm, then Spain wouldn't be so unique. But for now I think it is the only country in which it happens in a frequent way. Impru20 (talk) 00:31, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

FYI on FN in France [3] and FDP is fifth in Germany because it is the party with the largest popular votes among parties with 0 seat. In Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois is ranked by seat as you said. The specifity of Spain that you have TWO (!) regionalist parties that overscore a national party: on that I fully agree and that's why it should be refleted in the infobox because we shouldn't ignore this spanish specificity. Wykx 07:44, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, that's not done in any French article (in fact, the 2015 French regional elections article doesn't even't mention seats in the infobox). Two? Three. PNV too. And there is potential for four (Bildu could have very well ended up ahead of IU in seat terms to). And not something specific of a single election. In Canada it is only one regional party, and, again, it doesn't force a national party out from the infobox, as it would happen in Spain. As we shouldn't ignore this Spanish specificity, we shouldn't leave IU out from the infobox because there's no other precedent in Wikipedia for a country where, with a national party constantly outpolling regional parties in terms of votes, it being left behind in terms of seats and potentially being left out from the infobox. You still haven't answered on the necessity of sorting this by seats here. Impru20 (talk) 11:56, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

You're mistaken here, Impru. Both the UK and Poland have national parties with higher vote shares excluded from infoboxes while smaller, regional parties (with more seats) are included. Bondegezou (talk) 13:21, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm repeating this over and over again: this is not frequent for those countries.

• In the UK, the 2015 situation is not common. It's one election out of all held in several centuries in which something like that happens, but it's very rare for a regional party to actually outpoll a national one in terms of seats. Obviously, this is a single-case situation, in which is reasonable that a change of criteria would be unfair just to make fit for a single election.
• In Poland, national parties excluded from the infobox have no seats. A stark difference with what happens here. It may be discussed, for Poland, the opportunity of having a party with 0.1% of the vote in the infobox while having others with more votes out, but surely, there we'd be discussing a whole different thing: whether to add a party without seats at the cost of a party with seats. In this case, we have the example of Poland, which makes as you say, or France, which takes more priority on votes to have the FN in. But this is not the case for Spain, as both IU and ERC/DiL have seats.

In Spain, again, the norm is for regional parties to outpoll national ones in terms of seats (with those national winning seats too), not the exception. So the UK is not a good example, since there are a whole lot of elections where this never happened. And Poland is an example of parties with seats having priority over parties without seats, but again, this is not what happens in Spain, and can be countered with the example of France. Impru20 (talk) 13:35, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Again, this seems pretty much deadlocked, but the Polish example has given me an idea for a criteria that could be used, as a compromise between both visions (I'm telling you and then tell what do you think): that'd be, to order parties by votes in the infobox, but only considering those parties winning seats (that said, if IU or another national party had 0 seats with the same votes, it'd be left out from the infobox). I think votes can't be dismissed so easily, specially for the case of Spain where there's a constant dicotomy between national and regional parties. But, since you defend the purpose of an election is to elect seats, we'd be just considering parties with seats for that purpose. So, in the case of a national party winning millions of votes but no seats, it would be left out (this, not discarding than depending on the situation this could be discussed case-by-case if needed, but as a general principle it seems fine). Opinions? Suggestions? C'mon guys, let's try to solve this out, since right now we are doing nothing but repeating the same over and over again. Impru20 (talk) 13:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

Thank you for your suggestion above, Impru20. I was working on something else while you made it, so let me present that before returning to your idea.

I am concerned that much of the discussion above relies too much on anecdote or ideas of national exceptionalism, so I sought to look at this question more systematically. I decided to look at every country in the EU and see what their election articles' infoboxes do (just looking at their main legislative elections).

With many elections, there is no difference between the seat order and the vote order. (Indeed, a difference is impossible under some countries' electoral systems, e.g. Greece.) Thus, I started with the most recent election and went backwards until I found an election where there is a difference to see what was done, but didn't go back any further than 1971 (merely as that's when I was born!).

Results:

Countries with no difference between seat order and vote order (since 1971, when country created or when articles started having infoboxes): Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Greece, Czech Rep., Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg

Countries using vote order:

• Latvia -- Latvian parliamentary election, 2014 lists For Latvia from the Heart (7 seats, 6.9%) fifth above Latvian Association of Regions (8 seats, 6.7%)

Countries using seat order:

• France -- French legislative election, 2012 lists FdG (10 seats, 6.91% first round, 1.08% second round) fourth above FN (2 seats, 13.6% first round, 3.66% second round)
• UK -- United Kingdom general election, 2015 lists SNP (56 seats, 4.7%) third above the LibDems (8 seats, 7.9%), while UKIP (1 seat, 12.6%) are not shown at all. Note SNP are a regional party
• Poland -- Polish parliamentary election, 2015 excludes United Left (0 seats, 7.55%) from the infobox, while including PSL (16 seats, 5.13%) and MN (1 seat, 0.18%); plus 3 other parties that won no seats but got more votes than MN are excluded. Note MN are a regional party
• Romania -- Romanian legislative election, 2008 puts Democratic Liberal first (51 S / 115 D seats, 32.36%) above Social Democratic (49 S / 114 D, 33.09%)
• Belgium -- Belgian federal election, 2007 puts Open VLD (18 seats, 11.83%) fourth above VB (17 seats, 11.99%). Note these are all regional parties
• Hungary -- Hungarian parliamentary election, 1998 puts Fidesz (148 seats, 28.2%) first above MSZP (134 seats, 29.8%)
• Finland -- Finnish parliamentary election, 2015 puts Finns (38 seats, 17.7%) second above the National Coalition (37 seats, 18.2%). Note some regional parties in the infobox, although neither of these are
• Ireland -- Irish general election, 2011 puts Socialist Party (2 seats, 1.2%) fifth, then People Before Profit (2 seats, 1.0%), then Workers and Unemployed Action (1 seat, 0.4%) above the Green Party (0 seats, 1.8%)
• Croatia -- Croatian parliamentary election, 2007 puts HSS (8 seats, 6.5%) third above HNS-LD (7 seats, 6.8%). Note HSS was an electoral alliance including national and regional parties
• Lithuania -- Lithuanian parliamentary election, 2012 puts Homeland Union (33 seats, 15.08%) second above Labour (29 seats, 19.82%)
• Malta -- Maltese general election, 1981 puts Labour (34 seats, 49.1%) first above Nationalist (31 seats, 50.9%)

From this we can conclude that the issue of seat and vote order not matching does come up quite often and, nearly always, seat order is used. A key part of Impru20's argument is about the distinction between national and regional parties. I note that the examples of seat order having precedence in the UK and Poland involve regional parties being put above national parties (and indeed national parties with higher vote share being excluded from the infobox (including having won a seat in the UK), something Impru20 is concerned about here). There are also regional parties in Belgium (they all are), Finland and Croatia, but all three still go with seat order.

