Template talk:Canadian election result/Archive 1

Archive 1

Template broken or unsuitable in BC riding articles

Examples of either broken use or unsuitability of this template may be found in articles such as Vancouver-False Creek or Vancouver-Mount_Pleasant, if you look at the BC Liberal rows. --Ds13 (talk) 19:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

The case of the missing incumbency symbol?

I've noticed several instances of the "(x)" incumbency symbol disappearing in the course of upgrades to the new Canadian election result template. Could someone indicate why this is so? I'm not certain if this reflects a new policy or standard, or if it was simply the result of an oversight. CJCurrie (talk) 01:41, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

How does one know what an x means? 117Avenue (talk) 05:26, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

We could add an "(x) denotes incumbency" notice without difficulty. I'm just wondering if there was a conscious reached to stop using the symbol. CJCurrie (talk) 01:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

If we keep it, we would need a note either on each template or in each article where the template is used, because the X is meaningless on its own. I'm not opposed to marking someone as the incumbent, but I wonder if there is a prettier way to do so than in-line text. If nothing else, we should at least standardize the in-line text by deciding whether it's an uppercase or lowercase letter and whether it goes before or after the name. We could add a incumbent=yes parameter that would standardize the mark. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:08, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

I would support standardization. As to specifics, I've always used a lower-case "x" before the name, and I believe that's the most commonly used practice. CJCurrie (talk) 03:04, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Italics is also used. 117Avenue (talk) 04:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Boldface is sometimes used as well, though it's my understanding that an "(x)" before the incumbent's name is the most commonly used method. Anyway, I think it should be possible to (i) have a standardized method, and (ii) indicate to readers what is being designated. CJCurrie (talk) 21:29, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Bold and italic are already sometimes used to indicate the winner. I don't like using font to convey information, which is why I added a check-mark to indicate the winners in multi-member ridings. Are there any guides outside of Wikipedia that we could copy for style? Elections Canada and the CBC elections sites don't seem to indicate the pre-election incumbent. I guess a (x) would be okay, although I'd probably prefer an in-line icon if we can find an appropriate one. We could standardize the note by adding an incumbent=yes parameter to the /notes template. Alternatively, we could avoid the need for a note by adding the actual word "incumbent" after the candidate's name in small font or superscript. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:39, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

To be honest, I think (x) is somewhat of an archaic standard these days. Yes, it's certainly what you used to see in the old days, when you had to turn to a page in the next day's newspaper to see the complete final election results. But in this day and age, when the ballot counts are published on the web and tomorrow's print edition doesn't bother, you don't see (x)'s anymore because the web offers a much greater range of typographical and stylistic options than traditional print did. Even the TV networks don't typically use them anymore either, because even their election night graphics look much more webstyle — using a wide variety of different ways to denote the incumbent which depend much more on their own graphics style than on any particular loyalty to 20th century conventions. I agree with CJCurrie that it should indeed be possible to (i) have a standardized method, and (ii) indicate to readers what is being designated — but given that there's a much greater diversity of different methods in different sources now, an (x) isn't necessarily the only option. Given the sheer flexibility of Wikipedia coding, there's little question that we can figure out some solution that works. Bearcat (talk) 07:09, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

Could we modify the /gain and /hold templates to indicate the incumbent candidate? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:41, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

That could be one way of doing it, yeah. I'm not particularly well-versed in template coding, so I really don't have the knowledge needed to actually do very much besides copying and pasting stuff from templates that other people have already designed — but somebody (not necessarily you if you don't want to, but someone) who has more knowledge and ability with this stuff than I do could easily sandbox a copy of the template to test out some ideas and see what works and what doesn't.

For what it's worth, though, the comparable US and British templates generally seem unconcerned with denoting the incumbent member at all, and restrict themselves to using the gain and hold templates to denote whether the party held or flipped the seat without regard to whether the incumbent party's candidate was an established seatholder or a new candidate — of course, that doesn't mean that we have to do it the same way as they do, but it does suggest that maybe there's a case to be made that it isn't as necessary to the general user as political datageeks like us might think it is. Bearcat (talk) 17:55, 23 March 2013 (UTC)

