Talk:Landslide victory

What`s wong with this article?
What about Republican Warren G. Harding, who was elected in a landslide in the US (1920). "Harding won in a massive landslide, pulling over 7 million more votes than Cox." See http://millercenter.org/president/biography/harding-campaigns-and-elections. According to another link, Warren G. Harding won 404 out of 531 electoral votes. Karin D. E. Everett (talk) 05:02, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

Are the words in bold in there for a purpose? I don`t believe I have ever seen anything like this one before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.14.14.15 (talk) 20:19, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

United Kingdom
In what respect is Tony Blair's 1997 landslide the largest in the 20th century?
 * The 1931 election was a big landslide in which Conservatives gained 470 seats alone (not counting other National Government parties) and won 55.0% of the popular vote alone to Labour's 46 seats and 29.4%.
 * In 1997, Labour won 43.2% and 418 seats to Conservatives' 30.7% and 165 seats.
 * Would the 1918 token election also qualify as a landslide?

49.200.119.124 (talk) 13:09, 27 July 2016 (UTC)


 * 100%, I also think that the National Government's landslide victory in '31 absolutely should be on there. AScottishPersonOnline (talk) 21:00, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Canada 2015
Per the article, "The Liberal Party's increase of 148 seats from the previous election was the largest-ever numerical increase by a party in a Canadian election....Prior to the campaign, the Liberals had held only 36 seats—the fewest seats ever held at dissolution by any federal party that won the following election." If that doesn't count as a landslide, I don't know what does. - Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 19:27, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

The LPC won with 8% more of the vote (39%) than the next party, and holds 14 seats above the 170 seats majority (54% of seats, 184/340). It's by no measure a landslide. There is no mention of a landslide either on the Wiki page of that election either. The 2011 election actually produced a stronger lead by the CPC (9%) and about the same seat %age (53.5%, 166/310). There's no reason why it should be included, it's just a regular election that produced a majority. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.59.152.99 (talk) 12:03, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Germany
The two results from the 1950s were for West Germany. In an article of this kind I think the distinction important. 84.3.187.196 (talk) 12:18, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Barbados 2018
Elections in Barbados in 2018 resulted in the opposing Barbados Labour Party to secure all 30 seats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.231.127.195 (talk) 17:30, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Trimming back
At some point, this article was allowed to balloon into a huge collection of original research. The list of landslide victories article was deleted here for a reason: it is a term with various possible definitions, cannot be defined for encyclopedic purposes, and leads to all the OR here (in the Australian section, for example, there were several results that I wouldn't call a landslide, but what criteria were we using? Someone had randomly decided for themselves). Frickeg (talk) 02:14, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

US gubernatorial elections?
I'm not sure that the elections for US governors belong in this article, going by the introduction: The term is often incorrectly used to indicate a lopsided victory in which one side has a large majority, but it is not associated with a change in the political landscape. If we're using 'landslide victory' in that looser sense of 'a big win', then OK; but it seems to me it should be limited to elections of major significance and with considerable geographic scope, which basically means national results only. Robofish (talk) 16:19, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * This article continues to be 100% original research. I would support the removal of every single election listed here and trimming this back to be a simple prose explanation of a term with a number of definitions. Frickeg (talk) 22:09, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Looking at this article again, I'd agree. But if we are to keep a list of 'landslide victories', there should be some sort of consensus on what a 'landslide' actually is.
 * At the moment, the inclusion criteria for the gubernatorial elections seems to be 60% or more of the vote, which seems way too low to me. An election where 2 in every 5 people vote for a different candidate isn't a 'landslide'. I'd say the threshold for inclusion here should be winning 67% of the votes at the very least, maybe higher. Yes, this is arguably original research - but if we're going to have the list, we might as well agree on what the inclusion criteria should be. Robofish (talk) 21:46, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I support removing all of the elections because nearly all of them are not in any way a landslide victory. They do not represent any kind of change in the political landscape. Further, Wikipedia has rules that it is not a list of trivia. One or two good examples should be shown and that is it. If a reader doesn't comphrehend the topic with a couple examples, having a few hundred won't help. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Sequential Elections
Assuming that the article is correct, a landslide is different than a lopsided victory because a landslide indicates a change in the political landscape. Therefore, sequential elections for the same person cannot be a landslide. The landscape shifted for the first election. The rest of the following elections show that the landscape is still shifted - not shifting or changing. Correct? So, in order to trim this ever-growing list, we can easily remove subsequential elections for the same person. For example, I removed Reagan's second election, even though I doubt his win over Carter had anything to do with a shifting political landscape. Carter won by beating Nixon (who wasn't even running) and then lost to Reagan. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 16:43, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Precise Definition
Is there any consensus on exactly how large a swing, or how large a majority, is needed before the term landslide can be used? Robin S. Taylor (talk) 23:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)


 * No. While the term initially referred to a landslide-like change in the political landscape, it now has no meaning whatsoever. I searched and I found examples of "landslide" being used as nothing more than a filler word that sounds good when spoken. Further, on Wikipedia's reference desk, apparently younger commentors stated that a "landslide victory" means a "majority." So, winning by 50.0000001% is a landslide. They didn't see a connection of any kind between a real-world landslide and a landslide victory. I believe this is a word-police issue now. It is obvious that the word had meaning, but that has been lost. So, attempting to reapply meaning is a losing battle. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 18:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I just learned that there is a term for this: semantic bleaching. Landslide victory used to have a narrow, precise meaning. Over time, the meaning of the phrase has been "bleached" so it no longer has meaning. 135.84.167.41 (talk) 19:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Splitting proposal
I propose that sections of the page to be split into a separate page called List of Landslide victory by nation. The content of the current page seems off-topic and these sections are large enough to make their own page (note: yes, i copy them from WP:SPLIT. But that doesn't matter).

