Talk:2024 United Kingdom general election/Archive 6

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Infobox proposals

Display pooled other party results in Infobox (Option G)

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Party Labour Conservative Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% Seats won 411 121 Seat change 211 251 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader Ed Davey Other Parties and Party Liberal Democrats Speaker Leader since 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Kingston and Surbiton see results Last election 11 seats, 11.6% 72 seats, 9.5% Seats won 72 46 Seat change 64 26 Popular vote 3,519,163 8,198,624 Percentage 12.2% 30.4% Swing 0.6 pp

As a way of resolving the conflict about inclusion of other parties in the Infobox, I have here used "| leader =" 4 as a device to easily access their results. There may be a better way of doing this, but it works to my eye. Whereas the various aguments have been made above, it seems rather perverse to exclude (to name 3) the SNP, #4 and important in previous elections, Reform UK and the Greens, which achived 4.1 and 1.8 million votes respectively. The voting system that created these paradoxical results is almost certain to be a matter of debate over the coming months/years and I think it is important to have easy access to the numbers. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not meant to contain links to sections in the article, as per MOS:INFOBOX. Bondegezou (talk) 16:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

This issue still needs resolving and the MOS guidance is not absolute: "Avoid links to sections within the article" and "There will be exceptions ..." Roy Bateman (talk) 20:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It would be a novel solution, but I'd support it as a compromise. I think we should also apply it to other British elections though. And I'd prefer it be in a 2x2 format, with Lab and Con at the top, and Lib Dem and Other on the bottom. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 01:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you: this idea is growing on me - and I don't think the infobox can stay as it is. Personally. I would prefer the 'top 4' over just 3, in terms of seats in Parliament. It is worth taking a look at the WP treatment for elections around the 1931 United Kingdom general election: another period of political flux. If there were just 3 parties, how would we 'see' the rise of Labour (or Sinn Féin in 1918, if we exclude Ireland)? Roy Bateman (talk) 04:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

How would you see that? By reading the article. The infobox cannot and should not try to cover everything that happened. Our main focus should be on the article.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the current 1931 infobox. The seats were a bit more equally shared out then than now. But I do think we should stop trying to create an infobox that covers every possible angle. Bondegezou (talk) 12:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course the infobox cannot cover "every possible angle", but from the comments above, there is strong dissatisfaction with displaying data on just 3 parties (jointly sharing the lowest vote share in recent history). As a reductio ad absurdum and since the UK has FPTP voting (which promotes the two-party system), why not just display Labour and the Conservatives? It seems to me that one of the outstanding features of the 2024 election is the success of 'other parties' (up to 8 of them): in the interests of a balanced article, this somehow needs to be indicated without making the infobox unwieldy. I repeat, nearly 28% of the votes (more than the Conservatives received) should not be just 'tucked away'. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

While this was published prior to this election, it's still an accurate article on how the current British situation gives rise to something slightly different from a pure two-party system. The seat situation in the current election is broadly similar to those in the elections before the paper was written. [1] AnOpenBook (talk) 05:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - interesting paper. Some might now argue that the UK has a 1-2 and 3-4 halves system! Perhaps I should have written "FPTP voting (which effectively promotes a two-party system)"? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Note

Notes

Survey on Option G

I want to get peoples' opinions on this proposed solution, to see if it might be the consensus solution we're seeking. We're certainly nowhere near that for the other proposals, A-F. Here are a few options we could do:

• 1. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x2 (note: map to be added)
• 2. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 2x2 (as illustrated: map to be added)
• 3. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x3
• 4. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to include Reform, Green, Sinn Fein, or another sixth party
• 5. Do not move forward with Option G

AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 05:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• I vote 5. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• I vote 5, and oppose all the other options GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  As in, you oppose options A-F as well? AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 10:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. While I understand the idea of this, for such a format to work you would really need to make a change to the template itself. The proposal shown here feels too much like an awkward workaround, without being much of an improvement. This is especially the case when the vote shares and seat totals for other parties can be deduced from the number earned by the largest parties, and in any case read further down in the article. Gust Justice (talk) 10:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  You are probably correct, but reprogamming templates is beyond my technical abilities! I have just tried to create a 'quick fix compromise' here. I think it may also be useful for some other post 2010 elections. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 5. This is like the 2x2 format which hasn't been that popular in the RfC but while highlighting additional informational that doesn't provide any real context. As Gust Justice pointed out above, this would need a modified template rather than trying to fit into the current one. Also why is John Swinney's image larger than the other leaders? I assume this is a formatting error. Given there is already an ongoing RfC, and this proposal isn't formally a part of it, I also think it's best to let that play out first before providing further proposals, as even if there was consensus for this proposal, it shouldn't be implemented based on being a sub-proposal of the ongoing RfC that takes priority. Ultimately, if there is no consensus to changing the infobox, then the status quo will remain, which isn't the worst decision. CNC (talk) 10:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• 5 (and no support for 1-4). This is like option B (which has not gathered much consensus) but with the addition of an "Others" field. Neither TIE nor TILE are thought for this (technically TILE could handle it, but then what'd be the point of it altogether...). It's also visually appalling and is seemingly an awkward workaround: on which basis is the SNP left out of "Others" but not any other party? I also contest that "we're certainly nowhere near" a consensus solution for the other proposals: option A has a clear advantage over the others (as well as being the status quo version currently in use for 1945-2015) and, as of currently, is the obvious consensus solution. On the other hand, this option G dispels none of the concerns brought forward by other discussion participants (most of which revolve around showing Reform and/or the Greens if the SNP is also shown); option G will further aggravate such a concern and piss off everyone. A compromise solution would mean that, while almost no one is left 100% satisfied with it, it would be the least dissatisfying of all: I currently see this as the perfect choice for leaving people 100% dissatisfied. Impru20^talk 11:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. This solves nothing. My opinion on B (inadequate overview and NPOV-incompliant) applies for this one too - here it implies the rest of the seats are (with the possible exception of the Speaker) one bloc when it couldn't be further from the truth.

I would actually prefer F over G, and F is by far my least favourite out of the original six proposals. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. It obfuscates more than it helps. "Others" getting almost as much as the first party? It would better to accept 2024 as a step change in the political landscape, and choose a format which recognises that. RodCrosby (talk) 14:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Nearly 7.5 million (28%) votes was considerably more than the Conservatives received - I suggest that giving these numbers clarifies why "2024 [was] a step change in the political landscape". Roy Bateman (talk) 04:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 - but of course not "exactly how Roy Bateman laid it out" - this was merely for illustration. The maps etc. would go at the bottom. If I understand correctly, immediately after the results were anounced, it was a 3 x 2 table, with the top 6 parties included - was there ever a consensus that the current ("Option A") format be adopted? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Note: illustration above changed to 2x2 (as suggested) - consistent with 2015 - and wording survey options modified. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Option H: parties but abridged beyond top 3

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411 121 72 Seat change 211 251 64 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader John Swinney Mary Lou McDonald Nigel Farage Party SNP Sinn Féin Reform UK Last election 48 seats, 3.9% 7 seats, 1.1% 0 seats, 2.0% Seats won 9 7 5 Seat change 39 5 Popular vote 724,758 210,891 4,117,221 Percentage 2.5% 0.7% 14.3% Swing 1.3 pp 0.1 pp 12.3 pp   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Gavin Robinson Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay Rhun ap Iorwerth Party DUP Green Plaid Cymru Last election 8 seats, 1.2% 1 seat, 2.6% 4 seats, 0.5% Seats won 5 4 4 Seat change 3 3 Popular vote 172,058 1,841,888 194,811 Percentage 0.6% 6.4% 0.7% Swing 0.2 pp 3.8 pp 0.2 pp
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

