Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2018 Swedish general election in Södermanland County


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus defaulting to Keep and w/o prejudice to a future renomination. Ad Orientem (talk) 01:26, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

2018 Swedish general election in Södermanland County

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This is an unnecessary level of detail of the election results, which are already covered at Results of the 2018 Swedish general election. Previous AfDs on results at county level have ended in deletion. The article creator has made various claims that the two are not comparable, however I have not been convinced. There is a difference with UK elections in terms of counties being used as multi-member constituencies in Sweden. However, constituency-level result articles for individual elections are also not generally considered article-worthy.

The content could be merged, potentially to the aforementioned Results of the 2018 Swedish general election or to a new article such as Södermanland County (constituency) that would detail results in this constituency at each election (which is more standard practice for election article series).

I am also nominating the same articles for deletion for the same reason:
 * 2018 Swedish general election in Skåne County
 * 2018 Swedish general election in Örebro County
 * 2018 Swedish general election in Halland County
 * 2018 Swedish general election in Norrbotten County

Number  5  7  22:09, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Strong keep: Swedish counties are having the same role to play in elections as U.S. states have in theirs, hence WP:Notability is abundantly clear. "Län" to "county" is a bad translation first of all since they fill the role of English regions, only with administrative powers. Swedish counties are on the way to being renamed "Region", although this will not officially be in effect until 2022. Secondly all Swedish MP's are elected by the counties so long as they reach a 4 % national threshold of the vote to be eligible. UK counties do not elect a single MP, they are done by single-member local constituencies. To delete articles regarding Swedish counties in terms of their electoral role would be the same as deleting U.S. state presidential articles. Since the counties are the source of each elected MP they are fulfilling the same role as the Electoral Collage in a Swedish context. Third of all, deleting these while keeping the US articles and the England/Scotland/Wales/NI ones, would involve discrimination against election articles from countries that are not part of the Anglosphere. Even though this is an English-language encyclopedia, it does not have an Anglocentric perspective in terms of its articles and coverage. So, from that precedent of the US articles of electing subregions meeting WP:Notability, there is no choice on this matter. These articles must stay up so long as they have relevant sources, which they have. The articles in question are professionally written and notable enough. No question about it.