125.167.115.222 (talk) 05:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)


 * A similar page was deleted some time ago as largely original research, but now this page has largely transmogrified into the same thing. This page is almost entirely uncited, and the bits that are cited do not support the idea that any of these are "landslides". It's a colloquial term that has no absolute definition, so whether an election is a landslide or not is not something that can be accurately defined. In other words: delete all the lists from this page as OR. Frickeg (talk) 23:48, 5 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I'd argue that what qualifies as a landslide can be subjective, which can pose a problem. SecretName101 (talk) 16:39, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

The lists
I have boldly deleted all the lists on this page. Most of them did not even claim to be using any criteria, and almost none of them were cited, thus they were entirely original research. A list must, by definition, have some kind of criteria for inclusion, and those criteria must be more specific than "X won this election pretty easily". Frickeg (talk) 23:51, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
 * We could remake the list as "list of elections declared to be landslides", with explicit source citations required, similar to the List of "-gate" scandals, which contains a list of explicitly cited instances of sources using the -gate suffix to label a scandal, no matter how sparse or short-lived the use of the -gate term persisted. I have changed the split proposal banner accordingly. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 04:49, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It might be difficult given differing standards on what counts as a landslide.73.110.217.186 (talk) 04:32, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, IP's concern is mine as well. At least with the -gate list, it has a clear and simple criterion regarding its name. Here, if we broaden it to be "any election that any RS has described as a landslide", I'm not sure of its encyclopedic value. Without a consistent definition of "landslide", any such list is doomed to inconsistency; we might as well have a list of elections wins described as "convincing" or "narrow". As I said way back in the AfD for the list, a more useful list would be one of electoral records - the most seats one by a single party in each country, for example. Frickeg (talk) 05:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The NB Liberals winning every seat in 1987 and NZ's first solo-party majority government under MMP are massive records by any standard. But I think we need to get many more voices on this matter; just the two of us is not representative of a consensus to retool the article from root to stem. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 05:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support, defining a landslide victory is no rocket science and sources are available. --Dereck Camacho (talk) 23:03, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * How would you define it then? Frickeg (talk) 20:15, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Whenever a reliable source describes them as landslide victories. --Dereck Camacho (talk) 23:03, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Support 744cody (talk) 06:56, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose Quoted from the page itself: "Even within an electoral system, there is no consensus on what sized margin makes for a landslide." Because there is no consensus on what constitutes a "landslide", opinions differ between people and organizations. I believe that this proposal is stemming from the political divide within many countries, particularly from candidates declaring their victories to be "landslides." With these two things in mind, I have concerns listing certain elections could bring about issues such as bots, politically-slanted entries, and paid editing, which is prohibited by Wikipedia (see Paid editing (proposal)). Therefore, I respectfully oppose. NDfan173 (talk) 03:54, 26 December 2020 (UTC)
 * And landslides are not only extremely subjective, but they can also vary within an electoral system. For areas where party support makes close elections the standard, a single-digit percent victory can seem like a landslide. Whereas in other areas, it might not at all be considered a landslide, and may actually constitute an unordinary close election. SecretName101 (talk) 16:43, 31 December 2020 (UTC)
 * All very true. Personally, I also have the feeling that "landslide" includes a big shift compared to previous elections. If a party has 49% in the first election and 54 % in the second election, that is a secure absolute majority - but I would not call it a landslide. In 2002, a Dutch party went from zero to 17% - I would call that a landslide, but who else? Ziko (talk) 20:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Excess, lack of definition
, I saw that you seemed to approve of my cut, so I thought I'd document this on the talk page, where others have made similar comments already. In short: "landslide victory" is very poorly defined, and I think editors like, , , , , and have expressed the same doubts. Even "according to reliable sources" is a bit difficult, esp. in local coverage. But, User:Ahmadiskandarshah, it should be clear that the huge chunk of unverified information I removed just can't be reinstated without any work being done on it.Two problems: lack of definition, lack of evidence. The overarching problem: why should "Landslide victory" contain a huge list of things called "landslide victory"? It's what's wrong with many articles: trivial aggregation, and I look in vain for a mention of all governments in world history in the article Government--confusing an explanation with a list leads to poor articles. Drmies (talk) 14:22, 20 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Personally I'm okay with the existence of a list – provided each entry is adequately sourced. The problem with this article until now is that there's been a huge amount of unsourced content that keeps getting added to. — Czello (music) 14:48, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, that's fair--and I agree on the quality of the list. Drmies (talk) 16:40, 20 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair point, but I will add the section Malaysia back in because I already added the sources for it beforehand (it was deleted with the rest). As far as I know, by adding this back, there shouldn't be any violation. Ahmadiskandarshah (talk) 01:30, 11 February 2024 (UTC)