Just throwing another idea out there. Bit of an awkward compromise but it would be possible to include the nine parties whilst trimming down the info enough that it doesn't take up as much space, like this. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Let's call this Option H for the purposes of discussion. Personally actually quite like this one. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a better proposal than Option G by far, but I'm not convinced people will go for it. If we're at the point of preparing alternative proposals, then it'd be worth also considering the 2x3 format of this (as below but without the bottom row). In the RfC there appears to be more support for 2x3 than 3x3, so that option might receive better support. I otherwise think that when the RfC is closed, the closure will ideally can highlight options that were the most popular, so that a refined RfC can take place based on those options (if there is energy for that). CNC (talk) 11:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With 6 seats, shouldn't the Independents come-in at 6th place? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Independents are not a political party. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like it. Independents are an oddity... I would suggest they are not a coherent group, so they shouldn't come in a TIE infobox as if they were a party. I've never seen independents listed in a TIE infobox in that manner, I think, although I have seen them included in a TILE infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like this option a lot, and agree that Independents aren't a party, and should be treated as a series of 1-person groups rather than a 6-seat grouping. GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Especially since not all 6 run on the same platform. Alex Easton is an ex-DUP member who's decidedly divorced on platform messaging from the other five; while Jeremy Corbyn is an ex-Labour incumbent winning re-election, distinguishing from the other four pro-Palestine independents. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 10:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is basically option E but without the leaders' pics (which will mislead casual readers into thinking that pics are missing and should be added). So it's a no from me. Impru20^talk 11:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

If we're going with this, why not add in the pictures as well? We aren't limited for space on the article as is. Nonetheless, I think this will inevitably bring up NPOV discussions that are only solved by Option F (or, less strongly, A). AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With images would be Option E, this is a separate proposal. CNC (talk) 12:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

So it's the same than E but without images, which basically means to paint the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow don't see the elephant. Impru20^talk 12:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This feels like a downgrade from Option E. While I am neutral but receptive on E, Option H is a no from me for the same reasons as Impru. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of which parties to depict, I would honestly prefer option E to this. Not showing the images for some of the parties, while making the infobox more compact, awkwardly treats some party leaders differently for no apparent reason, as though there are two categories of parties. Gust Justice (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Survey on Option H

Another proposed solution: is it the consensus solution we're seeking, based on the comments above:

• 1. Move forward with Option H, as laid it out here
• 2. Go back to Option E (restore pictures)
• 3. Move forward with Option H, but add Independents, Plaid Cymru and SDLP
• 4. Do not move forward with Option H

If you vote for option 4, can you suggest anything better? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 has my votes, although option 2 is fine too. I'm not sure what you mean in option 3, by 'Add Independents, Plaid Cymru, and SDLP'. Plaid Cymru are already in, in 9th place, in the existing proposed layout. The independents are singletons, as has been explained already, and the SDLP only got two seats, so would stay behind Plaid Cymru and not feature. GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, keep the status quo Option A as bit fit for now, followed by 2x3 as potential improvement.. CNC (talk) 11:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, as laid out above. This is just option E (which does not solve the issues raised in the discussion above) but without the pictures. It does not provide any meaningful change and is prone to casual confusion since it's difficult to understand and entirely out of consistency with other articles (once time passes and the article becomes stable, casual readers will think the pictures are missing by accident and will attempt to add them, thus making it fertile ground for edit warring). Options A to F at the very least propose different infobox configurations with their own rationales; from G onwards we are basically discussing slight, decorative adjustments of these options (as I said yesterday: painting the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow pretend that the elephant does not exist). On my suggestion, that would be my !vote in the discussion above: Strong support for A, weak oppose to C, strong oppose to B/D and then E, strongly oppose to F. Impru20^talk 11:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: I think Option G is a better way to save space while providing clarity. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: This is just a diluted version of option E which is already one of the least popular options. Kiwichris (talk) 06:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Option I: Synthesis of options A and F

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	48,214,128
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411† 121 72 Seat change 211‡ 251‡ 64‡ Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– SNP John Swinney 2.5 9 −39 Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald 2.5 7 0 Reform UK Nigel Farage 14.3 5 +5 Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson 0.8 5 −3 Green Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay 6.4 4 +3 Plaid Cymru Rhun ap Iorwerth 0.7 4 0 SDLP Colum Eastwood 0.3 2 0 Alliance Naomi Long 0.4 1 0 Ulster Unionist Doug Beattie 0.3 1 0 TUV Jim Allister 0.2 1 0 Independent — 2 6 +6 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle 0.1 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Rishi Sunak Conservative Keir Starmer Labour

As a compromise option, this infobox uses TIE to display the top three parties with the other parties displayed in a TILE module. This isn't my preferred solution, but I think it does solve the issue of setting an inclusion boundary, while keeping the legibility of TIE for the main parties (unlike option F) and not taking up too much space (about the same as a 3x2 infobox, unlike option E). Just realised the number of infoboxes embedded on this page makes it a bit hard to find, so i've put a link to it here. Thoughts? CipherRephic (talk) 15:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

My thought is that this is the best proposal by some margin. It visually indicates the massive statistical outliers of the big three without relegating the others to being unworthy of mention in the infobox. I’ll be changing my vote. Cambial — foliar❧ 16:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Opposed to this. While I commend the good will behind this, we have gone beyond the point of reasonable discussion here; as I said in a comment previously, all options beyond F (G, H and now I) are mix ups/variants of options A-F, so it means they solve none of the concerns brought by them. In particular, the concerns over the use of TILE remain the exact same with this option, to which you now will have to add where to draw the line on which parties you will show with one format and which ones will go the other way: it should be the SNP? Why not Reform? Why not the Greens? This is also very out of consistency with infoboxes for two centuries-worth of elections in the UK. Not a good proposal, in my opinion. Impru20^talk 17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

It's a messy, shitty compromise, but maybe that's what we need at this point. For what it's worth, this might be the only option that satisfies both NPOV and UNDUE in a way that makes people the least unhappy. I think coming up with a proper solution is better and more important than "following consistency". AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 19:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

A messy and shitty compromise is not a proper solution. Needless to say, I don't see the benefit of this "synthesis" style infobox, if it were of any value this style of template would have been a created a long-time ago. I admire the good faith attempts of editors to discover consensus when these is little to none in the RfC, but so far these proposals G-I have overall been worse (less supported) than the originals. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, it might be worth accepting that based on the comments from the RfC, none of these proposals (or future proposals) are likely to be popular. CNC (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

If it's a "messy and shitty compromise" then it's not a solution. Options A-F may be agreeable or not, but these are not as messy nor as shitty as the ones from G onwards. Infuriating everyone so that everyone is as displeased as possible is not a compromise. Impru20^talk 09:22, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, if it truly does piss off a lot of people it's not a solution. Unfortunately we are no closer to a consensus or solution than before in that case. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 00:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I can see the merits of this. It looks messy but it does partially solve the issues at hand. While I am opposed to full TILE in British elections, a hybridised TIE/TILE setup can work in an election where nobody can come to an infobox consensus. SNP, Sinn Féin, Reform, and Green's surges all are notable, and it can show the surges while partially preserving the format.

We'll see how this goes. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 04:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I admire the ingenuity, but I think it will confuse readers who won’t have seen anything similar before, so it’s a no from me. If you want to show all the parties, just use TILE, as dozens of election articles do. If you want TIE, then just show the big seat winners, as dozens of election articles do. Bondegezou (talk) 07:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

This is functionally a variant of option G and an improvement on the staus quo: which many editors are unhappy about (myself included) since it doesn't adequately describe the complexity of the results. Roy Bateman (talk) 07:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

TILE listing every party describes the complexity of the results, if that’s what you want. There’s no extra complexity described by this hybrid. Bondegezou (talk) 08:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I beg to differ: the % and seats columns add a lot to the description of results. Roy Bateman (talk) 00:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Infobox proposals

Display pooled other party results in Infobox (Option G)

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Party Labour Conservative Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% Seats won 411 121 Seat change 211 251 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader Ed Davey Other Parties and Party Liberal Democrats Speaker Leader since 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Kingston and Surbiton see results Last election 11 seats, 11.6% 72 seats, 9.5% Seats won 72 46 Seat change 64 26 Popular vote 3,519,163 8,198,624 Percentage 12.2% 30.4% Swing 0.6 pp

