Talk:2020 United States presidential election

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Note: This FAQ is only here to let people know that these points have previously been addressed, not to prevent any further discussion of these issues.

Q1: Why does the article call President Trump's statements about the integrity and legitimacy of the election "false"?

A1: Because reliable sources call his statements false. Though Trump often classifies these sources as "fake news", the consensus of other reliable non-news sources and Wikipedia editors is that they are reliable. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia reflects these sources, which may not align with any one individual's statements on the matter. (See also WP:TRUTH)

Q2: Why does(n't) this article use [this specific source]?

A2: As mentioned above, Wikipedia is based on what reliable sources say. A basic definition of a reliable sources is that they publish reputable, accurate articles along with fact-checking them. Some sources are repeatedly discussed on if they are actually reliable with some sources being generally unreliable and should be avoided when possible or even deprecated which restricts their use to only articles describing themselves.

Q3: Why is Kanye West/Jo Jorgensen/Howie Hawkins/[other third party candidate] not included in the infobox at the top of this article?

A3: A consensus was reached in this discussion among Wikipedia editors to only include candidates who received at least 5% of the popular vote in the infobox. Changes to this decision must also reflect consensus.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

2020 United States presidential election was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 2, 2006	Articles for deletion	Deleted
October 30, 2015	Articles for deletion	Kept
November 1, 2015	Good article nominee	Not listed
March 1, 2017	Articles for deletion	Kept
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 22, 2015. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that potential candidates in the United States presidential election of 2020* include Tom Cotton, Hillary Clinton, and Kanye West?*
A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on November 7, 2020.
Current status: Former good article nominee

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Noam Cohen (October 26, 2020). "Wikipedia's Plan to Resist Election Day Misinformation". Wired.
Sara Morrison (November 2, 2020). "How Wikipedia is preparing for Election Day". Vox.

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This article has been viewed enough times in a single year to make it into the Top 50 Report annual list. This happened in 2020, when it received 25,765,871 views.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 13 times. The weeks in which this happened:

Consensuses reached for the 2012 and 2016 elections apply for the 2020 election as well, unless these consensuses are reversed.

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria (post-election):
A consensus has been reached to only include candidates who received at least 5% of the popular vote in the infobox.

Consensuses on pre-election presentation of candidates

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria (pre-election):
A consensus has been reached to make it so that the political parties that earned at least one electoral vote in the previous election are to, by default, be included in the infobox of the article about the next election. This means that, as of right now, only the Republican and Democratic parties are to be included in the infobox. Currently, third parties are only to be included in the infobox prior to the election if they are polling, on average, over 5% per this consensus: Rfc on inclusion for the infobox.

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria for state subpages (pre-election):
A consensus has been reached to include candidates in the infoboxes of state subpages who are polling at an average of at least 5% in a state or are the nominees of parties whose candidates received 5% in a state in the last election.

Consensus on the order of candidates in the infobox (pre-election):

Parties that got at least one electoral vote in the 2016 election will be the first to appear in the infobox and will be ordered by how many electoral votes they got in 2016. Since the Republican Party got 306 electoral votes and the Democratic Party got 232, the Republican Party will be the first to appear in the infobox and the Democratic Party will be the second.
Some political parties that may in the future be qualified to appear in the infobox did not get any electoral votes in 2016. They will be ordered by the total amount of electoral votes in the states that have ballot access. Write-in access counts too.
- If two or more parties have access to the same amount of electoral votes, they will be sorted by how many popular votes they got in 2016. If one of the parties did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be be ordered after the parties (with the access to the same amount of electoral votes) that did. If two or more parties both have access to the same amount of electoral votes and did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be sorted alphabetically by the candidates' names.

Consensus on the criteria for a potential candidate to be included in the article:

The "Publicly expressed interest" section requires only one source from the last six months where the individual is quoted as being interested in running in 2020. Social media posts do not count as public expressions of interest.
The "Potential candidates" section requires at least two sources speculating that an individual may run or where an individual talks about the 2020 election from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). The sources must not be a list of several potential candidates nor a persuasive article about why a candidate should run.
The "Declined candidates" section requires at least two sources from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). One source must be speculative in the same vein as the "Potential candidates" section, while the second must be a quoted denial from the individual in question.

The following images have been discussed:

Joe Biden (consensus link)

Consensus

Consensus on when to update the popular vote:

Initial: The popular vote tally and percentage should be updated twelve hours after polls close, and then every six hours thereafter.
Superseded: A consensus was agreed upon to shorten the time between updates.