When navlinks appear

When 117Avenue changed the edit link to a navbar link (which was a good move), he made it so the links to the template page only appear if the template exists. This makes it less convenient to move tables to the template space; rather than just opening the link in a new window, we have to type in the url manually (without typos). The old system showed links whenever the riding parameter was present. This made sense because if the table was only on the riding article it doesn't need the riding parameter, but if it was on any other page, then it needs to be moved to template space and have the riding parameter. Does anyone mind if I change the #ifexist condition to an #if:{{{riding|{{{3|}}}}}} condition? —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 23:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

I think it is very misleading to have an edit link in a table, that doesn't edit that table. I have applied your changes to the sandbox, meaning all you have to do is add /sandbox to the template name (example), click show preview, and you will get a link to the proper template name[1]. 117Avenue (talk) 22:01, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Changing ±pp to ∆%

Recommend changing the table headings on the column representing ‘change in percent from previous election’.  Personally, I find the current ±pp to be mildly distracting, obligating the reader to follow the link to verify that, indeed, the column represents change in percentage, which presumably most would assume instinctively.  ∆% has long been the business standard for reporting change in percentages; the claim that "pp" is the acronym for percentage point, indicating change in percent, comes solely from an unreferenced WP article; and we all know that even WP doesn't deem WP a reliable source (WP:CIRCULAR). Barring objections, I'll make the change shortly.  — Who R you? Talk 03:44, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

So is ∆% the business standard for changes of percentages or percentage points? If it usually means percentage points, then I guess I'm in favour of the change. Though I'm a bit worried about new editors adding errors; before it was changed to ±pp, editors were inconsistent, with some reporting a change from 10% to 12% as a 2% change and others reporting it as a 20% change. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 14:01, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

The only way I've ever seen ∆% reported is as the equivalent of percentage points (i.e. 2% in your example).  Unfortunately a quick googel/duckduckgo search didn't find any sources, or even references to ∆% (or "pp" for that matter); otherwise I'd have used them as hands-down justification to make the change.  I agree with your point regarding potential user/editor confusion; but I'm hoping the link being to percentage point would help deal with that.  — Who R you? Talk 19:41, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Calculation of Swing

The …/hold & …/gain templates provide a Swing figure.  The concept of swing is explained in Swing (politics) and Swing (United Kingdom); however in both of these cases it focuses primarily on a two-party system.  The (UK) article describes both the Butler and Steed methods of calculation; but both methods still focus on the two-party swing between the top two parties.  Given that Canadian politics has long been a 3 – 4-party system (particularly provincially/territorially), I question the benefit of providing any swing/hold/gain figures at all; and, if they are provided, I wonder if we should be using the Butler or Steed methods for Canadian politics?  Regardless of which (if any) method we use, we should definitely be consistent.  I personally wish there were a third choice of method that properly took into account all the various parties involved, since the dynamic of Liberal / Conservative / NDP / Green / Reform / Alliance / Libertarian / other is, as I'm sure we all agree, a lot more than just what happened between the top two in the current & preceding election.  Does anyone know of a Canadian RS that publishes Swing figures that we can use as an indication of what method(s) are most appropriate for us to follow?  Should we:
  a) stop providing and delete (where found) existing Swing numbers,
  b) use the Butler method,
  c) use the Steed method, or
  d) some other alternative?
— Who R you? Talk 17:00, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Most ridings in Canada are really two-party races (this is subjective, I know - but in most cases ridings flip between the same two parties), (as they are in the UK as well), even though we have a 3-4 party system. Since our electoral system is based on and is very similar to the UK's, we should be using what is used on their election articles. -- Earl Andrew - talk 17:16, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. There are very few ridings in Canada that can be characterized as volatile three- or four-way races, and the Ontario general election, 1990 was really the exception that proves the rule. We should continue to use swing calculations as they provide useful information of how the top two parties in each of the constituencies are really performing—especially where it suggests that part of the swing is really bleeding off to a third party—and the Butler swing is easier to calculate and understand (I don't think Canada is ready for the Steed calculation!).Raellerby (talk) 17:33, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea of using swings, but there are more than a few 3- and 4-way races, and we will need a consistent way to calculate swing for them. For example, in the 2011 election in Kenora—Rainy River, both the NDP and Liberals took a hit, and the PCs shot up to 2nd place. It is an NDP hold, but over whom? The Liberals, who were the 2nd party, or the PCs who are now 2nd place? Or what about Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound in 2007, when the Greens made huge gains to place 2nd? Is it a PC hold over the Liberals, or over the Greens? FUNgus guy (talk) 18:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