As a way of resolving the conflict about inclusion of other parties in the Infobox, I have here used "| leader =" 4 as a device to easily access their results. There may be a better way of doing this, but it works to my eye. Whereas the various aguments have been made above, it seems rather perverse to exclude (to name 3) the SNP, #4 and important in previous elections, Reform UK and the Greens, which achived 4.1 and 1.8 million votes respectively. The voting system that created these paradoxical results is almost certain to be a matter of debate over the coming months/years and I think it is important to have easy access to the numbers. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not meant to contain links to sections in the article, as per MOS:INFOBOX. Bondegezou (talk) 16:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

This issue still needs resolving and the MOS guidance is not absolute: "Avoid links to sections within the article" and "There will be exceptions ..." Roy Bateman (talk) 20:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It would be a novel solution, but I'd support it as a compromise. I think we should also apply it to other British elections though. And I'd prefer it be in a 2x2 format, with Lab and Con at the top, and Lib Dem and Other on the bottom. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 01:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you: this idea is growing on me - and I don't think the infobox can stay as it is. Personally. I would prefer the 'top 4' over just 3, in terms of seats in Parliament. It is worth taking a look at the WP treatment for elections around the 1931 United Kingdom general election: another period of political flux. If there were just 3 parties, how would we 'see' the rise of Labour (or Sinn Féin in 1918, if we exclude Ireland)? Roy Bateman (talk) 04:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

How would you see that? By reading the article. The infobox cannot and should not try to cover everything that happened. Our main focus should be on the article.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the current 1931 infobox. The seats were a bit more equally shared out then than now. But I do think we should stop trying to create an infobox that covers every possible angle. Bondegezou (talk) 12:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course the infobox cannot cover "every possible angle", but from the comments above, there is strong dissatisfaction with displaying data on just 3 parties (jointly sharing the lowest vote share in recent history). As a reductio ad absurdum and since the UK has FPTP voting (which promotes the two-party system), why not just display Labour and the Conservatives? It seems to me that one of the outstanding features of the 2024 election is the success of 'other parties' (up to 8 of them): in the interests of a balanced article, this somehow needs to be indicated without making the infobox unwieldy. I repeat, nearly 28% of the votes (more than the Conservatives received) should not be just 'tucked away'. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

While this was published prior to this election, it's still an accurate article on how the current British situation gives rise to something slightly different from a pure two-party system. The seat situation in the current election is broadly similar to those in the elections before the paper was written. [2] AnOpenBook (talk) 05:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - interesting paper. Some might now argue that the UK has a 1-2 and 3-4 halves system! Perhaps I should have written "FPTP voting (which effectively promotes a two-party system)"? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Note

Notes

Survey on Option G

I want to get peoples' opinions on this proposed solution, to see if it might be the consensus solution we're seeking. We're certainly nowhere near that for the other proposals, A-F. Here are a few options we could do:

• 1. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x2 (note: map to be added)
• 2. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 2x2 (as illustrated: map to be added)
• 3. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x3
• 4. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to include Reform, Green, Sinn Fein, or another sixth party
• 5. Do not move forward with Option G

AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 05:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• I vote 5. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• I vote 5, and oppose all the other options GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  As in, you oppose options A-F as well? AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 10:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. While I understand the idea of this, for such a format to work you would really need to make a change to the template itself. The proposal shown here feels too much like an awkward workaround, without being much of an improvement. This is especially the case when the vote shares and seat totals for other parties can be deduced from the number earned by the largest parties, and in any case read further down in the article. Gust Justice (talk) 10:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  You are probably correct, but reprogamming templates is beyond my technical abilities! I have just tried to create a 'quick fix compromise' here. I think it may also be useful for some other post 2010 elections. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 5. This is like the 2x2 format which hasn't been that popular in the RfC but while highlighting additional informational that doesn't provide any real context. As Gust Justice pointed out above, this would need a modified template rather than trying to fit into the current one. Also why is John Swinney's image larger than the other leaders? I assume this is a formatting error. Given there is already an ongoing RfC, and this proposal isn't formally a part of it, I also think it's best to let that play out first before providing further proposals, as even if there was consensus for this proposal, it shouldn't be implemented based on being a sub-proposal of the ongoing RfC that takes priority. Ultimately, if there is no consensus to changing the infobox, then the status quo will remain, which isn't the worst decision. CNC (talk) 10:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• 5 (and no support for 1-4). This is like option B (which has not gathered much consensus) but with the addition of an "Others" field. Neither TIE nor TILE are thought for this (technically TILE could handle it, but then what'd be the point of it altogether...). It's also visually appalling and is seemingly an awkward workaround: on which basis is the SNP left out of "Others" but not any other party? I also contest that "we're certainly nowhere near" a consensus solution for the other proposals: option A has a clear advantage over the others (as well as being the status quo version currently in use for 1945-2015) and, as of currently, is the obvious consensus solution. On the other hand, this option G dispels none of the concerns brought forward by other discussion participants (most of which revolve around showing Reform and/or the Greens if the SNP is also shown); option G will further aggravate such a concern and piss off everyone. A compromise solution would mean that, while almost no one is left 100% satisfied with it, it would be the least dissatisfying of all: I currently see this as the perfect choice for leaving people 100% dissatisfied. Impru20^talk 11:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. This solves nothing. My opinion on B (inadequate overview and NPOV-incompliant) applies for this one too - here it implies the rest of the seats are (with the possible exception of the Speaker) one bloc when it couldn't be further from the truth.

I would actually prefer F over G, and F is by far my least favourite out of the original six proposals. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. It obfuscates more than it helps. "Others" getting almost as much as the first party? It would better to accept 2024 as a step change in the political landscape, and choose a format which recognises that. RodCrosby (talk) 14:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Nearly 7.5 million (28%) votes was considerably more than the Conservatives received - I suggest that giving these numbers clarifies why "2024 [was] a step change in the political landscape". Roy Bateman (talk) 04:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 - but of course not "exactly how Roy Bateman laid it out" - this was merely for illustration. The maps etc. would go at the bottom. If I understand correctly, immediately after the results were anounced, it was a 3 x 2 table, with the top 6 parties included - was there ever a consensus that the current ("Option A") format be adopted? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Note: illustration above changed to 2x2 (as suggested) - consistent with 2015 - and wording survey options modified. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Option H: parties but abridged beyond top 3

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411 121 72 Seat change 211 251 64 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader John Swinney Mary Lou McDonald Nigel Farage Party SNP Sinn Féin Reform UK Last election 48 seats, 3.9% 7 seats, 1.1% 0 seats, 2.0% Seats won 9 7 5 Seat change 39 5 Popular vote 724,758 210,891 4,117,221 Percentage 2.5% 0.7% 14.3% Swing 1.3 pp 0.1 pp 12.3 pp   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Gavin Robinson Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay Rhun ap Iorwerth Party DUP Green Plaid Cymru Last election 8 seats, 1.2% 1 seat, 2.6% 4 seats, 0.5% Seats won 5 4 4 Seat change 3 3 Popular vote 172,058 1,841,888 194,811 Percentage 0.6% 6.4% 0.7% Swing 0.2 pp 3.8 pp 0.2 pp
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

Just throwing another idea out there. Bit of an awkward compromise but it would be possible to include the nine parties whilst trimming down the info enough that it doesn't take up as much space, like this. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Let's call this Option H for the purposes of discussion. Personally actually quite like this one. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a better proposal than Option G by far, but I'm not convinced people will go for it. If we're at the point of preparing alternative proposals, then it'd be worth also considering the 2x3 format of this (as below but without the bottom row). In the RfC there appears to be more support for 2x3 than 3x3, so that option might receive better support. I otherwise think that when the RfC is closed, the closure will ideally can highlight options that were the most popular, so that a refined RfC can take place based on those options (if there is energy for that). CNC (talk) 11:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With 6 seats, shouldn't the Independents come-in at 6th place? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Independents are not a political party. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like it. Independents are an oddity... I would suggest they are not a coherent group, so they shouldn't come in a TIE infobox as if they were a party. I've never seen independents listed in a TIE infobox in that manner, I think, although I have seen them included in a TILE infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like this option a lot, and agree that Independents aren't a party, and should be treated as a series of 1-person groups rather than a 6-seat grouping. GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Especially since not all 6 run on the same platform. Alex Easton is an ex-DUP member who's decidedly divorced on platform messaging from the other five; while Jeremy Corbyn is an ex-Labour incumbent winning re-election, distinguishing from the other four pro-Palestine independents. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 10:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is basically option E but without the leaders' pics (which will mislead casual readers into thinking that pics are missing and should be added). So it's a no from me. Impru20^talk 11:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