I also checked Spain's other neighbours in case there are local factors. Two of these (Andorra, Gibraltar) have no differences between seat and vote order. The Moroccan general election, 2007 article puts Istiqlal first (52 seats, 10.7%) above PJD (46 seats, 10.9%), so again seat order rules.

Combined with the earlier analysis of how the Spanish media are mostly using seat order, I personally find it difficult to see how the use of vote order is not special pleading (i.e., WP:UNDUE) in favour of certain small-but-national Spanish political parties. Bondegezou (talk) 13:58, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Having seen this raised at WP:E&R, briefly my thoughts are that in the infoboxes it makes sense to rank by seats won, as the infobox is meant to give a summary as to the key aspects of the result. However, I would always rank by votes in the results table. Number 57 14:13, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Hey, but you didn't comment on my idea. ;)

On your examples:

• France: Yes, a seat criteria is used for the parties shown in the infobox, but there are parties with more seats that are left out. It's a mix between seat-criteria and vote-criteria; with parties with many votes but little seats being included (and only then ordered by seats) but parties with more seats but less votes being left out.
• UK: Yes, but this is an unique case for that country (again). In roughly two centuries worth of elections the 2015 case is unique for the UK. So it's obvious that a change of criteria wouldn't be fair since it'd affect all previous elections. Even so, the exclusion of UKIP from the infobox was still contested and was not an easy-to-take decision. So, not actually that clear.
• Poland: A case of parties winning seats vs. parties not winning seats. Not comparable, as it is not the case here. Though my suggestion tries to work on this premise.
• Lithuania, Romania and Hungary: Those cases you say involve two national parties. Those are not countries with a culture of strong regional parties that do outpoll national ones in terms of seats. Furthermore, in the case of Hungary, that is for an infobox showing just two parties, and in which seat/vote-criteria is not determinant to exclude one of the two from the infobox. And in the case of Romania, while it is a four slot-infobox, they are put two-by-two, the issue coming with the two foremost national parties. Not comparable, either.
• Belgium: I did not take into account this country, which indeed has a strong culture of regional parties. Still, not very comparable to Spain, since in Belgium regional parties do actually compete with national ones for electoral victory and can be said to function like national ones in that sense. The regional parties of Belgium do compete with others to reach the premiership. Not in Spain.
• Finland: Same as other countries above: issue arise between national parties, and the use of a seat criteria in no situation leaves a national party out of the infobox in favour of a regional one. Also, for a country using a nine-slot infobox (the use of a six-slot infobox like in the case of Spain would leave any regional party out).
• Ireland: Same case as Poland, parties with seats vs. parties without seats. My suggestion tries to take advantage on this.
• Croatia: National coalitions including regional parties do not count as "regional parties". All PP, PSOE, Podemos and even IU coaligate themselves with regional parties. They are national parties, so long as they do compete (or at least they have an intention to compete) for electoral victory in the whole country.
• Malta: Just two parties in the whole country, so it seems this won't give a headache to anyone. xD

Exactly, nearly always. And even in those cases that do use a seat-criteria, there are countries (such as France) having its own criteria for showing parties. So seat-criteria is used in most countries, and I have never disputed that. But I have strong doubts that the situation in Spain is comparable to that of other countries, or even that it should also abide by a seat-criteria when there is not unanimity on Wikipedia, either. Each country is a world in itself. The collection you made on election articles is useful to quickly check that.

On the final comment: Yes, and then, in Spain, we have the Government's and the Congress' pages using vote order instead, as well as in Spanish media, there is not unanimity in the criteria used for showing election results (that's why I said it was a technicity, because each media uses its own criteria, also for showing Podemos' alliance system). Impru20 (talk) 14:28, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you may have misunderstood the French results, but they are certainly complicated and do reflect a certain French specificity. There are two groupings of assorted minor parties and independents (Miscellaneous Left (Divers gauche) and Miscellaneous right (Divers droite)) given in the results table that appear to be larger in seats won while being left out, but these are just convenient groupings used in results tables by the French media; they are not coherent parties. (I note that Wikipedia is here following what is normally done in the French media, a principle I'm all for using here.) There is then a complexity of these big coalitions of parties (Presidential majority (Left) and Parliamentary Right), with minor parties within those groupings being left out of the infobox.

More generally, of course every country is different. You can always find some difference between any two countries if you try hard enough. And yet, across this diversity, editors nearly always go for seat order. So I don't see much point getting into all these quibbles about why Poland or Ireland or Finland are subtly different to Spain. I know none of them are an exact match. They don't need to be an exact match.

Now, back to your suggestions before the arbitrary break! Thank you for coming up with some new angle. I would suggest general principles need to be discussed somewhere like Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums rather than just here. However, I am happy with infoboxes usually being just for parties that won seats, although I came across a number of exceptions in my research for the above where parties with no seats but substantial vote shares were included (but always in seat order, i.e. after all parties that did win seats). Generally speaking, I am all for infoboxes being inclusive and having more parties listed, with a switch to the 'Israeli-style' box (e.g. Next United Kingdom general election or Dutch general election, 2012) if the old-style box gets too big. However, I remain of the view, for reasons I've probably bored you with far too much(!), I think parties in infoboxes should be ordered by seats.