As a compromise, we could include two different numbers if the case warrants it. -- Earl Andrew - talk 20:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

I found this paper from the UK Parliament website, which discusses how the swing calculation works. In situations such as Kenora—Rainy River and Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, the two parties used are those that come in on top in the later election. We should adopt that convention here.Raellerby (talk) 21:14, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

That's what I've been doing, whenever I add swings to riding articles. -- Earl Andrew - talk 03:35, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

@Raellerby: Thanks for the link.  I refer to the bottom of Pg. 3 of that pdf which states "…  Swing has little to offer in this case.    It generally makes more sense in a multi-party system to look at the changes in each party’s overall share of the vote between two elections. …" which just brings me back to the question of whether or not there is any value to readers in our providing Swing figures.  Should we only be providing swing figures in certain situations (i.e. where the ∆% of other parties is minimal [say < 10% total absolute change in those outside of the top two]) or should we always include it, or is it not a particularly useful statistic given the increasing number of players in Canadian contests?  As FUNgus guy point's out, the Kenora—Rainy River is a good example of Swing being somewhat misleading; the -18½% for the NDP isn't really a good indicator of what took place.
Consider the hypotheticals: Winner has a ∆% of zero (45% both years); meanwhile Party2 & Party3 have a drastic switch of +30% for (the new) Party2 (bringing them from 14% to 44% = ∆%+30) from (the now) Party3 (going from 41% to 11% = ∆%-30%) → the Swing ends up being ((0 − +30%) ÷ 2 ) = Winner -15%. Alternatively, Winner remains unchanged (45% with ∆%±0), Party2 goes from 44.9% to 20% (∆%-24.9%), Party3 goes from 2% to 19% (∆%+17%), Party4 goes from 8.1% to 16% (∆%+7.9%), → ((0 − -24.9%) ÷ 2 ) = Winner +12.45% — I just find it uninformative to say that the winner can remain at 45% of the vote in either case but their Swing could range from +12.45% to -15% in these hypotheticals.
It does at least seem to be consensus (based on the input of 3 editors) that we're using the conventional/Butler method ((∆%₁− ∆%₂) ÷ 2 ); so we've already solved one question it appears!   Thx — Who R you? Talk 05:54, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Use of “Election results” tables in politician articles

The question has arisen of whether the personal articles about politicians should include the tables of election results and, if included, should they be initially collapsed (requiring the reader to click the [show] link to display each table) by default.  The standard seems to be that the “Electoral record” section goes towards the end of the article (with only the occasional “Later life”, “Honours and awards”, or “After politics” section following) immediately before the “References” section.  The argument has been made that the tables, particularly due to their size, length, appearance, and often the sheer number of them in an article, cause an imbalance in the visual aesthetic and adversely affects the readability of the article.  Conversely, some find the tables to be a good quick reference of the electoral record.
The options seem to be to collapse all the tables by default (in both the politican and electoral district articles), to leave all the tables expanded in both types of articles, to autocollapse them (so the first & second tables in each article would be expanded but subsequent tables would be collapsed by default), to completely remove electoral results from the individual politician's articles and just include them in the electoral district/specific election articles, or to have them collapsed by default in the politician's articles and expanded by default in other articles (that option would require editing every election results template and every article where the table is to be collapsed by default).  Samples of the issue can be found at Garry Guzzo and Bernard Grandmaître and at Ottawa West—Nepean (provincial electoral district) and Ottawa East (provincial electoral district) (among many others).  Is there any consensus on how to handle these?  — Who R you? Talk 17:47, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

It is a good quick reference to have election tables on politicians' pages (in my opinion), and if they're collapsed by default, that may solve the clutter problem. I feel that they should not be collapsed for riding pages, as the election results form the bulk of these articles, and are the main reason those pages exist. FUNgus guy (talk) 19:02, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Super cyclist. Definitely include all relevant tables. Autocollapse them if you feel it's necessary to save space (all except the latest two or three). Esn (talk) 01:07, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

broken links

I've noticed that something has happened to this template. The header seems to have an errant space before the comma, breaking the links to the election pages. FUNgus guy (talk) 23:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Width restrictions