If we're going with this, why not add in the pictures as well? We aren't limited for space on the article as is. Nonetheless, I think this will inevitably bring up NPOV discussions that are only solved by Option F (or, less strongly, A). AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With images would be Option E, this is a separate proposal. CNC (talk) 12:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

So it's the same than E but without images, which basically means to paint the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow don't see the elephant. Impru20^talk 12:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This feels like a downgrade from Option E. While I am neutral but receptive on E, Option H is a no from me for the same reasons as Impru. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of which parties to depict, I would honestly prefer option E to this. Not showing the images for some of the parties, while making the infobox more compact, awkwardly treats some party leaders differently for no apparent reason, as though there are two categories of parties. Gust Justice (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Survey on Option H

Another proposed solution: is it the consensus solution we're seeking, based on the comments above:

• 1. Move forward with Option H, as laid it out here
• 2. Go back to Option E (restore pictures)
• 3. Move forward with Option H, but add Independents, Plaid Cymru and SDLP
• 4. Do not move forward with Option H

If you vote for option 4, can you suggest anything better? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 has my votes, although option 2 is fine too. I'm not sure what you mean in option 3, by 'Add Independents, Plaid Cymru, and SDLP'. Plaid Cymru are already in, in 9th place, in the existing proposed layout. The independents are singletons, as has been explained already, and the SDLP only got two seats, so would stay behind Plaid Cymru and not feature. GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, keep the status quo Option A as bit fit for now, followed by 2x3 as potential improvement.. CNC (talk) 11:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, as laid out above. This is just option E (which does not solve the issues raised in the discussion above) but without the pictures. It does not provide any meaningful change and is prone to casual confusion since it's difficult to understand and entirely out of consistency with other articles (once time passes and the article becomes stable, casual readers will think the pictures are missing by accident and will attempt to add them, thus making it fertile ground for edit warring). Options A to F at the very least propose different infobox configurations with their own rationales; from G onwards we are basically discussing slight, decorative adjustments of these options (as I said yesterday: painting the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow pretend that the elephant does not exist). On my suggestion, that would be my !vote in the discussion above: Strong support for A, weak oppose to C, strong oppose to B/D and then E, strongly oppose to F. Impru20^talk 11:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: I think Option G is a better way to save space while providing clarity. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: This is just a diluted version of option E which is already one of the least popular options. Kiwichris (talk) 06:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Option I: Synthesis of options A and F

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	48,214,128
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411† 121 72 Seat change 211‡ 251‡ 64‡ Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– SNP John Swinney 2.5 9 −39 Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald 2.5 7 0 Reform UK Nigel Farage 14.3 5 +5 Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson 0.8 5 −3 Green Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay 6.4 4 +3 Plaid Cymru Rhun ap Iorwerth 0.7 4 0 SDLP Colum Eastwood 0.3 2 0 Alliance Naomi Long 0.4 1 0 Ulster Unionist Doug Beattie 0.3 1 0 TUV Jim Allister 0.2 1 0 Independent — 2 6 +6 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle 0.1 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Rishi Sunak Conservative Keir Starmer Labour

As a compromise option, this infobox uses TIE to display the top three parties with the other parties displayed in a TILE module. This isn't my preferred solution, but I think it does solve the issue of setting an inclusion boundary, while keeping the legibility of TIE for the main parties (unlike option F) and not taking up too much space (about the same as a 3x2 infobox, unlike option E). Just realised the number of infoboxes embedded on this page makes it a bit hard to find, so i've put a link to it here. Thoughts? CipherRephic (talk) 15:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

My thought is that this is the best proposal by some margin. It visually indicates the massive statistical outliers of the big three without relegating the others to being unworthy of mention in the infobox. I’ll be changing my vote. Cambial — foliar❧ 16:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Opposed to this. While I commend the good will behind this, we have gone beyond the point of reasonable discussion here; as I said in a comment previously, all options beyond F (G, H and now I) are mix ups/variants of options A-F, so it means they solve none of the concerns brought by them. In particular, the concerns over the use of TILE remain the exact same with this option, to which you now will have to add where to draw the line on which parties you will show with one format and which ones will go the other way: it should be the SNP? Why not Reform? Why not the Greens? This is also very out of consistency with infoboxes for two centuries-worth of elections in the UK. Not a good proposal, in my opinion. Impru20^talk 17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

It's a messy, shitty compromise, but maybe that's what we need at this point. For what it's worth, this might be the only option that satisfies both NPOV and UNDUE in a way that makes people the least unhappy. I think coming up with a proper solution is better and more important than "following consistency". AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 19:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

A messy and shitty compromise is not a proper solution. Needless to say, I don't see the benefit of this "synthesis" style infobox, if it were of any value this style of template would have been a created a long-time ago. I admire the good faith attempts of editors to discover consensus when these is little to none in the RfC, but so far these proposals G-I have overall been worse (less supported) than the originals. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, it might be worth accepting that based on the comments from the RfC, none of these proposals (or future proposals) are likely to be popular. CNC (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

If it's a "messy and shitty compromise" then it's not a solution. Options A-F may be agreeable or not, but these are not as messy nor as shitty as the ones from G onwards. Infuriating everyone so that everyone is as displeased as possible is not a compromise. Impru20^talk 09:22, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, if it truly does piss off a lot of people it's not a solution. Unfortunately we are no closer to a consensus or solution than before in that case. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 00:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I can see the merits of this. It looks messy but it does partially solve the issues at hand. While I am opposed to full TILE in British elections, a hybridised TIE/TILE setup can work in an election where nobody can come to an infobox consensus. SNP, Sinn Féin, Reform, and Green's surges all are notable, and it can show the surges while partially preserving the format.

We'll see how this goes. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 04:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I admire the ingenuity, but I think it will confuse readers who won’t have seen anything similar before, so it’s a no from me. If you want to show all the parties, just use TILE, as dozens of election articles do. If you want TIE, then just show the big seat winners, as dozens of election articles do. Bondegezou (talk) 07:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

This is functionally a variant of option G and an improvement on the staus quo: which many editors are unhappy about (myself included) since it doesn't adequately describe the complexity of the results. Roy Bateman (talk) 07:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

TILE listing every party describes the complexity of the results, if that’s what you want. There’s no extra complexity described by this hybrid. Bondegezou (talk) 08:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I beg to differ: the % and seats columns add a lot to the description of results. Roy Bateman (talk) 00:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Infobox proposals

Display pooled other party results in Infobox (Option G)

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Party Labour Conservative Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% Seats won 411 121 Seat change 211 251 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp   Third party Fourth party   Leader Ed Davey Other Parties and Party Liberal Democrats Speaker Leader since 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Kingston and Surbiton see results Last election 11 seats, 11.6% 72 seats, 9.5% Seats won 72 46 Seat change 64 26 Popular vote 3,519,163 8,198,624 Percentage 12.2% 30.4% Swing 0.6 pp

As a way of resolving the conflict about inclusion of other parties in the Infobox, I have here used "| leader =" 4 as a device to easily access their results. There may be a better way of doing this, but it works to my eye. Whereas the various aguments have been made above, it seems rather perverse to exclude (to name 3) the SNP, #4 and important in previous elections, Reform UK and the Greens, which achived 4.1 and 1.8 million votes respectively. The voting system that created these paradoxical results is almost certain to be a matter of debate over the coming months/years and I think it is important to have easy access to the numbers. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Infoboxes are not meant to contain links to sections in the article, as per MOS:INFOBOX. Bondegezou (talk) 16:03, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