 * As for merging, the articles would then become plainly way too long to be viewable, whereas at a second-level article basis, they are easy to comprehend and find as part of the navigational box. The deleter in question has clearly not understood but common sense must prevail. Glottran (talk) 22:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Regarding the point about length if merged, I would suggest not all the information is worth merging (specifically the breakdown of results by municipality, given the municipalities are only part of the constituency). For numerous other countries we have workable articles on multi-member constituencies, such as Madrid (Congress of Deputies constituency) or Warsaw I (parliamentary constituency). Number   5  7  22:32, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Then that is not a merger, but a de-facto deletion and contradicts your suggestion. This whole thing has been done at a whim and has not been productive at all, I'm afraid.Glottran (talk) 22:34, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Merging does not necessarily require all information to be kept. This has not been done at a whim, but rather as part of a desire to keep Wikipedia relatively consistent on what level of detail we have on national election results. Having Results of the 2018 Swedish general election and articles like Södermanland County (constituency) would replicate (for example) the information provided in Results breakdown of the April 2019 Spanish general election (Congress) and Madrid (Congress of Deputies constituency). What is the issue with this? Number   5  7  22:40, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Sweden-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 22:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You still haven't explained why U.S. states presidential articles are relevant if Swedish counties' (same role as the source of power) aren't (both are GE's for who becomes head of government) and instead are using rather irrelevant English county precedents when English counties do NOT elect MP's. That is why I'm saying this has been done on a whim with no basis in how the election rules work. Sweden has a PR system on paper, but for anyone getting more than 1/25 of the overall votes, they become eligible for where the election is decided: the counties. Every Swedish MP is representing a county. That is the big difference.Glottran (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I am not particularly convinced that we need an article on the US presidential election for each state, but apparently there is consensus for the articles to exist given how many of them there are. However, I don't think the two are exactly comparable, so I do not believe the existence of those articles sets a precedent for the ones we're discussing here. I am yet to hear a convincing argument from you that these articles are worthwhile and several of the arguments you made in the discussion on your talk page were easily rebuttable.
 * I noticed you didn't answer my question above about what the problem is with following the Spanish and Polish article model. Number   5  7  22:59, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Wrong, they were not easily rebuttable. Especially since I follow the US state precedent for subjects that elect legislators/executives based from a second-order administrative jurisdiction. This is cut and dry that I've only followed precedent. There are just two different Wikipedia philosophies at play. I have an inclusive perspective in which I welcome articles that live up to WP:Notability as sub-articles, whereas you seemingly don't since you'd prefer not to have US state articles either. Ultimately, I believe Wikipedia would be a way worse place if people weren't allowed to write about their subjects of interests while providing relevant sources and can make a coherent argument for WP:Notability. The Spanish, Polish, Finnish etc are not relevant to this since they don't include party and municipality breakdowns and thus are completely different concepts. I'd be open to be making those too, but they are once again apples and oranges. Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean it has to be deleted even though it matches the notability requirement. Wikipedia can't be run like that.Glottran (talk) 23:12, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The Spanish/Polish/Finnish articles are relevant – and certainly more so than the American articles – as they are all examples of multi-member constituencies being used to elect members to a national parliament. I cannot see the value of the municipal breakdown as it has no influence on the seat distribution. I'm sure the other results could be broken down to that level, but what would be the point? Number   5  7  23:18, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Municipalities form the county and do not take up that much space in the article either. The point is that this an encyclopedia and the more WP:Notability information available, the better. If someone is curious of how a Swedish election was broken down, they can find everything they need in my articles written by a real political scientist with a masters' degree at a professional standard of research.Glottran (talk) 23:22, 15 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete all. WP:PRIMARY material and unecessary detail. This is stuff that after a general election is mentioned in news media in table format, but the county and municipality level results are AFAIK know not analysed, which makes this topic non-notable. Maybe some small portion of the info can be merged to the main article, but not at this level of detail.


