Talk:2005 Polish parliamentary election

Completely replacing articles is good?
Even when I agree that the previous article was not easy to understand and think the new is way better, I think that the solution is not to completely replace it, but to improve it (as I tried to do). Doing the opposite may be interpreted by some (not by me, however) as bad manners, something like "what you wrote is a big piece of scum and mine is da best", especially if the version you replaced is not very old. This is not the case, however, because the article was pretty old for a current event and because the last editor (save me) was an anonymous user, but I advise you (by the way, I'm talking to Adam Carr) not to make such a sweeping change in relatively "young" articles or some people could (I know one or two which would) go postal. Habbit 14:48, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

This is an English-language encyclopaedia, and requires a certain minimum standard of English to contribute to it. The previous version of this article was in very bad English, and also lacked most of the information which English-speaking readers (ie, not Poles) would expect to find at this article. So I wrote an article which gave that information, in English. This is an open-access encyclopaedia and everyone gets their work rewritten or replaced all the time. They should not take it personally. Anyway I am used to Polish editors going postal at me - Poland seems to be a very postal country. Adam 15:27, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

D'Hondt/Sainte-Laguë
It's D'Hondt now, it was changed, here's the reference (in Polish) http://www.sejm.gov.pl/prawo/nowaord/11_20.htm ( Art. 166. 1. 1) )
 * 1) liczbę głosów ważnych oddanych na każdą z tych list w okręgu wyborczym dzieli się kolejno przez: 1; 2; 3; 4 i dalsze kolejne liczby aż do chwili, gdy z otrzymanych w ten sposób ilorazów da się uszeregować tyle kolejno największych liczb, ile wynosi liczba mandatów do rozdzielenia między te listy,

ie.: divided by: 1; 2; 3; 4; ...

Liberal
there's a problem with this word it's taken to mean something else in the US political system then it really does, I have no idea how to deal with it in the article.

Final opinion polls
The results differed in diffrent polls published on friday, which was the last day before an embargo came into power.

the last paragraph
one problem with the last paragraph, it's based on a single poll

here are some results from polls conducted by diffrent groups, copied from the Polish article:

comitees with less then 2% votes are irrelevent, the main observations are:
 * PO and PiS is going to win the elections, the parties have long declared an intention to form a coalition needed to secure a majority required to change the constitution. The party which gains more votes will most likely have the final say, thus the elections are in fact a choice between a liberal model of the economy proposed by right-wing PO or a social model proposed by the centrist PiS
 * it's not clear whever the third place will fall to the radical leftist Samoobrona or the nationalist LPR (however Samoobrona seems to have a slight edge and it has a tendency to perform better then polls indicate as people are often ashamed to admit they vote for it)
 * the post-communists are divided between three parties SLD, SDPL and demokraci.pl, it's unclear whever they'll make although SLD might cross the threshold
 * PSL might or might not make it.

two more things that should be mentioned in the article, it should be noted the elections are held earlier then scheduled and someone should write a section about the campaing.

Statistic range
I don't think an article about an election is a good place to put a range with [], [) or whatever you see fit. Why? Because this is not an article on mathematics. To a foreigner, [10,12]% and other would only look confusing. I would express a range with something like 10-12%. Note that, however, I leave that decision to you. Oh, and the next time you want to undo a change like that, please go to an earlier revision, get the correct source and _patch it onto the newest revision_. There were more changes to the article than just the ranges. Of course you are free to revert those changes too, but then state it in the change log, because it appeared to me that your only intention was to revert the range-decimal conversion, not the whole article. Habbit 19:05, 25 September 2005 (UTC)


 * feel free to convert it if the standard format is indeed confusing to people from english speaking countries.


 * I meant "foreigner" to mathematics. By the way, I'm not from the US, UK or any other anglophone country: my native language is Spanish. Habbit 20:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Colors
Any one knows which are the colors usually associated to these parties? I would like to make a graphic reflecting the exit polls. Habbit 19:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * PO - orange, PiS - blue, SLD - red and now it gets complicated both PSL and Samoobrona use green, and LPR doesn't have one color associated with it (I think they're usally assigned gray).


 * Thank you very much. The graph is now online. Habbit 20:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Senate
Does anyone have the preliminary results for the Senate? I know those can't be projected from the vote total because they are constituency and majority-based instead of nationwide proportial representation. Habbit 20:24, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
 * 45 PiS, 41 PO, 4 LPR, 2 Samoobrona, 8 others according to TVN,
 * 40 PiS, 36 PO, 6 SLD, 5 PSL, 4 LPR, 9 others according to TVP http://wybory.tvn24.pl/1250335,wieczor-wyborczy1.html

Results
Does this table show who has been elected to the Sejm? Does it show that the Prime Minister has lost his seat? Adam 02:34, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

It would appear to, but I think that was a foregone conclusion considering he is running (AFAIK) for the Democratic Party which will not make it into Sejm. Ak13 03:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

OK, now I am looking here, which seems to suggest that only 8 million people were eligible to vote, and that only 3 million did vote. This can't be correct. Can someone explain this? Adam 05:36, 26 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Voters apathy, Polish people are just generally pretty sick and tired of politics. Oh for compulsory voting Australia-style. Roo72 06:24, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but there are 30 million voters and a 40% turnout, so there should be 12 million votes to count, not 3 million. Adam 06:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Sorry, you are right, I missed it. That was not the total number of voters but the number of voters from those polling stations that were already counted - see here] for complete statistical data. Cheers, Roo72 07:11, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see now it is a running total. Thanks. Adam 07:42, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Here are some figures which can be turned into a nice table

NATIONAL SUMMARY OF VOTES AND SEATS (with 90% counted) ========================================================================================== Votes and seats are compared with those in the September 2001 elections -- Registered voters:                           30,338,316 Votes counted:                               10,919,626   36.0 Invalid votes:                                  405,170   03.7 Valid votes:                                 10,514,456   96.3 -- Party                                        Votes        %      Change     Seats  Change -- League of Polish Families (LPR)                 829,080   07.9    00.0         33     -05 German Minority (MN)                             34,469   00.3   -00.1          2 Law and Justice (PiS)                         2,821,579   26.8   +17.3        152    +108 Citizens' Platform (PO)                       2,547,176   24.2   +11.5        133     +68 Polish People's Party (PSL)                     731,260   06.9   -02.1         27     -15 Democratic Left Alliance (SLD)                1,196,859   11.4   -29.6         56    -160 Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland (SRP)  1,225,699   11.7   +01.5         57     +04 Others                                        1,128,334   10.7                  - -- Total                                        10,514,456                       460 -- Adam 00:24, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Final results
I've updated the article with final results, one suggestion regarding the graph: I don't think it's a good idea to combine PSL and the German Minority together as "other".

I have incorporated an updated version of the table above into the article, and deleted the other tables which are out of date. I have changed the whole article into the past tense and done a general copy-edit.

Just as a matter of interest, I see the name of the PSL translated both as "People's Party" and "Peasants' Party" Which is more correct? Are these the same word in Polish? Adam 00:17, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Those are two diffrent words (lud and chłop), the first translation is correct, the second is probably used because PSL is an agrarian party.

Further on the PSL: It's very striking when you look at this map showing the PSL's support, you can see the pre-1939 Polish-German border quite clearly. Obviously the PSL has a support base among rural voters in the "old Poland" which goes back to before the war. Adam 00:40, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone know why Samoobrona did not contest Sosnowiec? Adam 13:48, 1 October 2005 (UTC)


 * There was a conflict between the parties central and local activists, which ended with Samoobronas failure to deliver the appropriate documents in time.