This issue still needs resolving and the MOS guidance is not absolute: "Avoid links to sections within the article" and "There will be exceptions ..." Roy Bateman (talk) 20:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It would be a novel solution, but I'd support it as a compromise. I think we should also apply it to other British elections though. And I'd prefer it be in a 2x2 format, with Lab and Con at the top, and Lib Dem and Other on the bottom. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 01:28, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you: this idea is growing on me - and I don't think the infobox can stay as it is. Personally. I would prefer the 'top 4' over just 3, in terms of seats in Parliament. It is worth taking a look at the WP treatment for elections around the 1931 United Kingdom general election: another period of political flux. If there were just 3 parties, how would we 'see' the rise of Labour (or Sinn Féin in 1918, if we exclude Ireland)? Roy Bateman (talk) 04:22, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

How would you see that? By reading the article. The infobox cannot and should not try to cover everything that happened. Our main focus should be on the article.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the current 1931 infobox. The seats were a bit more equally shared out then than now. But I do think we should stop trying to create an infobox that covers every possible angle. Bondegezou (talk) 12:30, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Of course the infobox cannot cover "every possible angle", but from the comments above, there is strong dissatisfaction with displaying data on just 3 parties (jointly sharing the lowest vote share in recent history). As a reductio ad absurdum and since the UK has FPTP voting (which promotes the two-party system), why not just display Labour and the Conservatives? It seems to me that one of the outstanding features of the 2024 election is the success of 'other parties' (up to 8 of them): in the interests of a balanced article, this somehow needs to be indicated without making the infobox unwieldy. I repeat, nearly 28% of the votes (more than the Conservatives received) should not be just 'tucked away'. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

While this was published prior to this election, it's still an accurate article on how the current British situation gives rise to something slightly different from a pure two-party system. The seat situation in the current election is broadly similar to those in the elections before the paper was written. [3] AnOpenBook (talk) 05:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - interesting paper. Some might now argue that the UK has a 1-2 and 3-4 halves system! Perhaps I should have written "FPTP voting (which effectively promotes a two-party system)"? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:10, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Note

Notes

Survey on Option G

I want to get peoples' opinions on this proposed solution, to see if it might be the consensus solution we're seeking. We're certainly nowhere near that for the other proposals, A-F. Here are a few options we could do:

• 1. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x2 (note: map to be added)
• 2. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 2x2 (as illustrated: map to be added)
• 3. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to 3x3
• 4. Move forward with Option G, but change the formatting to include Reform, Green, Sinn Fein, or another sixth party
• 5. Do not move forward with Option G

AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 05:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• I vote 5. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• I vote 5, and oppose all the other options GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  As in, you oppose options A-F as well? AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 10:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. While I understand the idea of this, for such a format to work you would really need to make a change to the template itself. The proposal shown here feels too much like an awkward workaround, without being much of an improvement. This is especially the case when the vote shares and seat totals for other parties can be deduced from the number earned by the largest parties, and in any case read further down in the article. Gust Justice (talk) 10:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

  You are probably correct, but reprogamming templates is beyond my technical abilities! I have just tried to create a 'quick fix compromise' here. I think it may also be useful for some other post 2010 elections. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 5. This is like the 2x2 format which hasn't been that popular in the RfC but while highlighting additional informational that doesn't provide any real context. As Gust Justice pointed out above, this would need a modified template rather than trying to fit into the current one. Also why is John Swinney's image larger than the other leaders? I assume this is a formatting error. Given there is already an ongoing RfC, and this proposal isn't formally a part of it, I also think it's best to let that play out first before providing further proposals, as even if there was consensus for this proposal, it shouldn't be implemented based on being a sub-proposal of the ongoing RfC that takes priority. Ultimately, if there is no consensus to changing the infobox, then the status quo will remain, which isn't the worst decision. CNC (talk) 10:55, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• 5 (and no support for 1-4). This is like option B (which has not gathered much consensus) but with the addition of an "Others" field. Neither TIE nor TILE are thought for this (technically TILE could handle it, but then what'd be the point of it altogether...). It's also visually appalling and is seemingly an awkward workaround: on which basis is the SNP left out of "Others" but not any other party? I also contest that "we're certainly nowhere near" a consensus solution for the other proposals: option A has a clear advantage over the others (as well as being the status quo version currently in use for 1945-2015) and, as of currently, is the obvious consensus solution. On the other hand, this option G dispels none of the concerns brought forward by other discussion participants (most of which revolve around showing Reform and/or the Greens if the SNP is also shown); option G will further aggravate such a concern and piss off everyone. A compromise solution would mean that, while almost no one is left 100% satisfied with it, it would be the least dissatisfying of all: I currently see this as the perfect choice for leaving people 100% dissatisfied. Impru20^talk 11:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. This solves nothing. My opinion on B (inadequate overview and NPOV-incompliant) applies for this one too - here it implies the rest of the seats are (with the possible exception of the Speaker) one bloc when it couldn't be further from the truth.

I would actually prefer F over G, and F is by far my least favourite out of the original six proposals. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• 5. It obfuscates more than it helps. "Others" getting almost as much as the first party? It would better to accept 2024 as a step change in the political landscape, and choose a format which recognises that. RodCrosby (talk) 14:56, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Nearly 7.5 million (28%) votes was considerably more than the Conservatives received - I suggest that giving these numbers clarifies why "2024 [was] a step change in the political landscape". Roy Bateman (talk) 04:58, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 - but of course not "exactly how Roy Bateman laid it out" - this was merely for illustration. The maps etc. would go at the bottom. If I understand correctly, immediately after the results were anounced, it was a 3 x 2 table, with the top 6 parties included - was there ever a consensus that the current ("Option A") format be adopted? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:38, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Note: illustration above changed to 2x2 (as suggested) - consistent with 2015 - and wording survey options modified. Roy Bateman (talk) 08:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Option H: parties but abridged beyond top 3

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411 121 72 Seat change 211 251 64 Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader John Swinney Mary Lou McDonald Nigel Farage Party SNP Sinn Féin Reform UK Last election 48 seats, 3.9% 7 seats, 1.1% 0 seats, 2.0% Seats won 9 7 5 Seat change 39 5 Popular vote 724,758 210,891 4,117,221 Percentage 2.5% 0.7% 14.3% Swing 1.3 pp 0.1 pp 12.3 pp   Seventh party Eighth party Ninth party   Leader Gavin Robinson Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay Rhun ap Iorwerth Party DUP Green Plaid Cymru Last election 8 seats, 1.2% 1 seat, 2.6% 4 seats, 0.5% Seats won 5 4 4 Seat change 3 3 Popular vote 172,058 1,841,888 194,811 Percentage 0.6% 6.4% 0.7% Swing 0.2 pp 3.8 pp 0.2 pp
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

Just throwing another idea out there. Bit of an awkward compromise but it would be possible to include the nine parties whilst trimming down the info enough that it doesn't take up as much space, like this. Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 00:23, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Let's call this Option H for the purposes of discussion. Personally actually quite like this one. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 10:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is a better proposal than Option G by far, but I'm not convinced people will go for it. If we're at the point of preparing alternative proposals, then it'd be worth also considering the 2x3 format of this (as below but without the bottom row). In the RfC there appears to be more support for 2x3 than 3x3, so that option might receive better support. I otherwise think that when the RfC is closed, the closure will ideally can highlight options that were the most popular, so that a refined RfC can take place based on those options (if there is energy for that). CNC (talk) 11:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With 6 seats, shouldn't the Independents come-in at 6th place? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Independents are not a political party. Kiwichris (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like it. Independents are an oddity... I would suggest they are not a coherent group, so they shouldn't come in a TIE infobox as if they were a party. I've never seen independents listed in a TIE infobox in that manner, I think, although I have seen them included in a TILE infobox. Bondegezou (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

I like this option a lot, and agree that Independents aren't a party, and should be treated as a series of 1-person groups rather than a 6-seat grouping. GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Especially since not all 6 run on the same platform. Alex Easton is an ex-DUP member who's decidedly divorced on platform messaging from the other five; while Jeremy Corbyn is an ex-Labour incumbent winning re-election, distinguishing from the other four pro-Palestine independents. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 10:41, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This is basically option E but without the leaders' pics (which will mislead casual readers into thinking that pics are missing and should be added). So it's a no from me. Impru20^talk 11:08, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

If we're going with this, why not add in the pictures as well? We aren't limited for space on the article as is. Nonetheless, I think this will inevitably bring up NPOV discussions that are only solved by Option F (or, less strongly, A). AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 11:53, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