Thanks also to User:Number 57 for joining the discussion. Bondegezou (talk) 15:41, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The US uses seat order for presidential elections as shown here and here. My view is elections are about getting people elected, not collecting votes. 82.18.177.13 (talk) 16:37, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

That's a presidential election. Not even the same kind of election than a parliamentary one, or even using the same infobox fields (it does not even include "seats"). Not talking about other notorious differences with parliamintary elections and with Spain. Impru20 (talk) 17:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, parliamentary elections on Spain are on electing Prime Ministers too. And only national parties field candidates for that office. So one point of conflict here.

I pointed to it as a general principle that could be used in Spanish articles, of course, not all elections. I really don't care that much on what it's done on other countries as long as, for those, the system used does reflect their reality the better they can.

You, again, point out to it: nearly always. And, again, even when using that we find peculiarities (such as France, which, by the way, the media sources pointed to in this talk page doesn't correspond to what is shown in infoboxes). Also, as we have said, that for some countries it is done in one way does not mean that in Spain it must be done the same way. So that argument should be discarded, not because it is not valid, but because it in itself is not an enough argument. Would it happen something if Spain worked differently than most other countries (but not some countries which, indeed, work that way)?

We have the Spanish government's page and the Congress' page also as sources showing that a vote-criteria is prefered. And those are pages showing definitive results. Spanish media do not agree on this matter, each one using its own criteria for showing party results. And with media articles analyzing results having IU as "the fifth force" of the country.

This is why I put up that suggestion of mine. But other suggestions would also be welcome. Impru20 (talk) 17:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

As I have still not understood why Spain is specific (regional parties exist in a lot of countries; Spanish government page is explaining the calculation of seats by publishing the votes first as in our results table), I favor having ranking by seats in infobox (and using popular votes in case of ex-aequo) + using popular votes ranking in the results table. Wykx 18:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Obviously, as you're missing many of my points. Not only the Government's page, but the Congress' page, which only shows Congress election results, also orders parties by votes. And indeed, the Government's page explaining that it favours vote-ranking would be another reason supporting a vote criteria.

Then, again, the fact that a vote pattern like the one in Spain doesn't exist "in many countries". The differences of Spain have already been explained. You put up as examples countries where there is only one regional party constantly polling above a national (and whose addition doesn't result in a national party being expelled from the infobox) or the UK, where the pattern registered in the 2015 election was unique for UK elections, and where UKIP exclusion was not done without trouble. Or even comparing with elections where national parties are excluded in favor of regional ones, yes, but only because the national one did not win seats (that's it, 0). None of those are comparable here, and I can't see the comparation. Spain is a country where regional parties without any chance to win the election can get more seats than national parties that do contest the election to win it. National parties to field prime ministerial candidates, regional parties don't. In other countries (Canada, Belgium) regional parties can get enough seats even to become Leaders of the Opposition or lead the country's government (thus equalling themselves with national parties); in Spain they can't.

And yet again, you also fail to explain what's the necessity of changing the criteria for Spain. Third time I ask, and the most I can hear is that "it is done so for other countries". So, if that's to be the argument, I'll just say that "this is how it has been done in Spain for years without any issues". There is proof that a seat-criteria is not used for all countries. There's proof that a seat-criteria is not even necessary or even required for all countries, because each country is different. I even suggested a possible solution, or asked for alternative compromise solutions, and my call is going mostly unheard. There doesn't seem to be any will to even reach a compromise, and this is getting already too long. I even have the feeling that you don't even read my comments, because when I read you you seem like if you hadn't readed me. I don't know where is the urge to change the infobox to a seat-criteria, but I oppose it. Now I ask: something that has worked well for years for Spain, is it really a need to change it now? Impru20 (talk) 18:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The necessity : seats are used to vote laws and form groups and coalitions. That's the purpose of a legislative election. I respect your call for compromise. I also read that until now you're the only one to support the vote-ranking. I suggest we wait for more answers in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums as I recognize you did a great great job in spanish election pages and then your opinion counts more than a newcomer. Wykx 19:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

But that's not a necessity. That's an argument supporting the idea of using a seat-criteria. But neither the seat-criteria is established as an immovable requirement in Wikipedia, nor it is used in all election articles (in most, yes, but not in all), nor that is the only reason possible to support one or another view (for example, if only seats were relevant, what'd be the point of showing votes in the infobox too?). Here it has been even suggested that the criteria is up to editors, when Bondegezou said that, for other countries, they choose a seat-criteria. But that only reflects the fact that the choosing of the criteria is rather wild and not-established, and that one criteria is as valid as the other.

That it suddently "needs" to be changed, however, isn't reflected in the fact that this has went without trouble for years. I understand that, now that the election has just happened, some may want to change the criteria "to what is done in other countries" just because most of them use a seat-criteria, but then I have strong doubts that it should be appliable to Spain. Moreover, the change is only being pressed on one article of all Spanish election articles at all levels using the vote-criteria. For now, yes, I'm the only one of the users who have commented here supporting the vote-ranking. But I'm also the only user of those discussing the issue who keeps maintaining these articles, with others mostly being, as you say, "newcomers". Not intended to hurt, but while I appreciate the attempt at looking to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums to get help at solving this, I don't know how useful it is for more "newcomers" to come here just to make a note on matters which we've already laid out as inconclusive. That doesn't solve the deadlock here. That's why I talked on discussing possible compromise alternatives (if possible). Impru20 (talk) 20:02, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

The standard way of dealing with deadlock is to invite in additional views from, e.g., a relevant project. It is useful if those new voices can suggest other ways forward or demonstrate that consensus lies one way or another. It would, of course, be lovely if more people who had worked on this article waded in, but if they don't, what can one do? Sadly, many Wikipedia articles these days, it feels, depend on very small numbers of active editors. This debate notwithstanding, my thanks to Impru20 and all the others who have made this a quality article.

As to the other Spanish election articles, while we're talking about this one given the election has just happened, I support changing all the recent ones to seat order. (I note earlier Spanish election articles are perforce seat order because they don't even have vote share information.) Bondegezou (talk) 23:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Of course, new views are welcome. But so far, we have no new views, but a reiteration of already established views, so we are pretty much as we started on.

