Talk:2016 United Kingdom local elections

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Politics of the United Kingdom Mid‑importance

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London Assembly[edit]

I see that the London mayoral election is included in this article - should the London assembly election be included too? Sumorsǣte (talk) 08:53, 21 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Map[edit]

May's local elections seem to be taking place in many places, but not everywhere. Would anyone have the skills, time and inclination to set up a map? It might initially show where elections are taking place, and later the results. --Wavehunter (talk) 19:14, 27 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've put together a map (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_English_councils_that_are_electing_Councillors_at_the_2016_local_election.png). Do people think it's suitable for use? I can easily update it with the results when they come in. SteveIkura (talk) 17:47, 30 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me! --Wavehunter (talk) 20:22, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ballot fraud?[edit]

Trish pt7 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for those links. Your 4th, 7th and 8th links don't point to any specific stories...? The 6th one is a violation of election law, but it's not ballot fraud and appears rather minor. #5 and #1 are about the general election and I absolutely agree it should be covered under that article, but it's not relevant here. Your input at Talk:United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015#Non-infobox_topic:_Battlebus_spending on that would be most welcome. The 3rd story is about actions taken to avoid any fraud, and again seems to me too trivial to bother covering here. #2 is very interesting, but not about elections. Bondegezou (talk) 11:16, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Can we add national projected vote shares for 2015 and 2016 to infoboxes[edit]

https://electionsetc.com/2016/05/04/calculating-the-local-elections-projected-national-share-pns-in-2015-and-2016/ Guyb123321 (talk) 15:53, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If included in the article, I think the projected national share needs some explanation. National share of England? Or England and Wales? Or Great Britain? Or the United Kingdom? How is it calculated? Where is the reference? --Wavehunter (talk) 10:46, 7 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox[edit]

I know this is a bit of a tired argument on every UK election page, but can we discuss which parties to include in the infobox? UKIP only won 58 seats, which is quite a way below the other 3 parties. The Greens were removed earlier for not being significant enough, and they won 45 seats, which isn't that different. Neither party won overall control of a council, so I think we should either remove UKIP from the infobox, or add the Greens back in. Including one but not the other doesn't seem sensible given the results. Thoughts? SteveIkura (talk) 20:03, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Three or five parties, but not four. --Wavehunter (talk) 20:19, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see why we shouldn't add in the Greens or remove UKIP, but either way you should do the same for the previous few elections. Dionysodorus (talk) 20:22, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Projected national vote share has UKIP doing much better than the Greens. On those figures, a four-party infobox makes sense. Bondegezou (talk) 21:46, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

True. But this article is not about projected national vote share. It's about specific elections in which UKIP fared only slightly better than the Greens and the Residents' Association. --Wavehunter (talk) 20:51, 9 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please comment on a RfC at Talk:Jeremy Corbyn#RfC on infobox image[edit]

Please share your input in an RfC relating to what image should be used in the infobox at the Wikipedia page for the Leader of the British Labour Party (and in election infoboxes, such as the one at this page) AusLondonder (talk) 09:23, 19 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Vote Share[edit]

The information contained under "popular vote" in the box to the right is misleading at best. The wording "popular vote" implies actual number of votes cast, but the numbers present there were a projection to the national level of the actual results. I don't see how a projection can be more important than the actual number of votes cast. I changed the wording from Popular Vote to Votes Cast (Vote Share) with the actual number of votes cast included next to its percentage. Someone changed it back and added a footnote explaining it's a projection and added as reason that all local election pages use projection. Still, I don't see why the page should deprive readers of the very relevant and very neutral information of the number of votes cast. Also, I don't see how calling a projection "popular vote" is not misleading. Denver Wagner (talk) 10:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Because each set of local elections differs, the actual numbers of votes cast is not directly comparable from election to election. Thus, projected national vote share is used instead. This is a long-established and standard metric in psephology and we use it across multiple Wikipedia articles.

But, you're right, this all can be confusing, so I'm all for adding an explanatory footnote or something to aid understanding. The raw actual number of votes cast does also have value, so I'd suggest perhaps adding that to a table at the top of the article, although I think we should stick to the projected vote share in the infobox because of its comparability. Bondegezou (talk) 12:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I think the raw number of votes in a table is a good idea. Would you mind doing that? I'm really not good with complex edits. Denver Wagner (talk) 12:46, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm the person who changed it back. Bondegezou is right, it is inconsistent to use the raw vote as that is not how previous articles have presented vote share and for consistency and ease of comparison it is best to continue using the BBC projected vote share. I am happy to add the raw vote table at the top of the article :) 86.26.54.134 (talk) 16:01, 23 August 2016 (UTC) a friendly data geek[reply]

Thanks, 86.26.54.134. No-one likes tackling Wikipedia's table syntax! Bondegezou (talk) 16:20, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All done. - a friendly data geek — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.26.54.134 (talk) 16:53, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is wrong. The page is basically peddling a falsehood that everyone believes but isn't actually true. People believe the results of the English local election was 31% labour, 30% conservative, that's just wrong and untrue. The excuse of "that's what we've always done" is broken by the fact the situation in Scotland has drastically changed. The fix for this is probably to project for England, not GB. The projection is obviously now ridiculous as obviously it implies that the SNP wouldn't have a single MP. The 31%/30% figures aren't the 'popular vote', they're the BBC / Plymouth university projection for Great Britain (I'm not sure it includes NI by the way). The BBC reported that labour came third in Scotland, and then when reporting the English results adjusted them downwards and made out that labour had virtually lost in England too, which clearly isn't the case as they did nearly as well as 2012 which was considered a good result. I accept the BBC is an authoritative source, but no matter how authoritative and reputable they are, it doesn't change the cold hard fact of the number of votes cast, nor does group-think. Put the actual results in the Infobox as well as any projections, end this madness. 77.103.105.67 (talk) 12:03, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There were no local elections in Scotland this year, so your comments about Scotland don't make any sense...? Bondegezou (talk) 13:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's the whole point. If there weren't elections in Scotland in 2016, how can the results be extrapolated into a national vote share? By the way, I've noticed that the raw numbers of vote cast, which we had agreed should be included, has now been removed. Again, I don't see why we should deprive readers of such straight-foward, neutral, and accurate information. Wikipedia is not the BBC. Denver Wagner (talk) 22:17, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]