Talk:2016 United States House of Representatives elections

NC 13th Congressional District
It needs to be noted somewhere in the competitive districts section that NC's 13th Congressional district may be considered competitive. North Carolina redrew its congressional map earlier this year and the new district has not be assigned a Cook PVI yet, but from the new map makes it appear to be one of the most competitive districts in North Carolina. For reference, it contains the cities of Salisbury, Statesville and Winston Salem; all Democratic areas which will moderate the otherwise Republican tint of the district. Additionally, there is no incumbency advantage because no current Congressmen live in the district. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.178.167.197 (talk) 04:43, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Untitled
The "seats needed" part on the front is misleading. Boehner doesn't need 30 seats -- he has the majority. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:A:2C00:43B:8D23:53E1:A275:92D7 (talk) 23:53, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
 * It was pretty clear to me that down arrow in front of the 30 meant that Republicans would lose the majority if they lost 30 or more seats. Orser67 (talk) 18:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Removing Real Clear Politics ratings?
After visiting Real Clear Politics's homepage following a revamp, it no longer has any sort links to ratings for elections, thus strongly implying that they will no longer be doing any sort of prognostication for future elections. Should RCP's section on ratings table be removed based on this?Fuelsaver (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

No, Macraesam17 (talk) 08:52, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Deadline for announcing candidacy
Should article give indication of when/whether there are deadlines for announcing candidacy? crandles (talk) 18:15, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Uncontested results map
Does this map take into account third party and independent candidates? What about write-in candidates? I don't expect any of those three categories of candidates to win a race in 2016, but I think the description of this map should clarify whether or not these kinds of candidates have been taken into account. I asked this question on the map's talk page question as well. Orser67 (talk) 19:08, 18 May 2016 (UTC) *I believe this should be removed until the general election is over in November. It adds little value now and is confusing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TenderBlur (talk • contribs) 15:08, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Map for U.S. House races, 2016
This map doesn't make sense to add right now. With all races having the opportunity to be contested with Write-In candidates, or independents, which are on different filing deadlines often, this could be false information and thus it should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TenderBlur (talk • contribs) 17:16, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Bad links and disambig pages
I want to ensure that we're not muddling the page with 'redlinks' since many of these candidates will not be relevant after the primary. However, there are many bad links on this page, it would be great to fix them together. TenderBlur —Preceding undated comment added 16:16, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Results
I hope you will all finish updating the full results soon. Sorry I'm not able to help at this time! Academic Challenger (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Dear users, where is the result table? Where is turnout data? It is the end of December already! Olek Bokhan (talk) 20:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Speaker is elected by full House, in January 2017.
I placed the term (Presumed) at the bottom of the infobox, above Paul Ryan's name. The Speaker isn't elected (or re-elected) until the full House votes, in January 2017. GoodDay (talk) 17:12, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

map issue
a disjoint cartogram should be used: in the map you use, the tens of millions of people in LA NY etc are barely visible this sort of map psychologically gives an edge to the party that holds the sparsely populated western states, which this year is the GOP — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.245.17.105 (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Maps should be shown in a way that is easily understandable for most viewers, cartograms can be hard to understand for some. Macraesam17 (talk) 08:53, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

But I understand the point raised here, but if a user wants this information, they can look further on in The California results for example Macraesam17 (talk) 08:53, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

New member elected
Is it necessary to include this note for districts with new members? None of the other pages fore previous elections include it and the fact that the section already notes that the incumbents for this districts are retiring/defeated for reelection/not renominated already indicates that winner is a new member. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 147.126.81.6 (talk) 19:11, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, suggest it is necessary to state the new member was elected.  Otherwise the only statements are the Incumbent's action and the party change/hold in the seat.  We're doing that in Senate articles and we should do it for house ones.  Furthermore, if a specific article is every developed on that race, a link can be put there.—GoldRingChip 19:20, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

MAP
What has happened to the colours of the map, why aren't they the same as the 2014, 2012, 2010 elections and before. They used to be and why have they changed? Macraesam17 (talk) 08:54, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Where do the numbers in the full results table come from?
The full results table varies significantly from the source (the current link is broken, but you can find it here: ). See page 84 of the 2016 PDF. Even the figures for the minor parties are off. What gives? If we're presenting the results in a different way than the source, this needs to be explained. The only explanation given, "does not include blank and over/under votes", does not explain the discrepancies. --J. E. C. E. (talk) 15:40, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I slapped several warning templates on the "Results summary" section.--J. E. C. E. (talk) 15:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Very long page
You posted that this page was very long. So I trimmed some of it, but still it's not much shorter. However, I now realize that a lot of the page is just references. In fact, 47% of the page is references alone. (See this demonstration on my own sandbox.) How can it be trimmed without removing vital references? —GoldRingChip 01:35, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * For a reference that's used multiple times, you can define it as for the first time around and for subsequent uses. For multiple consecutive refs, such as  , I believe you can use Template:R instead, like so:  . Otherwise, perhaps consult WP:MINREF to see which refs are truly necessary, or create/elaborate spinout pages for results in each individual state. Hope this helps! – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 01:41, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * We've actually been fairly aggressive in reusing references (at least we were a couple years ago, I haven't checked back recently). I'll check with WP:MINREF, but I'm not optimistic.  And I'm not wild about splitting up an article which is, in itself, a summary of over-400 races. —GoldRingChip 01:59, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Even removing half of the references would still leave this article being very large. As far as I'm aware, it's only the US House of Representatives elections that list the individual results in the main article for each election. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:13, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a radical reduction of each state's section is in order, like I've done with Alabama. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 04:36, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps! I restored just a little bit of that Alabama section, but not much.  What if that were done with each section? —GoldRingChip 11:38, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * That might work, especially since more detailed stuff would be in the respective main article. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 June 2019 (UTC)