 * Swedish counties are not comparable to US states in the presidential elections. The outcome of the election in a state usually determines which candidate all the electors will vote for, and the predictions and results are analysed in depth. Sweden has a proportional voting system which means that as close as possible, the seats will be allotted according to the percentage of votes in the country as a whole. The votes from an individual county is not even that important, since Sweden uses leveling seats to ensure that a party's seats are proportional to the votes they recieved. Also, not all counties are electoral districts, but Västra Götaland and Skåne counties contains several districts. Sjö (talk) 06:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 10:06, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
 * In 2010, the net difference of vote between the Social Democrats and the Moderates was 0.6 % but resulted in a five-seat difference of Riksdag representation because of how the county system worked even though proportionally the difference would've been two. This was due to the one-sided nature of the Moderate Party wins in Stockholm County, whereas the Social Democratic vote was spread across the country. Västra Götaland and Skåne are divided into several districts for counting area convenience under old county lines, but they still gain their representation as members of said county and those subdivisions are all named after the county in question. So those points are half-truths since Sweden does not have a full PR for said reasons. This is not WP:PRIMARY since it's official statistics and therefore not biased in any way. These are just numbers. If a party does not perform in a county, they are not getting seats from there. Levelling seats are given to locations where the party in question did better than elsewhere, hence why a party with uneven distribution (Centre Party) did not get any representation from Örebro County in 2014 on 5.6 % of the vote compared to a party with a more even distribution (Liberals) who gained one on 4.3 % of the vote. So, counties play a role in where the parties get their levelling seats too. Therefore the articles still maintain strong WP:Notability and are entirely in line with congressional articles about US states for sure, even if you don't accept the EC argument.Glottran (talk) 11:39, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Strong keep: This is similar to the US articles and they elect MP's directly. The material is adequately sourced to the Swedish electoral agency and written at a professional level. I agree with the creator of said articles that second-level jurisdictions which select MP's meet WP:Notability just like the thousands of similar US presidential/federal election articles and that therefore it is a definite call from my side that the author's articles remain Marsh008 (talk) 22:53, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * This is so painfully obviously a sockpuppet or meatpuppet of Glottran – suddenly reappearing after five months with no edits, referring to it being written at a "professional level", not bulleting their comment, an odd reference to WP:Notability, and a strange habit of adding messing around with climate data in their userspace. I hope some action is taken about this flagrant attempt to inappropriately influence the outcome of the discussion. Number   5  7  23:44, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate if stuck to the discussion matter at hand rather than engaging in conspiracy theories. I have only one active Wikipedia account and anything else is defamatory. There are shades of WP:HA and WP:PA (both met by engaging in conspiracy theories) are highly unadvisable in this. Glottran (talk) 13:28, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Personal attacks, defamation and conspiracy theories are really unfortunate. If you would win, at least keep it civil. Please. My two former Wikipedia accounts [1] and [2] are officially retired. I probably won't make any other county articles than the 2018 series anyway. Glottran (talk) 13:43, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Relisting so more folks can participate. It's great to see so much enthusiasm, but, please act civil towards each other and assume good faith. Also, please refrain from accusations of socking until the investigation is completed.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Missvain (talk) 18:01, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and Sjö. Would not object to the more common practice of creating Södermanland County (constituency)-style articles that provided input on results at the constituency level for all Swedish elections, but creating election-specific articles is an unnecessary ammount of detail, as per WP:NOTSTATS. I also agree that Marsh008 may look suspiciously like a duck; in such a case, they should get a report at WP:SPI that determined whether this could be a sockpuppet of Glottran. Using an alternative account for creating an illusion of support for one position in discussions is not allowed in Wikipedia. Nonetheless, this should be clarified at the appropiate venue, not here. Impru 20  talk 21:19, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't even know where to begin with this nonsense. First of all, I have already cleared a sockpuppet investigation, secondly, conspiracy theories are once more a form of personal attack, thirdly WP:NOTSTATS is even worse than the original argument. This is clearly not such a case given it details a second-tier subdivisions' results and not a statistical dump or anything like that. Yikes. I know I'm losing this due to lies and smears and it's a great shame. I can console you guys that my Swedish election series will be concluded in a few days. There is no point trying to do more than that with people like you lot around trying to delete what I'm doing. I'm a real political scientist doing real work with this and all I get is this, including a re-hashing of already debunked conspiracy theories? The only hope in this is that you didn't see that the investigation already is done. Otherwise all I can say is: Sigh.Glottran (talk) 19:58, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * You could begin with showing some more civility. I only commented that the sockpuppet issue should be addressed at the proper venue: if it has been already resolved (which I didn't know at the time), then that's all for it. If I have offended you, I sincerely apologize because that was not my intention.
 * You won't be winning any argument just because of staunchly defending your own work and dubbing any arguments opposing it as part of any conspiracy theory, lies or smears. No one has said that your work is not valuable; to the contrary, I personally find the constituency part really useful, as only few users are knowledgeable enough of Swedish politics to come to this point of hard work. The point is that this degree of detail is not only excessive, but possibly counterproductive and against Wikipedia's own guidelines (detailing general election results at the municipality level is far too much work compared to the degree of notability that such an issue gets in reliable sources). As Number 57 and I have pointed out, you could possibly use your work and investigation to create articles on constituencies, which do get much more attention and would be far more useful to the casual reader. Impru 20  talk 20:39, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Whilst it's correct that the SPI proved that Marsh008 is not a sock account, the behavioural evidence suggests that the chances they joined this discussion at random (and were not recruited) are practically zero. Number   5  7  00:50, 26 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Merge into Södermanland (Riksdag constituency) or Södermanland County (Riksdag constituency). An article covering results from a single election for a single constituency is over the top. It would be helpful to readers if articles were created for the Riksdag constituencies, as there are with many other legislatures, so that they can see changes in political support over time. The numerous tables in 2018 Swedish general election in Södermanland County can be condensed into a single table without losing any information (see Jaffna Electoral District for example).--Obi2canibe (talk) 19:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Needs more participation. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 12:16, 1 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.