That's the issue. Changing all Spanish election articles would make CiU the third political force in the country for several of those articles when in NO media site it was cited as such. So it'd be blatantly wrong. Again, Spanish Government and Congress sources (and the Congress sources could be considered as a secondary source of a relevant entity, as it gets its data from the Interior Ministry and not directly) use a vote-criteria, while the media doesn't agree on which criteria to use. This site also uses a vote-criteria, and it's a site dedicated to election analysis. And, just to note, the Spanish Wikipedia also uses vote-criteria for Spanish election articles infoboxes despite using a seat-criteria for other countries in the same Wiki.

I don't understand your note. Those election articles all do have vote share information.

I again ask on why something that has worked until now must now be changed to something that will not work, on the basis of rather weak ("because in other countries it is done so") and/or contested arguments. Impru20 (talk) 00:02, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

A quick note just to clear up two points before I take a short break for NYE. Impru20, we may be talking at cross-purposes over "new voices". Since you started this section, two editors have joined the discussion, User:Number57 and 82.18.177.13, and both support using seat order. We are not where we started on this: we've gone from 2:1 in favour of seat order over vote order to 4:1 in favour of seat order over vote order. That is what User:Wykx and I mean.

As to earlier Spanish election articles, all the election articles from 1876 to 1923 only contain information on the number of seats, with no data on votes included. The election articles up to 1936 then only include seats in their infoboxes, but do include vote data in the article bodies. When you talk about "Changing all Spanish election articles", we just mean the post-Franco elections and your point about the CiU only applies to elections from 1982 to 2011 (and not all of those). Bondegezou (talk) 10:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

The 1876 to 1936 articles are not even complete. In any case, you can't absolutely compare the political systems on those (the 1876 to 1923 elections were not even "free" elections); every time I'm talking about the 1977-2015 period. Periods which are separated even by historians, so, obviously, you putting the 1876 to 1923 and 1931 to 1936 at the samel level than 1977 onwards just show how unfamiliar with Spain's elections you are. The CiU issue does exist. I've never stated it applied to all elections since 1982, but it does apply to most of them (82, 89, 00, 04, 08, 11 and the ongoing issue with 2015, in which IU would be displaced from the infobox because of DiL (CiU's successor)). Now you seem to skip on this, but the issue does exist. And no one has ever referenced CiU as the third political force in the country, no matter how many seats did it won; but it was IU (briefly the CDS) until now.

As per WP:CONS, "any edit that is not disputed or reverted by another editor can be assumed to have consensus". So, the fact that the vote-criteria stood up for years uncontested, and even with intermediate edits from other people, can be assumed to have consensus, and thus, is valid. But if a new consensus was to be reached, it can obviously be discussed. However, as it says: "editors can also suggest alternative solutions or compromises that may satisfy all concerns. The result might be an agreement that does not satisfy anyone completely, but that all recognize as a reasonable solution. Consensus is an ongoing process on Wikipedia; it is often better to accept a less-than-perfect compromise – with the understanding that the page is gradually improving – than to try to fight to implement a particular preferred version immediately. So far I'm the only one who has been willing to reach that extent so to reach a point that half-satisfied everyone, instead of fully satisfying a part. But you seek to impose a particular version. I was willing to not seek a particular version, and have shown my will for it, but this went nowhere, so I must assume that what you want is just to impose your version, knowing that a part won't be satisfied. And a relevant part, since I'm the one maintaining these articles which you only cared about just know.

I've pointed to strong evidence supporting the idea of vote criteria, with sources from the Government's sources, Congress' sources, an election analysis site's source (which, by the way, also treats the 1876 to 1923 elections the way they are shown, and is one of the scarce sources showing information for those elections) and even some media, as well as examples of the Spanish wikipedia (which I believe they may know something on their own country, just saying). I've tried to reach a compromise to solve the deadlock since this was going nowere, and you seemed to not care. I suggested an option and you're ignoring it. I told you on suggesting another alternatives to talk about, and you just don't do it and ignore it yet again, saying that it must be done your way. My own arguments are being ignored as people acknowledgly doesn't read them. You just want to impose your view for the sake of it and don't even seem to care on compromise, saying that you note my effort on it (I don't care whether you note on my effort or not if then you're just skipping it entirely. Be practical). Now, you only say that this must be solved on the strength of numbers (I should remind you that, as per WP:CONS, consensus is not achieved "as a result of a vote"), not on the quality of arguments, and you only bring people who know nothing on Spanish politics, and that surely are not even reading the whole discussion and just note on already existing arguments that have been already established as insufficient, just to have your point done. You want to change something that has worked for years, that it's the most representative of the country's reality, and that indeed did met the criteria for attaining consensus as no one contested it for all that time, for something that will not work, that will be surely contested and on an unsupported basis, as there is absolutely no rule saying that an infobox must show a seat-order and, indeed, even you yourself acknowledging that it is not done so for all countries. And then, once the "change" is supposedly done... you'll of course go, probably without contributing to these articles ever again until the next election which may be in a few months... or in a few years. Or just never. This discussion was seemingly for nothing, because you are only seeking me to accept your arguments, but you were never willing to be able to accept my own. That's a legitimate goal in consensus-making, to seek the other to accept your views, but if none is able to do that, the logical resolution would be to seek a compromise, but that has not even been attempted.

I, as the one who keeps maintaining these articles, and as a person quite aware of the Spanish reality, may have a say on this; not as the article's owner as some guy spoke out in a rant early on, which I aren't, but as the main contributor whose edits have been commended even from yourself (so I can't be doing this that wrong, really). It'd be, of course, good for other people to keep maintaining the articles, as you said, but it has been years now and no one really cared on them and it went up to me, so, for now, this is what we have, and we're discussing facts here. You said you had no problem on a vote-only criteria but that you wanted to understand the reason why. The reason has been explained. And there's not a rule saying that a seat-criteria must be followed, so it'd be enough to, at least, cast a reasonable doubt on the opportunity of pressing for a seat criteria. I can't accept a seat-only criteria because that'll indeed cause problems in the future, and it surely won't help improving these articles, which is what the primary goal would be (i.e. from Spanish casual editors who change the infoboxes, mirroring what happens in their Wikipedia, and with much reason, since CiU was never considered the third political force in the country). This also began as a discussion for this article only, and now you want to change everything in all Spanish articles, which sorry, but doesn't seem to me not even reasonable. I'm not accepting it if you're keeping doing things in such a manner, which means that, indeed, the issue will remain deadlocked here, unless other proposals are discussed. Impru20 (talk) 13:02, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm not comparing the political situation post-Franco with that pre-Franco -- I was just going through which articles do what. I do have some understanding of Spanish history!

