Talk:1902 French legislative election

This page seriously needs to get its record straight

Earlier today I submitted an edit to this page to clean up the infobox and present more information. At first I just moved info from the results box to the infobox, and called it a day. Looking at the recent history of this page, there’s some kind of edit war going on over the election results. Popping over to the [version of this page on French Wikipedia] makes it pretty clear that we need to sort out the results of this election for English wikipedia. It’s totally different to the English version! I gave it a quick skim and on the surface it seems more similar to the version that was reverted, but I may be wrong. Can someone with a good English source for this election, (or even better, someone who can speak French,) please help us put in the accurate results? Would also appreciate it if we took this stuff to the talk page instead of just reverting everyones edits. Codename Jenny V (talk) 04:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

The version on the French Wikipedia page fits closely with the description of the election results in the article and should definitely be moved to this article. The results in the infobox and results table aren't very descriptive or helpful at all. Must we keep reverting these edits between representing only these informal alliances and the parties? Surely it would be more helpful to readers if both the alliances and the parties that make up the alliances are shown in the infobox and results, should information on the parties be available.

There needs to be a general cleaning up of pretty much every single Third Republic legislative election as well. A lot of these seem to have been sourced from very general sources (almost always Nohlen and Stoever, which very broadly covers electoral history across Europe, and the defunct Kings & Presidents website). The French language version of this article references a French paper on the election, helpfully.

Pretty much ALL of these articles have been plagued by these kinds of unproductive edit wars. Such major edits need to be discussed and resolved in the Talk page rather than in the edit history. Pave Paws (talk) 04:40, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, tomorrow I’ll start moving the information from the French page to the English page, (which I recommend for all of the Third Republican elections pages) unless anyone has any objections. One of the people involved in the edit war (Number 57), is apparently an administrator of English Wikipedia which is just embarrassing for them. In the meantime I’ll just subscribe to this talk page and check back in tomorrow afternoon. Codename Jenny V (talk) 04:49, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

weird that french wiki claims the radicals won while english claims the moderates did so

Geoelections claims even other resuls

France-Politique is mostly identical with Nohlen but has some differences ("Republicans"=ALP, Others=Nationalists), the seats they give don't match Braganza (talk) 07:48, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

France-Politique seems to have some discrepancies across its results compared to contemporary reports on the elections as well as the other sources cited across these articles (see the 1898 election talk page). Pave Paws (talk) 08:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

What are the "republicans" though Braganza (talk) 11:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

"Republicans" refers to Progressive Republicans, Moderate/Opportunist Republicans, and Left-wing Republicans. Pave Paws (talk) 07:32, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Codename Jenny V: Not sure what is embarrassing here, but there was a major issue with a lot of French legislative election articles, in that the results being given in the articles did not match the source. I attempted to try and clean these up last year so that the results/infoboxes actually matched information in the sources. I've got no issues with the results being improved, as long as the figures being added actually match the sources. The French article may be more detailed, but its results do not match the source cited, so copying that across won't work. Cheers, Number 57 08:34, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Number 57 Roi et Presidents gives totally different numbers for the election results. The numbers largely match up with the paper cited in the fr.wiki article, but we have a discrepancy between the sources on the total number of seats again. ReP totals up to 589, the paper totals, confusingly, either 590 or 591, and Nohlen and Stover total 575.

For the sake of consistency with other articles, should ReP be used here instead? Pave Paws (talk) 13:31, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

I suspect Nohlen & Stöver's figures are Metropole only. It's really hard to choose which one to use, as ReP doesn't have the vote figure for Progressive Republicans so the table would have gaps in it if we used that, and the other source (from fr.wiki) seems to be quite internally inconsistent as well... Number 57 13:40, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Good news; France-Politique's total of the votes for 1902 does contain the vote figure for Progressive Republicans and all of the figures match perfectly with ReP's. Although F-P combines both Left-wing Republicans and Progressive Republicans into one total, ReP does have the vote figure for Left-wing Republicans alone, so it can be subtracted. Pave Paws (talk) 14:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

OK cool, happy for the results table to be updated with those figures.

Separately, I saw you added detail to the 1906 infobox – I'm a bit confused by the Conservatives as the seats won is the figures for the Conservatives, but the dropdown list includes the Nationalists (who won 30 seats). Cheers, Number 57 16:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up; I've updated the infobox to include the Nationalists in the seat total for 1906. Pave Paws (talk) 16:35, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

where did you? Braganza (talk) 17:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

This is starting to me nuts. I did a quick calculation and France-Politique's vote figures don't even add up to the same total as ReP. I'm starting to suspect that ReP's vote figures aren't accurate either when comparing them against fr.wiki's, which make more sense for the seats won by each party. I have no idea where they could've gotten their numbers, though; they don't appear anywhere in the paper cited in that article. Pave Paws (talk) 17:46, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Now you're feeling my pain... When I first started trying to clean up these articles, it was a nightmare as pretty much every source seems to have different numbers, none of which correlate... Even before this whole Twitter furore it was frustrating to see semi-regular attempts at reverting the nonsense results back into articles... Number 57 20:39, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

@Number 57 This is about the best I can do. I used the new source helpefully provided by Aréat to get reasonably accurate figures for the vote totals (they even line up somewhat with Nohlen and Stöver's percentages) and used Rois et Presidents for the seat totals, since they seem to correlate the most with some other sources. Unfortunately, this new source for the vote figures, as far as I know, also only covers Metropolitan France, which is beyond frustrating.