With images would be Option E, this is a separate proposal. CNC (talk) 12:03, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

So it's the same than E but without images, which basically means to paint the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow don't see the elephant. Impru20^talk 12:58, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

This feels like a downgrade from Option E. While I am neutral but receptive on E, Option H is a no from me for the same reasons as Impru. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 13:00, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of which parties to depict, I would honestly prefer option E to this. Not showing the images for some of the parties, while making the infobox more compact, awkwardly treats some party leaders differently for no apparent reason, as though there are two categories of parties. Gust Justice (talk) 16:45, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Survey on Option H

Another proposed solution: is it the consensus solution we're seeking, based on the comments above:

• 1. Move forward with Option H, as laid it out here
• 2. Go back to Option E (restore pictures)
• 3. Move forward with Option H, but add Independents, Plaid Cymru and SDLP
• 4. Do not move forward with Option H

If you vote for option 4, can you suggest anything better? Roy Bateman (talk) 06:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 has my votes, although option 2 is fine too. I'm not sure what you mean in option 3, by 'Add Independents, Plaid Cymru, and SDLP'. Plaid Cymru are already in, in 9th place, in the existing proposed layout. The independents are singletons, as has been explained already, and the SDLP only got two seats, so would stay behind Plaid Cymru and not feature. GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, keep the status quo Option A as bit fit for now, followed by 2x3 as potential improvement.. CNC (talk) 11:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4, as laid out above. This is just option E (which does not solve the issues raised in the discussion above) but without the pictures. It does not provide any meaningful change and is prone to casual confusion since it's difficult to understand and entirely out of consistency with other articles (once time passes and the article becomes stable, casual readers will think the pictures are missing by accident and will attempt to add them, thus making it fertile ground for edit warring). Options A to F at the very least propose different infobox configurations with their own rationales; from G onwards we are basically discussing slight, decorative adjustments of these options (as I said yesterday: painting the elephant in the room in pink so that we somehow pretend that the elephant does not exist). On my suggestion, that would be my !vote in the discussion above: Strong support for A, weak oppose to C, strong oppose to B/D and then E, strongly oppose to F. Impru20^talk 11:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: I think Option G is a better way to save space while providing clarity. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:01, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Option 4: This is just a diluted version of option E which is already one of the least popular options. Kiwichris (talk) 06:18, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Option I: Synthesis of options A and F

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Registered	48,214,128
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411† 121 72 Seat change 211‡ 251‡ 64‡ Popular vote 9,731,363 6,827,112 3,519,163 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.7 pp 19.9 pp 0.6 pp
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– SNP John Swinney 2.5 9 −39 Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald 2.5 7 0 Reform UK Nigel Farage 14.3 5 +5 Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson 0.8 5 −3 Green Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay 6.4 4 +3 Plaid Cymru Rhun ap Iorwerth 0.7 4 0 SDLP Colum Eastwood 0.3 2 0 Alliance Naomi Long 0.4 1 0 Ulster Unionist Doug Beattie 0.3 1 0 TUV Jim Allister 0.2 1 0 Independent — 2 6 +6 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle 0.1 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Rishi Sunak Conservative Keir Starmer Labour

As a compromise option, this infobox uses TIE to display the top three parties with the other parties displayed in a TILE module. This isn't my preferred solution, but I think it does solve the issue of setting an inclusion boundary, while keeping the legibility of TIE for the main parties (unlike option F) and not taking up too much space (about the same as a 3x2 infobox, unlike option E). Just realised the number of infoboxes embedded on this page makes it a bit hard to find, so i've put a link to it here. Thoughts? CipherRephic (talk) 15:10, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

My thought is that this is the best proposal by some margin. It visually indicates the massive statistical outliers of the big three without relegating the others to being unworthy of mention in the infobox. I’ll be changing my vote. Cambial — foliar❧ 16:36, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Opposed to this. While I commend the good will behind this, we have gone beyond the point of reasonable discussion here; as I said in a comment previously, all options beyond F (G, H and now I) are mix ups/variants of options A-F, so it means they solve none of the concerns brought by them. In particular, the concerns over the use of TILE remain the exact same with this option, to which you now will have to add where to draw the line on which parties you will show with one format and which ones will go the other way: it should be the SNP? Why not Reform? Why not the Greens? This is also very out of consistency with infoboxes for two centuries-worth of elections in the UK. Not a good proposal, in my opinion. Impru20^talk 17:49, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

It's a messy, shitty compromise, but maybe that's what we need at this point. For what it's worth, this might be the only option that satisfies both NPOV and UNDUE in a way that makes people the least unhappy. I think coming up with a proper solution is better and more important than "following consistency". AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 19:47, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

A messy and shitty compromise is not a proper solution. Needless to say, I don't see the benefit of this "synthesis" style infobox, if it were of any value this style of template would have been a created a long-time ago. I admire the good faith attempts of editors to discover consensus when these is little to none in the RfC, but so far these proposals G-I have overall been worse (less supported) than the originals. At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, it might be worth accepting that based on the comments from the RfC, none of these proposals (or future proposals) are likely to be popular. CNC (talk) 20:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

If it's a "messy and shitty compromise" then it's not a solution. Options A-F may be agreeable or not, but these are not as messy nor as shitty as the ones from G onwards. Infuriating everyone so that everyone is as displeased as possible is not a compromise. Impru20^talk 09:22, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, if it truly does piss off a lot of people it's not a solution. Unfortunately we are no closer to a consensus or solution than before in that case. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 00:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

I can see the merits of this. It looks messy but it does partially solve the issues at hand. While I am opposed to full TILE in British elections, a hybridised TIE/TILE setup can work in an election where nobody can come to an infobox consensus. SNP, Sinn Féin, Reform, and Green's surges all are notable, and it can show the surges while partially preserving the format.

We'll see how this goes. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 04:42, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I admire the ingenuity, but I think it will confuse readers who won’t have seen anything similar before, so it’s a no from me. If you want to show all the parties, just use TILE, as dozens of election articles do. If you want TIE, then just show the big seat winners, as dozens of election articles do. Bondegezou (talk) 07:14, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

This is functionally a variant of option G and an improvement on the staus quo: which many editors are unhappy about (myself included) since it doesn't adequately describe the complexity of the results. Roy Bateman (talk) 07:54, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

TILE listing every party describes the complexity of the results, if that’s what you want. There’s no extra complexity described by this hybrid. Bondegezou (talk) 08:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I beg to differ: the % and seats columns add a lot to the description of results. Roy Bateman (talk) 00:52, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

Banned user providing citations

I'm not clear on the background here, but it looks like we have an IP editor who is presumed to be a banned user, who is making extensive edits to parts of this article - in particular, repeatedly blanking a paragraph that there's no consensus to remove. However, the same user is also providing (at least to my casual glance) good citations for many of the CN tags that have been placed in the article in recent days. Each reversion of the edits takes out the citations and reinstates the CN tags. I'm posting here because I don't wish to get involved in an edit war, especially not when one participant is being identified as a ban evader by means I'm not clear on. Can we find a consensus to accept the citations, rather than just mechanically removing them along with reversing the paragraph blanking, please? GenevieveDEon (talk) 10:24, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

It's Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Lam312321321. I'm reverting under WP:BE with no view on the content - the presumption in non-obvious cases is to revert a banned user's edits. If you want to go beyond that casual glance and verify that each of the citations that they've added supports the statement, you're welcome to restore the references. Belbury (talk) 10:49, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey guys. I'm not a stockpuppet. The reason why my IP continues to change often is because I'm using a hotspot.

I respect some of my edits have got taken away, and I respect the reason why. I did try my best to add the sources but, I sadly cannot do that anymore because I've been blocked from this page.

I have edited this page since the election started, back in May! But I won't edit it now, because my IP is causing problems.

I enjoyed my time here throughout the election 😊 2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:85B7:221A:11A5:A118 (talk) 09:39, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

There's currently a 2a0a:ef40:e4a:e101 rangeblock on Lam312. One of the blocked IPs was removing a paragraph about Grant Shapps's supermajority comments in this article which other IPs in the wider 2a0a:ef40 range have tried and failed to remove again since.