I am sorry that you feel as if you are being ignored. That is certainly not my intent. As you say, I have commended your work on this and related articles, as has User:Wykx. I meant those comments sincerely. You, as I, have had ample opportunity to explain your reasoning on this point and, as I, have done so at length. I have read all your arguments, as I can see you're read mine and Wykx's. As it happens, we still disagree and I understand that is frustrating. I've done my best to minimise frustration by not rushing the discussion (WP:TIND), by acknowledging other points of view and by following standard Wikipedia principles for resolving deadlock (WP:CONTENTDISPUTE). I do not see this discussion as having been "for nothing". However, sometimes on Wikipedia, despite all the discussion and with everyone having the best will in the world, editors still disagree about what is best. As an editor, I have had discussions go against what I felt was the right thing to do. That's life. That's going to happen in a collaborative project like Wikipedia. I accepted that I couldn't win those arguments and that consensus was against me. (As an example, typing these words now, I still get frustrated that I was unable to persuade other people of how the article for The Matrix should reflect Lana Wachowski's gender better, but I have to respect others' views on the matter.)

I thanked you for the suggestions you made to find some other solution, some compromise. I responded to those suggestions and made some suggestions of my own (like changing the format of the infobox and using a sortable table format for the table in the body text). Ultimately, all your suggestions preserve using vote order and all my suggestions involve switching to seat order. Neither of us have found a compromise to solve that.

I am happy to stick to just discussing this article for now. You raised the issue of the other Spanish election articles using vote order, so I was responding to that, but you're right: let's stick to this one in this discussion.

I would like to challenge your criticism that I "only bring people who know nothing on Spanish politics, and that surely are not even reading the whole discussion and just note on already existing arguments that have been already established as insufficient, just to have your point done." I, entirely in good faith, sought to resolve deadlock by bringing in additional perspectives from a relevant project page. I trust that those people who have chosen to join the discussion have done so having duly thought about the issue and based on their own experiences as Wikipedians and their own knowledge of the topic area. To accuse them of not reading the discussion seems to me like a failure to assume good faith and I don't see how you can know what knowledge they bring to the discussion (WP:EX is relevant here). I am happy with other WP:CONTENTDISPUTE processes you wish to start. Your claim that "existing arguments" were "already established as insufficient" is disingenuous: what you mean is that you consider them insufficient.

In conclusion, I am sorry that you are frustrated with this process and have great respect for your editing contributions here and on many, many other articles. However, we disagree on whether IU-UP, with 3.7% of the national vote and 2 seats, should go fifth in the infobox. I am saddened you appear to think ill of me, but I would suggest focusing on content is the best way of moving forwards. Bondegezou (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

We were talking all the time of the 1977 to current situation. So it seems rather weird to point out to past elections for past political systems. Obviously, for many of those elections there are no historical data for factual election results (vote results), so the seat-ordering in those cases comes because of no other choice, not because of preference. Those articles are also very poorly developed yet. Even in some of those elections, sources disagree on how many seats did each party won, so even that would be rather conflictive. At all, nothing comparable to the 1977-2015 situation.

I really do appreciate your good words commending my work, but obviously we're not here for that. Compliments are well, but they mean nothing if they're just intended to skip on the issue at hand. I've tried several times suggesting discussing different alternatives, and the only response were you and User:Wykx commending me for my work and for proposing a good initiative, and that's it. Well, that's good, but that wasn't what I was asking for, but to actually discuss alternatives. Right know, it seems like this is only a one-way solution discussion, and that this can only be solved by using a seat-criteria. You're just pressing for it and do not enter into discussing other possibilites.

Of course, I'm not saying it's your fault that the people that comes here has little knowledge on the Spanish situation. But the only people coming here is people who, like User:Number57, have recognized that have just "briefly" read the discussion, so I obviously challenge your claim that they do so on "duly thought". They have not read the discussion, and they themselves acknowledge it, no matter the "trust" you may have on them. And you giving such a weight to people who are commenting without even reading the whole discussion, just repeating that "it's done so in other countries" when we've already discarded that as a valid argument, seems a bit biased. Not that their opinions aren't valid, but if they are not even reading the discussion, I don't know how they can even be compared to my opinion or your opinion. They just come here to say, just as you and User:Wykx, that "as other countries use a seat-criteria, it should be done here too". Despite you recognizing than that is not always the case for other countries, and despite the fact that established consensus for Spanish articles (no challenge to edits for years, and even support from those who edited the pages without modifying that) has been to follow a vote-criteria. Please, don't try to tell that others are "informed", because obviously they aren't and they themselves recognize it.

Not that it's your fault, but surely, I dunno exactly what do you intend with this but to rely on the strength of numbers over the quality of arguments; and as I told you, numbers do not mean much, as consensus does not equal to "vote".

Btw, I'm focusing on content. I'm just tired of revolving on a deadlocked issue, trying to put forward a solution that satisfies everyone, yet it would seem that you just want to impose your view, and just use this discussion as a mere procedure to get to it. You even went on as far as to make the change yourself early on in the article (which I had to revert) despite the dicussion being open. I seem to be the only one interested on really discussing this, while you seem more focused on ending the discussion so that your change can be done. Of course I must assume good faith, but one thing is to assume good faith and another very different one is to be blind to what is obviously going on. I assumed good faith from the very beginning. And the proof is the entire development of this discussion. I assumed good faith on you when I made an alternative suggestion. I assumed good faith on you when I asked you on suggesting other possibilities to the seat-only criteria and the vote-only criteria, so that all of us could be satisfied with a common solution, which is the point of consensus. But you just use good words to deviate the discussion. So please, stop complimenting me, since whether you appreciate my job on Wikipedia or not is not the issue of the discussion. I really do appreciate that, but that's not the matter at hand.