Maybe I'm just being overly-perfectionist, but some of the election table lines are taking up two lines because of the width restrictions. For example, the Co-operative Commonwealth party, the Government (Liberal-Unionist) party and a few exceptionally-long candidate names (such as Ashton Aubrey Burnet Matthew Clark or Raven-Chanelle Arsenault-Augustine) are taking up two lines instead of one. Also, with the CANelec/gain template, the combined party/candidate rows are not wide enough to fit "Co-operative Commonwealth gain from Progressive Conservative" on one line. Perhaps this template could be widened just a tad to accommodate these examples? FUNgus guy (talk) 03:19, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

• @Fungus Guy: I tried to make the party column wide enough to fit the PCs, but I think that made the column too long for elections with no long party names. Instead, I'll abbreviate the party name. —Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Labour Progressive

As per the (brief) discussion here, the "Labor–Progressive" party's page has been renamed "Labour Progressive Party". Can we change this template to match? FUNgus guy (talk) 03:01, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Done. Ajraddatz (talk) 03:13, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

/pickup subtemplate?

Hi all, I've been looking for a CANelec/pickup-type template, for reporting the results of new districts. Does anyone know of something that works for that, and possibly add it if they have the technical skills that I lack? Thanks, Ajraddatz (talk) 03:10, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

Done myself, at Template:Canadian election result/pickup. If people can think of a better work or format, please do change it. Ajraddatz (talk) 03:17, 24 March 2016 (UTC)

New naming convention for elections

Could someone please adapt this template to the new naming convention for election articles?

Canada federal election, 2015 -> 2015 Canada federal election

Thanks.

HandsomeFella (talk) 21:17, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Pre-PC Conservatives

I note, with some annoyance, that as this template has replaced manual election results in a lot of early Canadian political articles (Charles Stewart (premier) is the one where it came to my attention), a bunch of candidates have been styled "Progressive Conservative" despite running at a time when that party did not exist. I'm hopeless with template code, so I have no idea how to fix it, but the status quo is quite unacceptable. Unless it can be fixed, we'll need to revert to non-templated election results. Steve Smith (talk) 12:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Looks like templates already exist for those elections with the correct party name, so they should be replaced with those templates. But, the easy way to fix this issue going forward is simply changing "PC" to "Conservative" whenever you see it. -- Earl Andrew - talk 15:06, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Won't that create links to the modern Conservative Party of Canada, though? Steve Smith (talk) 04:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

In the template, you will see "AB|" preceding PC. This ensures that the link will go to the former Alberta Conservative Party, not the current federal party.-- Earl Andrew - talk 05:46, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 10 November 2020

Hi... for {{Canadian election result/top}}, could we fix "±%" by changing to "± (pp)" as per the edit here? This column is not representing a percentage change but a change in percentage points, which is something else entirely. E.g. a change from 5% to 6% is an increase of 1 pp, but a % increase of 20%. —Joeyconnick (talk) 02:12, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I made a recent requested change to {{Election box begin}} to address a similar concern. It would be nice to have these templates consistent. Can you please take a look at what I did to that template to see if it would make sense to do the same thing here? I am a little concerned that nobody will know what "pp" means; I have never seen that abbreviation in my life. – Jonesey95 (talk) 02:50, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree that pp is an obscure abbrev. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 04:01, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if some find it obscure (that's what links are for)... "% change" is not the same as percentage point change. It is literally factually wrong. Now if for some reason "pp" being linked to Percentage point is somehow not explanation enough, then we could do pp for extra clarity or just spell it out but "±%" is not what's being reported. —Joeyconnick (talk) 06:06, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

I understand your concern. I think that introducing an abbreviation that is familiar to nobody would not be an improvement, however. For now, I have changed the heading to be consistent with Template:Election box begin. If you can come up with a better, concise, understandable way to abbreviate this concept, perhaps by finding out how other media represent it, let us know. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:28, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 21 March 2022

أحمد محمد بسيوني (talk) 18:09, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Primefac (talk) 19:27, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 30 March 2022

i want to make edit for this page--أحمد محمد بسيوني (talk) 11:14, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest to edit this template! {{Canadian election result/source}} is permanently protected so an editor must be an administrator or a template editor to edit it. Please explain what you would like to edit. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 16:25, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. – Jonesey95 (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2022 (UTC)