 * I like this version. Onetwothreeip (talk) 12:57, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I'll try it. —GoldRingChip 16:04, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Looks good, given that the single edit removed more than three quarters of the article's size. You're welcome to try to reduce it further, but I think it's fine as it is now, and most list articles tend to be about as large. Thanks! – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 18:31, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Should the changes be implemented on the other election pages? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:301:4360:28A1:BEF9:A980:8240 (talk) 04:36, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
 * There's a related discussion here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:301:4360:515C:E557:DA4:F90C (talk) 20:54, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
 * There's another related discussion here: Talk:2020 United States House of Representatives elections. Orser67 (talk) 20:53, 9 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The consensus on that article was to keep the tables. Does that have any effect on this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:241:301:4360:588A:3422:852C:B9BB (talk) 04:39, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Length
It seems the issue has come up again. Personally, I think all the election pages should be consistent in format.67.173.23.66 (talk) 19:01, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure, other election articles should follow this reduced format. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:22, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this should be brought up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elections and Referendums. Posting there.67.173.23.66 (talk) 22:17, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Article results
- You redirected another editor to the talk page to start a discussion revolving around the inclusion of the election results on the page. Personally, I think that not including them is absolutely ridiculous, and your "summary" format is inadequate, but you seem to think otherwise. Also, literally every other elections page includes it in the format, and so if you want to remove the results, you should do so for all of the other articles, instead of just this one. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 02:21, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This was a format developed in 2019 from a previous discussion on this talk page, with most of the work not being done by myself. My edits have only restored it to that format. It's certainly not true that every other election article includes the results of each legislative election of that year in the article, and that's very much unusual. This is something that is particular to the series of US House of Representatives election. I would support the other House of Representatives election articles to follow a similar format. It's important to note that the election results in total are still on this article, and the individual results are found in the sub-articles, which is typical of election articles on Wikipedia. Onetwothreeip (talk) 02:34, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean - check 2006 United States House of Representatives elections, 2008 United States House of Representatives elections, 2010 United States House of Representatives elections, 2012 United States House of Representatives elections, 2014 United States House of Representatives elections, 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, I could go on all day. The point is, all of these articles include the full elections results in the previous format, so if you want to remove it for this article, then you should do it for all of the other articles as well. -- Politicsfan4 (talk) 21:20, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Those articles are unusual in that they list the results on the same page. I can't think of any other national legislative election where this is standard for us. I do support changing the format of the articles you've linked. Onetwothreeip (talk) 21:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * If you feel they should be changed, there's nothing stopping you from doing so, though I would suggest gaining a consensus on their talk pages.2601:241:300:B610:4C2B:CD5B:2110:D204 (talk) 01:32, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned earlier, a different election article decided on a different approach, so I think there needs to be a unified consensus.2601:241:300:B610:2827:6075:D9FB:E6EE (talk) 15:56, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay I am little late to this conservation and it's kinda died but it is pretty informal to just put "TBA re-elected." Yes, it does shorten the page but can't we make it so we can at least see the losing candidates and or margins since if someone wants to quickly find a result for a district they will need to go to their respective pages. It might sound a little lazy but it is more quickly to just make this page go back to what it was before. All that I want is to just see margins and all the candidates instead of the informal and frankly boring "TBA re-elected" or "TBA retired, TBA elected". Justarandomnamejake (talk) 01:37, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * As I said at the wikiproject talk, I often use these articles as a useful reference and I do not wish to always have to use the state-specific pages. Much of the length is formatting and citations that can be consolidated, and there was never any need to completely chop out the table formatting. I agree with Jake that this page should retain the candidates and results. While these are on the state pages, they also have details on votes, candidates, and primaries, and merely limiting this to who the incumbent is and who won is far too limited. Reywas92Talk 00:36, 9 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Regarding the length, it may also help if the candidate list are limited to major party candidates/those who received at least 5% of the vote.2601:241:300:B610:5989:30F5:F336:5B48 (talk) 06:02, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Saving space...in the least efficient way possible
Not to dig up the past debate on whether the tables should've been kept or not, but dear lord the new formatting was written in the least efficient way possible. I've tried to restore some order by properly formatting the hatnotes (which saves data space) and using the USHR templates for districts (which again saves space), but honestly I'm not sure it's even worth it.--Woko Sapien (talk) 20:57, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Alabama section ("skinny" tables)
Okay, since there's been a fair bit of edit warring going on here, I've deciding to show everyone what it would look like if "skinny" tables were restored. These tables use less data because they:
 * Would only cite one main, reliable source per state rather than one source per each candidate
 * Take advantage of the USCongressElectionTableHead template, among other data-saving templates
 * Wouldn't include write-in votes, or very minor candidates.

Please let me know what everyone thinks. Hopefully, this compromise could satisfy both sides and stop any future edit wars. --Woko Sapien (talk) 17:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes looks great to me. Reywas92Talk 21:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll start slowly migrating the old data over and stripping it down to "skinny" tables.--Woko Sapien (talk) 20:16, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * All finished! Woko Sapien (talk) 20:52, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Should this format be applied to other election articles?67.173.23.66 (talk) 00:12, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, it probably should be applied to all U.S. House election articles over time. --Woko Sapien (talk) 21:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)