IU-UP should be fifth because the vote-criteria is the established consensus for Spanish election articles since the country's transition to democracy, and that's the way things have worked on for those for years. It also the way some media presents it, as well the Congress' and the Spanish Government's page, which have also showed preference for a vote-criteria. You it's up to you, obviously, to argument it on better arguments than just "it's nearly always done so in other countries" or just "some media do it". Yes, and for Spanish articles that was not the case and some other media don't do it. I opened the door for a compromised solution, and that was refused. So, obviously, I may get a bit frustrated when I intend to get a consensus and you seem to not be willing to even discussing, just keeping complimenting me all the time. Impru20 (talk) 16:13, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Please don't forget that I propose to have ranking by seats in the infobox (and proposed also the additional possibility in that case to display more parties) and ranking by votes in the table so that both rankings are displayed in the page. Wykx 19:09, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

So, you defend that for the infobox it must be done by seats and then... you don't have any issue for the table to be ranked by votes. Understand that I feel this has little sense, because then, maybe it's not so important for the infobox to use the seat-criteria... is it? I mean, you have said multiple times that seats were so important because elections are purposed for etc etc and now you say you don't care for the table to use a different criteria. Maybe you propose this as a compromise... yet: 1. So far, we were only discussing the infobox. I never mentioned any change to be made in the table (so, you can't compromise on something that was not even being discussed about) and 2. You are acknowledging that the infobox issue is not that relevant, and that it may just go off with whatever system. I just propose using votes for both of them, as a more coherent system. Impru20 (talk) 00:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

1. Indeed I try to find a compromise solution: table is complete with all information so each reader can see the full picture. This compromise is not a change in the table but in the infobox. 2. That's not a compromise. Wykx 08:09, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

We talked a while back about what other language Wikipedias do about this election and Impru20 raised the matter more recently, so I thought I would summarise the current state of play for reference. Consistency within a Wikipedia is generally considered more important than consistency across other projects, as I understand it, but there is certainly value in looking at other Wikipedias' approaches. There is quite some diversity in this case.

zh-yue, nl, hu, eu, eml, da: Have no infobox or no parties listed in their infobox

es: Has a different style of infobox; only lists top four parties in infobox (thus seat vs. vote order not an issue) it: Only lists top three parties in infobox (thus no issue) th: Only lists top two parties in infobox (thus no issue) ja: Copies the es article.

zh: Copies this article's infobox directly (so seat order)

pt: Has an infobox style similar to es, but different. Lists all parties that won seats, but uses seat order. gl: Similar infobox style to es/pt, lists a top 9, uses seat order.

fr: Similar infobox style to es/pt. Lists all parties that won seats, but uses vote order. ca: Similar infobox to this article in style, but using seat order (top 9 parties given).

de: Entirely different approach: no infobox as such, but highlights a graphic focusing on vote share and that uses vote order. cs: Again, no infobox, but highlights a graphic showing seats won.

So, that's lots of articles without infoboxes, three for seat order, two for vote order, and four avoid the issue by showing fewer parties in the infobox. Those are crude counts: I'm not suggesting we give equal weight to Wikipedias with short articles a long way from Spain (e.g. ja) as we do to Wikipedias with long articles close to (fr, pt) or with most editors from Spain (ca).

I also note that other Wikipedias have gone for different numbers of parties in the infobox to what we have here. If we switched to four or fewer, the whole issue disappears. Others have opted for longer lists, which avoids the problem of certain parties dropping out depending on whether one uses vote or seat order. Does either of these approaches suggest a solution to our current quandary? Bondegezou (talk) 16:27, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

You keep just showing that there's a nice variety on infobox styles depending on the country mentioned. Each country uses its own infobox criteria. That's a fact. A new reason to consider "that's what's done in other countries"-like argument as invalid. Other countries do many things in their infoboxes. We should center in the case of Spain, shouldn't we?

The Spanish wikipedia has opted for a four-slot infobox... classified by vote-criteria. As you now want to mention that the number of parties in the infoboxes of other Wikipedias' election articles in order to suggest a change on the number of parties shown here, you may also want to mention that, for Spain, the number of parties has been always four (or five) for all elections (because their infobox design allows for it, vertically instead of horizontally), and ordered by vote-criteria.

The issue is, the number of parties in the Spanish infobox was already discussed even before this issue (and you participated in it), and it was already agreed by everyone to leave it as it is. So I had assumed you had already understood the reasons behind not limiting this to a four party-only infobox. It causes problems with infobox width. Not a valid solution (and I'd question if it is even appropiate, given that it has been already dicussed). And it doesn't help solve the issue on whether use a vote-criteria or a seat-criteria at all. For example: we will just keep dropping parties in future or past elections just to try to hide this issue? Impru20 (talk) 16:44, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

I suggested other changes to the infobox in an attempt to find some new path through this. If others feel those ideas would not work for other reasons, fair enough. They were just suggestions.

I've explained my reasoning and evidence base at some length above: I feel I should take my leave of this discussion before I start contributing more heat than light. I trust the community will come to some eventual decision for the best. Bondegezou (talk) 23:43, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

You have (intentionally or not) proposed something that was already discarded in a previous discussion in this very same talk page. I don't know how that can count as "propose something". Yes, that was already dicussed, even before discussing the seats vs. votes issue. So, I don't know if you just said that to come and say that you did actually propose something. I can't see how something already discarded because of technical reasons already explained can count as a suggestion.

You just come, throw off the stone, and then leave. Just as I predicted a lot earlier. As you can't base yourself on coherent arguments or even want to reach a compromise, you just rely on the force on numbers hoping than that is useful for you to impose this here, despite known that WP:CONS specifically establishes that consensus is not a vote. I at least hope that evidence of this attitude remains here in this talk page, but it's pretty obvious you are doing nothing to even attempt reaching a compromise solution that satisfies both sides, but to impose an Anglophone criteria here. Impru20 (talk) 00:32, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Are the technical reasons where that the infobox would be too long with 9 parties? If the infoboxes are supporting 9 parties, that is because this is possible.