The paper by Lucien Mitais cited in fr.wiki splits the seat totals into Metropolitan seats and Colonial seats, so this could potentially be helpful. For now, I think this is acceptable. There is no single correct interpretation or source for the vote figures for any of the early Third Republic legislative elections because every person who did the counting had a different interpretation of what bloc each elected candidate belonged to. The only recourse is to just use the source that is most consistent with other sources and which is most verifiably accurate. In this case, ReP seems most accurate for the seat figures and Cage and Piketty seems most accurate for the vote figures. Pave Paws (talk) 06:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

@Pave Paws: Having had some time to look at the new results table, I don't think it works. The parties listed in Cagé and Piketty's database don't line up with those in ReP, so I think in the current form, the results table is WP:SYNTH. I think we either need to (a) go with a single source that has both votes and seats like Nohlen, (b) use two sources that have the same party breakdown (France-Politique and Nohlen, potentially using FP for the votes (as it has an accurate breakdown rather than rounded numbers) and Nohlen for seats), or (c) have separate results tables for the seats or votes (like 1927 Bulgarian parliamentary election, where no-one can get the sources to line up). Below is what option B could look like. This might be the best option for now. Cheers, Number 57 21:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with (b) for now, though it would be useful to have some clarification here on what Nohlen & Stover refer to by "Moderate Republicans" vs. "Republicans". FP refers to "Progressive Republicans" aligned with Meline and "Left Republicans" who are against Meline (which I suspect refers to the ARD). I'm also curious to know how you got the vote figures for the Moderates, as that's not mentioned in FP. Thanks! Pave Paws (talk) 21:23, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@Pave Paws: It's all a bit confused (again!). The Nohlen book doesn't explain the definition. However, there were indeed Moderate Republicans, but that group seems to have been dissolved in 1901 and succeeded by the ARD (who I agree appear to be the Left Republicans referred to in FP). Even more confusingly, there was also a Progressive Republicans group, but the article claims the group was dissolved in 1901 and 1903... Perhaps the below would work? Re the vote figure for the Moderates, Nohlen lists the Moderate Republicans as a single party (with 2,501,000 votes but FP splits them into two type of Republicans with a rounded total of 2,501,429). Cheers, Number 57 21:43, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

I think for now it's best to just consider them just "Republicans" in the results table per France-Politique and Rois-et-Presidents and perhaps add an Efn to clarify that this group includes both pro-Méline (Progressive) and anti-Méline (Left) Republicans.

As for the confusion, yes, it is frustrating! I think the most succinct summary is that "Moderate Republicans" refers to the entire Republican bloc, while "Progressive Republicans" were merely a split-off/faction of Moderate Republicans, and they seem to have first contested the 1898 election. The remaining Moderates then split into a left-wing which became the ARD and a right-wing which supported Méline. Pave Paws (talk) 22:04, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Can you check what I've implemented on the article? I might have confused myself with the infobox (I combined Radicals and Independent Radicals under Combes). Cheers, Number 57 22:45, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

You did, but I think this might not be the best approach honestly. How about something like this? This uses ReP which have essentially the same party breakdowns (although F-P breaks them down further). Pave Paws (talk) 02:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks ok to me, although I would change the order so that it is ordered by votes rather than seats. Have added it to the article. Cheers, Number 57 12:53, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Party		Votes	%	Seats
	Left and Progressive Republicans	2,501,429	29.73	175
	Independent Radicals	1,413,931	16.81	117
	Nationalists	1,194,900	14.20	145
	Reactionaries	1,188,180	14.12
	Radical Socialists	853,140	10.14	75
	Socialists	531,087	6.31	45
	Popular Liberal Action	385,615	4.58	18
	Socialist Revolutionary Party	344,445	4.09	0
Total		8,412,727	100.00	575
Valid votes		8,412,727	95.65
Invalid/blank votes		383,000	4.35
Total votes		8,795,727	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		11,109,851	79.17
Source: France-Politique, Nohlen & Stöver

Party		Votes	%	Seats
	Independent Radicals	1,413,931	16.81	129
	Progressive Republicans	2,501,429	29.73	127
	Left Republicans			62
	Radical-Socialists	853,140	10.14	104
	Nationalists	1,194,900	14.20	89
	Reactionaries	1,188,180	14.12
	Socialists	531,087	6.31	43
	Revolutionary Socialists	344,445	4.09
	Popular Liberal Action	385,615	4.58	35
Total		8,412,727	100.00	589
Valid votes		8,412,727	95.65
Invalid/blank votes		383,000	4.35
Total votes		8,795,727	100.00
Registered voters/turnout		11,109,851	79.17
Source: France-Politique, Rois et Presidents

References