The IP's response above was prompted by me requesting page protection half an hour ago, which I did given the IP range's ongoing slow edit wars, such as blanking the betting scandal section six times with increasingly deceptive edit summaries (eg. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]). This is not the behaviour of someone who respects the fact of or reason for their edits being reverted. Belbury (talk) 10:03, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

I had no warning about that on my talk page and yes, I did try changing that a few times, but only because the reason for taking away the edit wasn't clear enough for me. It wasn't an edit war, and these edits were made weeks ago, if not a month or more so go.

It would be helpful if you could warn people on their talk pages about stuff like this in future. 2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:BC36:6290:2DBC:433F (talk) 10:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

You're on a dynamic IP range, and that range has had a few talk page messages, such as the one where an IP claimed to have only started editing this article on July 7.

You somehow found and responded to my RfPP request within ten minutes today, despite it not being linked from this talk page, so you seem to be up to speed with how this all works. Belbury (talk) 10:36, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

That's not me, and I saw you took away my edits earlier so went on your contributions list and found you were requesting it.

Not exactly hard work.

It's not my fault I have to use a hotspot. 2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:BC36:6290:2DBC:433F (talk) 10:41, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

It's funny how you have no evidence what so ever to back your claims up, but you refer to everyone as a sockpuppet.

If I got a banned on another IP, how am I still here making edits? How can you take away an IP ban? Did I by magic remove an IP ban? 2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:BC36:6290:2DBC:433F (talk) 10:44, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Hey guys, I can remove an IP ban by magic!

Get a life @Belbury. Stalking people isn't healthy hun x 2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:BC36:6290:2DBC:433F (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

So who are you "2A0A:EF40:EDE:B201:BC36:6290:2DBC:433F"? Roy Bateman (talk) 05:00, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Inclusion of parties in the Infobox

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Overall, I find no consensus here. There seem to be several competing factors, different balances of which led to people preferring different options. The only real loser seems to have been option E.

• A desire to keep things "simple" (i.e. not having too much information) led many to reject E, and to a lesser extent C and D as well. F got both support and rejection on this metric.
• A and F benefitted from being obvious cut-off points: F shows every party winning a seat, while A shows only the parties that won a significant proportion of seats.
• B, C, and D benefited for potentially including other stories of the election while not going to the extreme of F: the fall of SNP, Reform UK getting a lot of votes but very few seats, the rise of the Greens in England, and Sinn Féin pulling ahead of DUP in Northern Ireland (although only half of that story is included in C since DUP doesn't make the cutoff).
• On the other hand, many specifically rejected including other "stories". This includes both supporters of A who saw it as summarizing the effective results and letting the text get into stories, supporters of F for concisely listing all seats won, and several "A or F" !votes who accepted either as valid summarizations.
• D seems to have suffered from being characterized as "excluding NI" for no given reason, rather than "includes the top 6 vote-getters" (versus "top N seat-winners" for the other options). On the other hand, the counterpoint that regional parties have little chance at ever looking good on a vote-getters metric did get mentioned.
• F also suffered for looking very different and breaking from the style used for past UK elections. The flip-side view, that the election itself is a break from tradition in having a rise in small parties, seems to have been an influence for supporters but didn't get much direct discussion.
• E suffered generally from being too big and complex. Most wanting that much information were willing to go to F, while others wanting more information than A were happy to stop at C or D.

Not many policies or guidelines were cited throughout the discussion. MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE could support A or F, both being different ways of summarizing the results. WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE were claimed in all sorts of ways, rejecting A for not reflecting the performance of smaller parties, F for over-emphasizing smaller parties when the top three won 93% of the seats, and everything in between for choosing some parties to include over others. Anomie⚔ 13:52, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

---

There is a clear consensus that Labour, the Conservatives, and the Lib Dems should be included in the infobox. Should more parties be included in the infobox, and if so, which?

The main viable options (examples linked) are:

• A: Keeping the infobox as it is currently (3x1, LAB CON LDM. format used for elections 1950-2010)
• B: Changing the infobox to a 2x2 layout and adding the SNP (format used for 2015, 2019 elections)
• C: Changing the infobox to a 3x2 layout and adding the SNP, Sinn Fein and Reform (format used for 2017 election)
• D: Changing the infobox to a 3x2 layout and adding the SNP, Reform and the Greens (excluding NI parties from the Infobox, see first box here)
• E: Changing the infobox to a 3x3 layout and adding the SNP, Sinn Fein, Reform, the Greens, Plaid, and the DUP (see earlier edits to this page)
• F: Changing the infobox to TILE (format not used for UK elections, but is used for elections e.g. in the Netherlands and Israel)

Other suggestions also welcome. CipherRephic (talk) 00:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support B or C I think. Adding the SNP is important for showing the defeat, also they were the third largest at the last election and that seems significant - I referenced the 1993 Canadian federal election further up as an example of a now small party that was previously large making it into the infobox to display the scale of the defeat. Another example would be the Scottish Socialist Party in the 2007 Scottish Parliament election. I think it might be biased to include the Greens but not SF/DUP since the Greens did get less seats, and that's actually what the election is won on. Not 100% opposed though. I'd also mention that UKIP was left out of the 2015 infobox for similar reasons to Reform/GPEW this time - lots of votes, but not that many seats (which is how the election is actually won). Strongly Oppose F - I think TILE is better for where there are many smaller parties - more than 6 parties with significant support. I would be amenable to A and I would not be completely opposed to D. Agree with the below comment that E is too bulky. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 00:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  Since a few others are ranking choices I'll do the same here - B>C>A>>D/E>>F Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 19:27, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Personally, I support A on the grounds that it includes all parties with a major share of the seats in parliament and is the most compact and digestible of the options, while also being amenable to B and C on similar grounds. I'm not wholly opposed to D but I'm aware many other editors would consider its logic dubious and am not entirely convinced of it myself. I strongly oppose E and F - E is far too bulky to serve as a quick summary of the election results (it takes up nearly two 1920x1080 screens, not to mention the problems mobile users would have viewing it!), and F, while compact, is too dense to be legible at a glance, includes a number of parties that would be superfluous to a quick summary of the election. Not to veer too hard into WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT, but I also think it's really rather dull aesthetically (an opinion echoed by a number of lay-readers in previous debates over the infobox in South African and French elections.) CipherRephic (talk) 00:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• Appreciate the willingness to start an RfC here, though as above, I'll note that there already exists one at another link sitewide.

I personally prefer Option F, as it is the most fair. I most strongly oppose A and B, while I have little preference between C, D, and E.

I think we should keep discussion on this talkpage relegated to the bigger thread above. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 01:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• At the risk of opening up a second WP:CANOFWORMS here, perhaps it's time to think about creating a new style of infobox instead of choosing between TIE and TILE? We could steal some inspiration from other language wikipedias, like cawiki (example).  M2Ys4U ^(talk) 02:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The example you used seems to look very similar to TILE. Why not just go for it instead? AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 02:23, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