I would like to remind WP:EQ, WP:AGF. Wykx 08:23, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Infobox: Seats vs. Votes

The following discussion 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.

---

We are looking to know whether infobox should rank parties for the Spanish general election of 2015 by popular votes or by seats. The arguments have been widely discussed and no consensus has been reached yet. We have the main contributor (pro-vote ranking) to the page opposing all the other readers who gave their opinion (pro-seats ranking). The discussion went into the specifities of Spain that may justify not to change the current article vote ranking. Thanks for your comments on this. Wykx 17:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

• As I stated briefly above, rank by seats. Number 57 13:23, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by votes, as I explained thoroughly above. Impru20 (talk) 13:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats, as most Spanish media do (see analysis abvoe) and as nearly every election infobox does (see analysis above). Happy to see the infobox include more parties (e.g. by using the design at Dutch general election, 2012/Next United Kingdom general election/Israeli legislative election, 2015) if that will alleviate concerns with parties falling out of the infobox. Also happy to consider the infobox including fewer parties (most post-Franco Spanish election articles had just the two main parties in their infoboxes for many years; there would be some logic to just including the top four now) as another way of ducking the problem. Bondegezou (talk) 15:46, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Disagree. Secondary and tertiary sources analyzing election results use a vote-criteria. "As nearly every election infobox does" has been regarded as an invalid argument even by yourself. Also, a four box-solution is neither the question at hand here (and it was already discussed against) would also be horrible for the Spanish case, since the map's width would greatly distort the infobox' width. And the point of an infobox is to be a summary. If you're going to have a full-fledged table there, just remove the infobox altogether, as the in-depth results table within the article already does fulfill that purpose. Impru20 (talk) 16:36, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats, because legislative elections goal is to elect MPs and vote of laws is done by seats, not by popular votes. Wykx 19:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats, because -as Wkyx said- the final purpose of these elections is that a party could gain the most seats available (according to the districts/constituencies where they presented candidacies), and the popular vote, even when it could represent the preferences, doesn't reflect clearly the composition of the next Parliament (independently if the electoral law, gerrymandering or what else could benefit some parties). --Sfs90 (talk) 21:54, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats (in the Congress) including all candidatures with representation in the infobox giving preference to the party logo rather than the "party leader"? "presidential candidate" (when there is one)? photo. That would actually be a summary because a complete table of results may include results sorted by electoral district aside from extra-parliamentary candidatures. I am not sure secondary and tertiary sources analyzing elections in Spain use the vote criteria as core principle (which is the Congress composition just as it comes out of the event, imho) rather than as a secondary statistical product.--Asqueladd (talk) 01:16, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats that is what the vast majority of reliable sources do and the more important result is the number of seats won, since that will determine government formation. Valenciano (talk) 09:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats - I notice that parties in the cortes have to organise in groups according to number of MPs and not the number of votes the party achieved at the election. Therefore, number of seats is what is important and that is what should be reflected in the infobox. Regards Fishiehelper2 (talk) 13:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Actually, the criteria for group creation in the Congress is complex. If a party does not reach the 15 MP's limit, they need 5 MPs and >5% of the national vote (or >15% in all the districts they took part in) to form a parliamentary group. But this is the bylaw of the Congress (and applied loosely), nothing to do with the Electoral Law (and therefore it has a looser link to the election itself).--Asqueladd (talk) 18:25, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

• Rank by seats, by all means include the 'popular vote' info, within the info, but seats are outcome. All electoral systems have anomalies to a greater or lesser extent, but it makes no sense to give priority to 'popular votes', which are input rather than outcome. Pincrete (talk) 23:07, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
• Rank by seats as these are the actual outcome of the election, including all parties that won seats at either the current election or the last one (to cater for cases like the FDP example in the German federal election, 2013). For multi-party systems use the Israeli Infobox style or adapt the election infobox of the French Wikipedia. --PanchoS (talk) 13:04, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

_

Outcome of the RfC: We have 9 contributors favoring Rank by seats and 1 contributor favoring 'Rank by number'. We have also alternative proposals based on other election/language pages, which I personally find interesting. As per Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#Ending_RfCs 'The outcome is determined by weighing the merits of the arguments and assessing if they are consistent with Wikipedia policies. Counting "votes" is not an appropriate method of determining outcome, though a closer should not ignore numbers entirely'. So what shall we consider now? Thanks Wykx 00:40, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

One can wait the standard 30 days (so end of this month) and wait for an uninvolved editor to close the discussion, or given the views expressed so far, one can see whether the participants can mutually agree a close. Basically, Impru20, you've had multiple opportunities to put your case and it appears that no-one else agrees with you. Would you like to concede the point for this article? Bondegezou (talk) 13:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

The fact that no one else agrees with me is inconsequential with my position at this point. Specially given that the vote-criteria has not been regarded as "wrong" but, rather, that others have chosen the other one because they like it more. I still maintain my initial belief, obviously, and as you have your own, respectable opinion, I have mine. The RfC result does not forces me to concede on my opinion, so I won't, nor do I have to.

It'd have been also interesting that each contributor had stated whether they had actually read the lengthy discussion, but well, we may never know. Impru20 (talk) 16:02, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Then I suggest we await regular RfC closure by an uninvolved editor. Bondegezou (talk) 16:20, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Most probably not all contributors read the long – unnecessarily long, I might add – discussion. In this case it proved disingenious to blow up the discussion with all these overly lengthy comments instead of condensing your argumentation into a few short, concise sentences. --PanchoS (talk) 10:35, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

I did it. I might add the big elephant in the room is the customary decision to include leaders and pics of leaders in the infoboxes of legislative elections. The noises this custom bring affect the point about "presidential candidates" (which are more a thing of the electoral campaign postering and the parliamentary activity of the new term of the legislature rather than the election itself) brought by Impru20 into this issue. I thoroughly think portuguese wikipedia aproach to infoboxes of legislative elections (save for some synth of candidatures) is the way to go.--Asqueladd (talk) 12:21, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, @Asqueladd: I agree the →Portuguese style has some merits, too, as our current style unduly personalizes elections in parliamentary, as opposed to (semi-)presidential democracies. In most parliamentary democracies, politics is much more party-politics, even though to some extent, "American style" personalization gained ground. The Portuguese infobox style would however be such a massive depart from our usual customs, that it would seem impossible to find consensus. Again, I'm proposing the →French style as a good compromise. Still including small photos of party leaders, it doesn't unduly personalize the elections and caters much better for multi-party systems. --PanchoS (talk) 12:50, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

• Rank by seatsSummoned by bot because this is what most reliable sources do, and this actually represents the political outcome of the election. The system might be flawed; but the number of seats represent political power in the next government of Spain. Vanamonde93 (talk) 01:31, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

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.

