Talk:2016 United States presidential election in Texas

Importance of Texas delegates/voting

Today, Donald J Trump won the 'winner-take-all' delegates in South Carolina (50 delegates) and a Cruz supporter noted that the delegate count in Texas exceeds Iowa, NH, and SC combined. -- Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 10:22, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Missing Counties vote totals

The bottom end of the counties from Sterling to Zavala are missing from the "By County" vote totals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.239.191.174 (talk) 17:09, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Soapboxing about county "wins" to make original arguments is against policy

The whole section with a litany of superlatives about first candidate since 19xx to "win" X Y and Z counties is in violation of the WP:No original research policy. State contests are not determined by "winning" counties. No candidate "wins" a county. They are arbitrary divisions, convenient for getting an idea of how votes are distributed, but not meaningful. Zip codes, census blocks, precincts or anything else could be used as well. It just happens that most states make county-level data easy to get. That doesn't make the number of counties a candidate "wins" important.

It's possible a pundit who is considered an influential expert might claim that "winning" X county or Y county matters, and if they give plausible reasons, we could attribute directly to that person the opinion that "winning" this or that county was important. But to state in Wikipedia's voice that certain counties mean anything is pure original research, and editorializing.

The whole paragraph should probably be deleted unless someone does the work to locate a reputable source and attache's that person's name to the opinions. They content should also be relocated to an analysis section, not the lead. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 06:16, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Declaring winners of counties

The US election system allocates electoral college votes by state. With a couple exceptions, almost all states allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner of the entire state's popular vote. The popular vote is reported as the total number for the entire state, and it is also broken down in to administrative units, typically counties. Many elections are organized by county -- each county collects all the votes and then reports them centrally. Precinct, voting bloc, congressional district, census blocks, zip codes and other organizational areas exist too and sometimes votes are broken down by these. These exist for administrative purposes, but have no effect whatsoever on the outcome. The number of residents or voters per county is totally random, with no effort to balance the size of counties in any way. Some counties are laid out on the Jefferson Grid, most are historical accidents. Some counties record mere tens or hundreds of votes, others have several million. Loving County, Texas has 65 votes. Whichever candidate "won" Loving County is of no consequence whatsoever. Each vote counts toward that statewide total, but chalking up "one win" for that county is a false idea. To say, in the same chart, that Loving counts as one win, and Harris County, with 1.3 million votes, is also "one win" is beyond absurd.

We have tables of this data because it's convenient. Most states report their results on the county level, and it's a granularity that is convenient. Some states also break down precincts, but these are so small that a table of them would have so many rows that it wouldn't be something you'd examine visually; you'd visualize it statistically or graphically. And we can make a table of the raw county results with little effort. So it's convenient, but that's all. Nothing more. Adding up "wins", using color that emphasizes county wins is original research, and analysis, that must be attributed to a source by name. It's not a fact contained in the data. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:36, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Synthesis and original research in post-election analysis

On punditry and analysis: There are examples of punditry, analysis or forecasting that break down election data or results on a county-by-county basis. For example Rich County, Poor County at fivethirtyeight.com. Or Where Do Clinton And Trump Have The Most Upside? by David Wasserman, Reuben Fischer-Baum and Ritchie King also at fivethirtyeight.com. This is fine: it's the opinion of the authors, and they can be considered experts. But that doesn't mean county "winners" are real. It' just means someone decided it would produce a reasonable result to use counties as units to break down their data, given the law of averages. In many cases, county-by-county results would produce an abysmal result. It depends on how the analysis is designed to work. What matters for Wikipedia is that this must be attributed by name to the author. We don't report it in Wikipedia's voice. If someone wants to make an argument about how many counties were "won" in a state, we can describe that analysis and opinion, and say the name of the pundit, but we don't put it in color coded tables as if these "wins" were a fact. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:47, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Another good source for opinions Analysis: The blue dots in Texas’ red political sea by Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune. As above, a summary of Ramsay's opinions, with direct attribution to Ramsay by name, would be excellent in ==Analysis== section. Some broader trend analysis at the NYT. Similarly, the WaPo has some national analysis that has a little relevance to Texas.