Section sizes

Section size for 2020 United States presidential election (79 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	50,805	50,805
Background	11,871	11,871
Nominations	196	11,526
Democratic Party	2,986	2,986
Republican Party	2,775	2,775
Libertarian Party	2,083	2,083
Green Party	3,486	3,486
General election campaigns	33	143,150
Ballot access	3,310	3,310
Party conventions	9,939	9,939
Issues unique to the election	38	96,751
Impeachment	2,555	2,555
Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic	26,672	26,672
Foreign interference	21,696	21,696
Trump's potential rejection of election results	14,777	14,777
Election delay suggestion	5,364	5,364
Postal voting	11,955	11,955
Federal Election Commission issues	2,144	2,144
Supreme Court vacancy	8,208	8,208
Pre-election litigation	3,342	3,342
Debates	23,411	23,411
Polling	177	8,758
Two-way	118	118
Four-way	120	120
Swing states	306	306
Predictions	8,037	8,037
Endorsements	273	273
Total cost estimate	675	675
Campaign issues	22	33,739
COVID-19 pandemic	5,042	5,042
Economy	3,099	3,099
Environment	1,917	1,917
Health care	2,537	2,537
Racial unrest	6,707	6,707
Exit poll	14,415	14,415
Timeline	82	82
Results	196	62,485
Statistics	21,072	21,072
Election calls	5,787	5,787
OSCE election monitoring	5,658	5,658
Electoral results	1,826	1,826
Results by state	20,658	20,658
States and EV districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic	211	211
Close states	3,668	3,668
County statistics	1,381	1,381
Maps	2,028	2,028
Voter demographics	17,398	36,062
Voting patterns by ethnicity	37	14,126
Hispanic and Latino voters	4,652	4,652
Black voters	2,192	2,192
Asian American and Pacific Island voters	1,532	1,532
Indian American voters	1,855	1,855
American Indian and Alaska Native voters	3,858	3,858
Polling accuracy	4,538	4,538
Aftermath	96	118,453
Election night	6,242	6,242
Late counting	21,017	21,017
Election protests	2,238	2,238
False claims of fraud	23,146	23,146
Lawsuits	4,420	6,909
Texas v. Pennsylvania	2,489	2,489
Trump's refusal to concede	5,976	5,976
GSA delays certifying Biden as president-elect	1,546	1,546
Attempts to delay or deny election results	5,776	5,776
Plot for state legislatures to choose electors	3,877	3,877
Pressure on state and local officials	6,525	6,525
Recounts	5,728	5,728
Electoral College votes	3,967	3,967
Certification and January 6th	16,138	16,138
Post-certification	3,242	3,242
Election audits	3,523	3,523
Viewership	2,507	2,507
See also	293	293
Notes	87	87
References	5,183	5,183
Further reading	3,259	5,312
Voter fraud	1,109	1,109
Policy implications	944	944
External links	1,843	1,843
Total	480,891	480,891

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question? about the infobox:

States carried:

25 + DC + NE-02

25 + ME-02

Why are ME-02 and NE-02 included as States carried ?

69.181.17.113 (talk) 01:37, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Because they each count as an electoral vote. --Super Goku V (talk) 10:34, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 8 November 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The US Elections Project citations are a mess. There are three copies of the citation on the page:

<ref>{{Cite web|title=US Elections Project – 2020g|url=https://www.electproject.org/2020g|access-date=November 14, 2022|website=www.electproject.org|archive-date=April 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210430220622/http://www.electproject.org/2020g|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref>{{Cite web|title=US Elections Project – 2016g|url=https://www.electproject.org/2020g|access-date=November 14, 2022|website=www.electproject.org|archive-date=April 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210430220622/http://www.electproject.org/2020g|url-status=live}}</ref>
<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.electproject.org/2020g|title=2020 November general election turnout rates|work=United States Election Project|date=October 7, 2020|access-date=November 8, 2020|archive-date=November 7, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201107042631/http://www.electproject.org/2020g|url-status=live}}</ref>

The first one is mostly correct. The second one was supposed to cite turnout from 2016, but the URL is wrong. The third one is fine, but it duplicates the first one.

I suggest replacing the first one with

<ref name="Elections Project 2020g">{{Cite web|title=2020 November General Election Turnout Rates|work=United States Election Project|url=https://www.electproject.org/2020g|access-date=November 14, 2022|website=www.electproject.org|archive-date=April 30, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210430220622/http://www.electproject.org/2020g|url-status=live</ref>

the second one with

<ref>{{Cite web|title=2016 November General Election Turnout Rates|work=United States Election Project|url=https://www.electproject.org/2016g|website=www.electproject.org|url-status=live</ref>

and the third one with

<ref name="Elections Project 2020g"/>

. 185.47.220.165 (talk) 20:56, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done, thanks. DrOrinScrivello (talk) 22:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, sorry, I forgot the closing braces (}}) for the templates, so they do not render correctly. I didn't notice my mistake because I couldn't preview the change. Could you (or someone else) please add them in? Thanks 185.47.220.165 (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done Thanks for the citation cleanup - I've made the changes, without any attempt going wrong.. FifthFive (talk) 00:08, 19 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

CNN sourcing

Since when is CNN a reputable and valid source to speak about a political candidate that they have repeatedly shown clear bias against? 47.62.150.58 (talk) 09:44, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Since always. WP:RSP. – Muboshgu (talk) 14:18, 6 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 16 December 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change "Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia" to "Numbers indicate electoral votes cast by each state and the District of Columbia." Skywithanunderscore (talk) 05:21, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: Uh... they're the same? Found the difference (a period),

Done. '''[[User:CanonNi]]''' (talk • contribs) 07:47, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]