Talk:2016 Spanish general election

Explain mathematics please
PP got 150 seats. The total number of seats is 266. Half of 266 is 133. So PP has absolute minority. But the article doesnt seem to reflect that, whats wrong?91.154.68.98 (talk) 06:14, 29 June 2016 (UTC)


 * You're thinking of the Senate, which is the upper house (and not that important.) In the main chamber of parliament, the Congress, PP got 137 seats out of 350. However, for the Senate, the PP got 130 seats out of 266, just short of a majority. Valenciano (talk) 08:29, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The PP does indeed command an absolute majority in the Senate: it won 130 out of 208 seats up for election. However, adding the regionally appointed 21 seats, that number rises to 151 out of 266. Thus, an absolute majority.
 * However, since the Senate is a nearly powerless chamber which has no role in the government formation process (being the Congress the main chamber of parliament), the importance of this fact is very, very limited. Also, the PP already held an absolute majority in the Senate in the previous two legislatures (and note how useless it was in the 2015-2016 period to prevent a new election from taking place), so it's not a noticeable change from past results, either. Impru20 (talk) 17:27, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Senate
The Senate does not lose a seat. It remains one seat allocated by Regional Assembly of Castilla and Leon. There are 266 Member of Senate. Sorry for my bad english
 * The "lost seat" was not the one from Castile and Leon, but one that was to be substracted from the Valencian Community. Finally, it was announced today that the Community will maintain all of its designated seats, so the number remains at 266. Impru20 (talk) 22:26, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Date/Article name issues
It's Wednesday, April 27. The election won't be formally called until Monday, May 2, so that's five days from now. I suggest reverting to "Next Spanish general election" at least until late Saturday, once it becomes clear that no Parliament session will be convened. I remind you what happened in Catalonia...
 * The election has been already announced by President of the Congress Patxi López, with preparations for it having been underway (and documented) since several days ago. It is now also cear that no Parliament season will be convened (the deadline for doing so before 2 May expired today at 16:00 as announced yesterday by López; they can't do it now even if they miraculously wished to). Keep in mind that the Spanish political system involving government formation is more complex than the Catalan one, preventing any kind of last-hour agreement like the one between JxSí and CUP from happening. The time for that would have been yesterday at latest (and it was already very unlikely from happening). The election is a certainty now. Or so do sources reflect, which what is reflected in Wikipedia too. Impru20 (talk) 18:31, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Using 'The' before Parties' Names
I'm not a linguist, but I think that we should refer to:

"PSOE" and not "The PSOE". "Podemos" and not "The Podemos"

For PP and C's it gets more complicated!

If we write "PP" and pronounce it "Peepee", that's fine.

But if we pronounce "PP" as "People's Party" then we should write "The PP".

If we write "C's" and pronounce it as "Sees", that's fine.

But if we pronounce "C's" as "Citizens" (or even "The Citizens Party" or "Party of the Citizenry") then we should write "The C's".

Hope that helps! Ulgarg (talk) 21:46, 2 May 2016 (UTC)


 * PP and PSOE use "the" before the acronym because they are referred to as "parties"; those are acronyms which have the word "party" within. i.e. "The PSOE" being akin to "the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party", "the Socialist Party" or even "the Socialists". And "the PP" referring to "the People's Party". Surely, if without the acronym you would use "the", you would surely use "the" with the acronym too, except for given cases (I can think of when you use "with", which sometimes may not need the use of "the" before the acronym").
 * You, however, wouldn't use "the" for C's or Podemos. You don't say "the Podemos" or "the C's"/"the Citizens". You would only use "the" in those cases if you say "the Podemos party" or "the C's party", but those are not widely used actually.

Not much change
Honestly, I don't see much change between the elections of 2015 and those of 2016. While 2015 was a landslide, this time only 19 seats out of 350 changed hands: PP won 14, Ciudadanos lost 8, EAJ-PNV one, PSOE lost 6 but won one (in Madrid) and Podemos (including IU) won 4 and lost 4.Bancki (talk) 20:00, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Visual
Why did you revert to ± from, User:Impru20?

49.200.119.84 (talk) 16:29, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Consistency with other articles, as well as because may be a too ambiguous symbol so as to ascertain its meaning. ± is more visual, clearer, and much more easily related to the function it is purposed to.
 * I could also ask why was ± replaced by in the first place. Impru20 (talk) 17:22, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, a large number of articles use as it used for no change in the first place, look at this for example. 49.200.119.84 (talk) 17:33, 29 June 2016 (UTC) Why don't you say fair enough and change it back to. Retain the 0 if you want to remove ambiguity that this means a no net change.

49.200.119.84 (talk) 17:43, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
 * It's curious how you say "a large number of articles", yet you only post one example of a country using it. All previous Spanish election articles use the ± format, and have been using it from a large amount of time. You asked why "did I revert to ± from ". I answered you, and I in turn asked why ± was replaced with in the first place. Given that I have given reasons so as to why ± should be preferred, I think some reasons should be argued so as to why  should be instead, which so far have not been given. We need some arguments that don't rely on just the classical "others use it" or "US elections use it", specially if those use it in a different way than the one being suggested to use here. Impru20 (talk) 18:29, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Fine, use you ancient ±, don't bite me.

49.200.119.84 (talk) 18:38, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Senate results
I know that this section is controversial and difficult to represent here, but maybe it would be clearer to show the results by province in the Results of the Spanish general election, 2016 page. Togiad (talk) 09:04, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The results by province for the Senate should ideally be shown in their own articles, as is done for the Congress. Impru20 (talk) 10:24, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Now that the results breakdown has an atricle on its own, I think that having popular vote figures may be confusing—as it is pointed out, it does not add up to total figures, so it is inaccurate. I would leave it as before, only with seats per party. Togiad (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Sort of agree. I'll finish moving any useful data from the election article to the Senate article itself and then leave it as a simple table in here with just seats. Impru20 (talk) 12:22, 18 November 2016 (UTC)