As I said earlier, it's WP:SYNTH when a Wikipedia editor chooses to emphasize Trump's gains over Romney in counties with the letter R in their name that have less than the median number of cat owners. You can pick any criteria out of a hat to argue whatever point you like: "states that became more Democratic", "first Democrat/Republican to win Fort Bend County/Jefferson County/counties with both a Starbucks and a Cracker Barrel" etc. It's arbitrary, and the responsibility for the choice to look at this county or that county or the 2012 election or the 1888 election, or cat ownership, should be attributed to an independent expert, not some Wikipedian's whim. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:01, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

The most votes that nominees of either party have won in Texas

Clinton's total in the general election surpasses Obama's 2008 totals in Texas, which was previously the largest number of votes a Democrat had received in Texas. This would mean that Clinton's totals are the largest number of votes received by a Democrat in Texas. Trump's surpasses Mitt Romney's 2012 total. Therefore, it is the largest received by a Republican nominee in Texas. Both of these facts should possibly be included SecretName101 (talk) 21:16, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

You shouldn't have any trouble finding a reputable source who has said the same things. If you honestly can't find a single one, it seriously calls into question whether these factoids are of any significance. The same goes for all the other selected factoids picked out of the election data. The stronger your argument that it's of great significance, the easier it ought to be to find someone to attribute it to. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 01:00, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

Trump's percentage of vote the lowest since 1996

Trump's percent of the general election vote is the lowest a Republican nominee has received since 1996. Might be worth mentioning. SecretName101 (talk) 21:18, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

Formatting problems

I don't think it's going to be possible to fix the mismatched formatting of this article, with so many infoboxes stacked down the right side of the page. I mentioned that I couldn't find any Featured Articles that used reverse chronological order (placing the analysis section first), but rather, FA election articles usually end with == Aftermath == . Examples: United States Senate election in California, 1950, United States Senate election in Ohio, 1898, New York's 20th congressional district special election, 2009, Kentucky gubernatorial election, 1899, and so on. They also usually begin with a ==Background== section and if one were added to this article, it would balance the infoboxes on the right, giving the primary election infoboxes a better chance to land next to the text they go with. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:16, 18 March 2017 (UTC)

"Green Primary"?

I confessed to being puzzled by the entire section titled "Green Primary." Was this a primary election or, from the sound of it, a caucus? If it was a primary election, where are the vote totals? Why is the Texas "Green Primary" chart labelled "Minnesota Green Party presidential caucus, March 1, 2016"? NicholasNotabene (talk) 21:42, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

As no one has responded to my query, I've taken the liberty of correcting the infobox, deleting the "Minnesota" label, correcting the (state convention) date, deleting the (irrelevant) links to other states' results, and noting that this tally appears to have been the product of a month-long series of caucuses rather than from a single primary election date.

NicholasNotabene (talk) 21:15, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Faithless electors

A query raised at the Miscellaneous Reference Desk has suggested as error in the "Notes" section, namely: "Bill Greene voted for John Kasich for president and Carly Fiorina for vice president". This article says that Greene voted for Ron Paul. Could somebody please check and edit accordingly? It's somewhat outside of my area of expertise. Alansplodge (talk) 18:26, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

There is also an internal inconsistency. According to section Faithless electors in the 2016 United States presidential election § Validated, one Christopher Suprun voted for Kasich and Fiorina, while Bill Greene voted for Ron Paul and Pence. This is supported by three cites. The current state of the Notes section here is due to this edit. Its summary (why bother list one elector and forget the other?) in conjunction with the actual edit may be confusing, but at the time of this edit, Suprun was mentioned by name higher up in the article. His name was recently edited out in this edit.  --Lambiam 08:12, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I have merged the first two notes, which both were about the effect of the two faithless electors, while fixing the error and giving equal treatment to Suprun. I've also removed the third note, which revealed Mike Pence's membership of the Republican Party – you don't say.  --Lambiam 10:59, 9 December 2023 (UTC)