Lead is far too long and detailed

Most of that stuff should be in the main body of the article. All people want to read about in the lead is when did it happen, who participated, and what was the result. MaxBrowne (talk) 14:07, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

It's in line in with what is done for the leads of other recent elections, and it's not neither too long nor detailed:

• United Kingdom general election, 2015
• Portuguese legislative election, 2015
• Turkish general election, June 2015
• Turkish general election, November 2015
• Canadian federal election, 2015

It does what it's supposed to do at summarizing as most as possible the key issues of the election. But this election was exceptionally notable in many points for obvious reasons (Podemos and C's rise, PP and PSOE collapse, uncertainty of results maybe requiring of a second election, historical lows and highs for many parties, etc). People would want to have it mentioned in the lead instead of having to dig in further into the article to check those facts.

Furthermore, it's just absurd that you say this when you keep making edits that make the lead longer. Impru20 (talk) 14:34, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

This is a variation on the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. I think Australian federal election, 2004 is a far better model for how to write a lead section for an article on an election. OK, the Spanish election result was more complicated, but the detailed stuff can wait. What people want from the lead is a concise summary of the results. MaxBrowne (talk) 23:48, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Given the large evolution of results of the four first parties, it seems balanced to have this included in the summary. I don't see any issue. Wykx 09:48, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

I've already summarized the lead section by a great deal, but your edits only keep making it longer for no reason, as well as having no sense. You do not make a correlation of the ideas you post, and do want to be too specific for a lead section:

• "As of 3 January 2016" is way too specific. We're not going to update that in a day-to-day basis.
• You say that parties are still in coalition negotiation talks, when, in fact, no formal negotiation has started yet (Congress has not even convened, and then there'd still be two months until late March or early April for negotiations to either fail or succeed). PP is just asking for the PSOE to either abstain or forming a grand coalition with it, but the PSOE has refused, and they're obviously not negotiating anything as of yet. The PSOE is not even negotiating with anyone as it's busy with its internal leadership crisis right now, but some party members have already stated that they'd go to a general election before negotiating with Podemos.
• You make a reference to "two parties", without saying which two parties are you refering to (though it seem obvious that you must be refering to PP and PSOE, but you don't say so).

The lead section is to be taken into account in its entirety. All of the lead section is intended to summarize the election outcome, not just the first paragraph. In this case, there are specifities to his election that must obviously be explained, even if little, in the lead section. So, stop the edit warring. Impru20 (talk) 15:05, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The edit warring is by you. Undoing someone's edits repeatedly is a hostile act, and reeks of ownership issues. MaxBrowne (talk) 23:54, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

1. When writing your first message, it seems like you seemingly did not read my second answer.

2. When writing your second message, when it seems like you did actually read my second answer, you are not answering it at all.

3. You have just used the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument yourself.

4. What you think is not necessarily what is better, specially given the points I've pointed to you (incoherence in writing, the fact that you're actually making the lead longer, the paragraph you keep adding having incorrect data, etc).

5. I'm reverting data that is both incoherent, incorrect and unnecesary, and could potentially be regarded as disruptive editing. Looking at your talk page, it seems like you did have issues of edit warring in the past. So, yes, it seems like it is you the one that is doing edit warring with the only purpose to add a paragraph that has little sense and adds little to the lead section except for... consuming space. You come here critizing the length of the lead section... yet your edit only made it larger than what it actually was before it.

Right now, there's a concise summary of the results. But it adds all info needed for people to know about key issues of this election. Another thing is that you consider concise as just disregard all info as possible to keep this small, something to which we obviously wouldn't agree. Seeing that the lead section has been edited and re-edited by many users and they have not complained on it, would seem like the only one having an issue with it is you. Impru20 (talk) 23:58, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

The lead is a nice essay or political analysis. Don't think it is necessarily too long, nor wrong, but includes rather banal ballast like the timespan between the elections – having the election a month later may indicate something, and it is sourced as well, so may be mentioned somewhere in the article, but is certainly not important enough to bore the readers to death before they get to the actual results. The lead also includes quite some unsourced and contestable assessments like "surprisingly strong performance", "seeking a successful move", "far below expectations" etc. Also, while the wording of MaxBrowne's addition may not be optimal, summarizing the actual result in the opening paragraph of a relatively long lead, seems necessary. I'm giving it a new try to see how long it will stay there before being reverted. --PanchoS (talk) 00:58, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

The timespan between elections was a rather relevant issue, as it was commented for the media since it was the first time ever that an election was delayed until the last legal date (usually they are held one month earlier that deadline at most). But I think it can work fine by moving it to the "Electoral calendar" section as you did.

The other you point is a comparison with what opinion polls said (it is not sourced in the lead, but it is in the "Outcome" section below). However, since for several months polls predicted a rather bad Podemos' performance and a strong C's result (some polls placed it with as much as 23%) it seems rather reasonable to point that out in the lead section since that was one of the biggest election surprises (and was commented through the entire election night and thereafter).

Right now the result is summarized in the second paragraph of the lead, and you also have an infobox which also works as an election result summary. Not sure that the election result needs to be summarized even more; seems unnecessary with what there is already. The lead section should serve to highlight those issues that, being significant, are not noted by the limited scope of the infobox (which only shows raw data). And given that you'd have to comment on the results of four parties and their notability (because those results are notable because of their comparison with past records, mainly) the second paragraph (which has already been shortened by a great deal by both you and myself) seems actually fine for that purpose right now. Impru20 (talk) 15:26, 6 January 2016 (UTC)