Template talk:United States political parties

Peace and Freedom, again
They're not listed anywhere, yet they appear on the ballot in as many states as some of the third parties that are in bold. Also, they appear on the ballot in California, which is 1) the largest state, 2) one of the hardest states to get on the ballot on, and 3) one of the states with the fewest third parties. I'm being bold and adding them back.  Purplebackpack89 (talk) 01:34, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I also added Connecticut for Lieberman in the minor-party category because it got a candidate (Lieberman) elected to the Senate. Also, if you decide to drop P&F from the major third party status, please drop it down to minor third party instead of just removing it Purplebackpack89 (talk) 01:43, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Figuring out inclusion for lists like this is always tricky but Third_party_(United_States) says that Peace and Freedom is "currently active only in California" so including it on a US template seems a little ambitious. By the same argument single state parties like Connecticut for Lieberman should not be included. I am not going to edit the template though.--Commander Keane (talk) 02:01, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I have moved the Peace & Freedom Party to the "smaller parties" section, as it is my understanding based on previous discussions that the "third party" section is for the more prominent parties, those that regularly qualify for enough state ballots to theoretically receive the minimum number of electoral votes necessary to win the election. The P&F Party clearly dosen't meet that standard. It has, however, been in existence for decades and, I believe, qualified for multiple ballots (albeit fewer than needed for the minimum electoral votes) in '08 (with Ralph Nader as its nominee). So a solid case can be made for its inclusion on the template, just not under the Third Party heading. I also removed the Connecticut for Leiberman Party due to the consensus that singe state parties not be included here. If I'm not mistaken, there is a separate template somewhere for such parties.--JayJasper (talk) 06:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I found the aforementioned template for state & local parties: Template:USLocalParty.--JayJasper (talk) 06:27, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Purplebackpack89 - looking at the article for the Peace and Freedom Party, I see the same concern that Commander Keane has - if they are a more major party, could you please update (w/ refs) the article and/or let us know here? If it is a California-only party, it should probably be moved to USLocalParty.  The article mentions a few national P&F candidates, but suggests that the party is "run" by a state convention, not a national one. --Philosopher Let us reason together. 05:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * That's enough. Also consider the number of votes it got compared with other third parties on the list...it is more than most of them Purplebackpack89 (talk) 05:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Missing party
If this is to be a comprehensive list of national political parties, shouldn't the Prohibition Party be included? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.153.253.179 (talk) 12:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Third Parties vs Smaller Parties
I know it has been discussed before, but I feel that we should designate Third Parties and Smaller Parties differently, since it is a fact that all parties other than the primary two are "Third Parties". Not using the proper adj may confuse people who do not understand US Politics, since this is an encyclopedia I feel that we should change it to something like "Major Third Parties" "Minor Third Parties", and also have a clear cut definition on which is. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Teamcoltra (talk • contribs) 04:28, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I actually don't recall discussing this before. Anyway, I've added a level of indentation, does this work?  As for linking and terms, "Third parties" is already linked appropriately, and I've used "larger" and "smaller" to reflect the terminology at Third party (United States). --Philosopher Let us reason together. 10:47, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That looks great! I think this better represents the United States political system, so someone new will be able to "get it". Thanks for helping! Teamcoltra (talk) 00:21, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Conservative Party
There's no article at present about a national Conservative Party, although Conservative Party gives two red links to uncreated articles. So I and another editor are in a quandary about how to treat "Conservative" in this template. Should we list those two separate red-links (which might start returning this template to being one loaded with red links to dozens of other defunct minor parties, links that would be of little use to the ordinary reader), do we link to Conservative Party (which leads to four live articles about state parties as well as two non-existent articles about national parties), or do we just omit "Conservative" until someone has written at least a stub for one national party with that name? I'm attaching the earlier discussion on my Talk Page below.

In your edit summary on Template:USParty, you said "Reverted food-faith edit leading to empty links, since disambig page also leads to state parties". OK. First, if these two parties aren't notable enough to have articles written about them, maybe they don't need to be in the template all. Or, if they are notable, it would be a good idea for someone to write those articles. Second, the headline at the top of the template says "National political parties in the United States". How do state parties come into the discussion, then? --R'n'B (call me Russ) 00:03, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
 * [of course that was meant to be good-faith, not food-faith] Both good points; the template could otherwise easily turn bloody with useless red links to a hundred defunct minor parties about whom no one has yet written even a stub article. If that item were a page or a list of such parties (like Conservative Party), the red links could serve a useful purpose, but I'm not sure how useful they are for a navigation template. My inclination would be just to leave out "Conservative" until we have at least a stub article for one of those national parties. (I think the question's different when there's a definite finite number of red links in some kind of pattern, such as those I added for separate years to Template:New York City mayoral elections). ¶ Anyway, I don't take this question personally (and I hope the abrupt terseness of an edit summary didn't made you take it that way), and since this discussion covers only a single item, and it isn't hyper-technical or super-controversial, I think it's best to move this over to the Template's talk page where others can see and join the discussion (and understand why the Conservative items are being moved or removed). That's what I'll do now. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

—— Shakescene (talk) 06:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Changes
I updated the template to match List of political parties in the United States, with 3 parties excluded: American 3rd Party, New Union Party, and Socialist Labor Party. The first is of questionable significance (see its talk page), while the second and third might be inactive - it's not clear. Also, the "List of..." page does not contain American Independent Party, which used to be a national party but is now only a state party. I didn't touch the historical parties. 71.184.241.68 (talk) 22:34, 14 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I moved the SLP to the Defunct box, since what little information I have suggests that it is no longer active. Discussion at the former Yahoo! group for Socialist Party history a few years ago indicated that the active SLP had shrunk down to its last National Secretary, Robert Bills, who was trying to preserve its archives, documents and heritage while it was still possible to do so. The SLP hasn't run a presidential candidate since Julius Levin in 1976, and stopped publishing The Weekly People in 2011. Further comment or information certainly welcome.
 * —— Shakescene (talk) 20:15, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Larger vs smaller
I annotated the definition of "smaller" to say it is based on number of party members. According to the membership parameter in, the larger parties all had at least 100,000 members. If there's a better definition, feel free to add it. 67.100.127.116 (talk) 00:00, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

This does not seem to be true at this date.173.15.73.108 (talk) 20:37, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Americans Elect and Justice Party
I have added Americans Elect and the Justice Party as "larger" parties, based on them having ballot access in enough states to theoretically win the 2012 presidential election, as can be seen here.--24.240.187.254 (talk) 20:40, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The delineation between "Larger" and "Smaller", per the description in the template, is whether the party has >100k members, and there's no evidence to suggest the Justice Party has that. The addition of Americans Elect was also reverted earlier, something I support as well. The template as of now better matches List of political parties in the United States, which is a more accurate picture of the political landscape in the US. GregChant (talk) 11:37, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

What's a 'major national party'?
According to the notes, a larger party is one which is "Recognized as a major national party by the FEC" while a smaller party is "Not recognized as a major national party by the FEC". What does this mean? There does not appear to be any information on the FEC's website about "major national parties". 1.126.110.204 (talk) 19:43, 2 August 2018 (UTC)