They look very different to me...  M2Ys4U ^(talk) 02:37, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I support A or B. I think A contains most of the important information related to specifically the resulting Parliament and disregarding any swings or stories of the election itself as well as containing the three parties which are clearly above the rest in terms of seats. However, I support B more than A, as I feel that the inclusion of the SNP, given the magnitude of their change in seats, is warranted, as was the inclusion of the Liberal Democrats in 2015. Now, while Reform and the Greens had a large gain of votes and their rise in seat totals is incredibly significant politically, neither had a large magnitude of change in seats, and I would object to their inclusion over parties with more or equal seats solely as a consequence of that. I strongly oppose C because, to me, it doesn't make much sense to either include Reform over the Greens, as both saw strong performances and I don't think the decision should be made solely on the basis of votes, or include Sinn Féin over the DUP, especially since doing so potentially gives the false impression that Northern Ireland was strongly republican when it was broadly fairly divided between the two groups. I also strongly oppose D as I feel it doesn't make sense to exclude Northern Ireland when neither Scotland nor Wales are removed and, to me, it feels as if the decision to remove the NI parties is made in order to include both Reform and the Greens rather than because there's a compelling reason to remove the NI parties. I oppose E for the reasons mentioned above, namely that it's too large. Finally, I strongly oppose F on the grounds that there isn't enough of a reason to change to this and remove a significant amount of information. I do think this would be the most fair way of doing things for all parties winning seats, but I think the reason why I don't feel as if that's a helpful thing to consider when making this decision becomes apparent when we look at what would be fairest for all parties, namely to list out every single party which ran, whether or not they won a seat. I think that that's a little ridiculous and I think most people would agree, even though it's the most fair. Now, there are definitely reasonable situations where option F should be used, the Netherlands and Israel are two of them, but I don't think it should be used solely on the basis of being fair. AnOpenBook (talk) 02:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I feel like I should add why I don't think, even though the rise of minor parties was a key part of this election, that the infobox should reflect that. While this is a story of the election, it isn't a story of the results. Reform got 5 seats and the Greens got 4 seats out of 650. While this is still an incredible shift from British political norms, it isn't a significant amount of seats, which is what Wikipedia normally bases infoboxes on, and so isn't a story of the results, and the infobox is supposed to be a summary of the results. The rise of minor parties needs to be discussed in the article, and it is, but that doesn't mean it needs to be in the infobox, especially since they didn't get a lot of seats. Plaid Cymru got 4 seats, but they aren't a part of this discussion because they didn't get the same number of votes. However, infoboxes are based on seats, since those are what determines the governance of the country. It may be true that votes should be considered above seats, but that isn't the current consensus for Wikipedia elections. AnOpenBook (talk) 03:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I think option F makes the most sense if more than the 3 largest parties are to be included, and option A otherwise. With 13 parties elected, I'd say its pretty close to equivalent to the Dutch example above on 15; additionally, a line has to be drawn somewhere and there is no clear place to draw said line (besides the 3 largest parties by seats, hence option A), and certainly not without getting into arguments of "why include X and not Y". Curbon7 (talk) 02:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I support Option F as this election had one of the largest share of non-major party votes and this should be represented accurately within the inbox. Option A makes this election seem as if it was a 1997 style election where only the 3 major parties had significant support where that just isn't the case. As a compromise I would also support Option C as the collapse of the SNP and the rise of Reform where significant events in this election. Smashedbandit (talk) 02:30, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I support Option C as it will keep the parties in order of seats won and include Reform UK who had a massive impact on the election and came third in vote share. IMO it would be illogical for them to be excluded from the infobox. Option F should not be considered as it is not consistent with all other UK election articles. Kiwichris (talk) 03:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It isn't out of the question to update the other UK election articles to match the TILE style as well, if needed. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 04:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

That would require a far bigger consensus than one for just this page though. Changing this page with the expectation of gaining consensus to change all others is foolhardy nor can a local consensus ignore a wider consensus. Kiwichris (talk) 04:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This is why the other RfC has been set up - though the question remains as to whether we should move discussion there. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 04:54, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I oppose Option F, as it doesn't really fit with the style of UK elections or their campaigns. Its use in the Netherlands election is a perfect example of why: the number of parties participating in Dutch debates is vast, with one radio broadcast somehow including sixteen separate parties! Furthermore, the Dutch House of Representatives operates a Hare quota system, by which any party receiving more than 0.67% of the vote is entitled to at least one seat. But because it only has 150 seats, a party returning a single representative works out at the same 0.67% of the legislature - but the equivalent proportion would mean returning 4 MPs to the House of Commons: in other words, like only the nine largest parties in the 2024 election.

On the basis of the infobox's purpose being to provide a picture of the election at a glance, and given that the largest of the UK debates this year featured seven parties, I would support Option E. The expansion of televised debates over recent elections is an excellent indicator of the corresponding expansion of British politics as a whole, given that the 2010 general election debates only featured three party leaders - not coincidentally, the same three leaders featured in the infobox for that election. Furthermore, expanding the infobox to 3x3 would allow it to include not just the three main GB-wide parties, but also the one or two largest parties that returned MPs only in England (Reform, Greens), Scotland (SNP), Wales (Plaid Cymru) or Northern Ireland (Sinn Féin, DUP).

For this latter reason, I strongly oppose Option D, and note that when most people talk about reflecting the 'story' of this election, they speak overwhelmingly in terms of the election in England. Reform, for example, fared far worse in Scotland, where it only came fifth in total vote share (on around 7%, substantially lower than the Lib Dems on 9.7%), got nowhere near second place in any constituency, and even lost its deposit in 15% of seats. By contrast, the idea that Sinn Féin should somehow be wilfully excluded from this infobox when - for the first time in actual history - a nationalist party has just won the most seats in Northern Ireland(!!!), is arguably to miss one of the real stories of this election, one that could potentially have far more lasting ramifications for the UK as a whole.

For that last reason alone, I would also support Option C, although not nearly as much as Option E; that said, I am a desktop user, and I appreciate that mobile users may find larger infoboxes disadvantageous in ways I'm not aware of. I am largely indifferent regarding Options A and B, but return to my earlier point that both of them seem to reflect an increasingly outdated picture of British elections in an era of fracturing votes, and when there is greater-than-ever recognition of devolution and its effects on the individual identities of all four nations. 31.111.26.25 (talk) 04:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support C or D, and Strongly oppose A or B. Both Reform party and Scottish National Party were notable in this election. The former gaining 14% of the vote is important, any lead box without Reform will leave an enormous gap. The conservatives lost something like 20% of their past vote yet Labour and Liberal Democrats only gained 2.5% votes among them. A reader will immediately question where the other 17.5% of the votes went. Having Reform on the infobox will allow readers to immediately see where a vast majority of those votes went.

Scottish National Party's massive loss in votes is also notable. The party went from a supermajority in Scotland to a distant second. Readers would easily access this info by adding SNP in the infobox. They would also see where many of the other parties seats came from as almost all if not all SNP seats went to Labour, Conservatives or Liberal Democrats.

I have no strong opinion on the sixth party. However, we should add whichever one is more relevant in the news. If there is more coverage of Greens then the sixth party box should reflect that, and vice versa. What matters here is not the number of seats got or votes (since both are low) but how much reliable sources are emphasizing one party over the other. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 05:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support Option C, strongly oppose Options A and B. A and B eliminate way too much nuance from the actual election, D feels like it would just lead to more argumentation down the line of why certain seats are being entirely skipped, and E and F would be way too bulky. However, I would rather have F over D or E, and either of those three would be a vast improvement over A or B. C strikes the balance between keeping WP:NPOV (a seat tie being broken by popular vote is extremely well established), getting across all important information, and keeping things from becoming unwieldy and overburdened. While the Greens increasing their seat share is important, skipping over the Northern Irish parties would be a problem since this is a United Kingdom election, not an English one. Fundamentally, an infobox cannot get across every piece of information, and so should aim to get across all that it can without overburdening itself, something neither A nor B achieve, as they serve to cut out some of the most key changes of the race. DvcDeBlvngis (talk) 07:31, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  Of note is the fact that TUV and Reform may infact sit together as an alliance[10], bringing their total seats up to 6. Would this be cause for changing the number, and thus, settling on C, as the tie would be broken with 6 clear biggest parties? DvcDeBlvngis (talk) 00:50, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

  While this is definitely something to keep an eye on, it sadly wouldn't change the results of the infobox, as they didn't run together as a unified party during the election. We wouldn't be able to make a change to the results if parties make an after-the-fact change to their status in the House of Commons. AnOpenBook (talk) 01:45, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

  The Reform UK–TUV alliance did exist beforehand, and they did run together (not as a unified party, but neither is Co-operative and Labour a single party either per se) in Northern Ireland, with Reform explicitly not running any candidates themselves. As it states on the article, "The TUV applied to run candidates as 'TUV/Reform UK' on ballot papers for the July 2024 general election, but this was rejected by the Electoral Office. Instead, the candidates appeared under a joint Reform UK–TUV logo." The question was whether the alliance would be honored in light of Farage's endorsement of certain DUP candidates, but if it stands, then it would be able to be included, at least in my opinion. DvcDeBlvngis (talk) 02:27, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

  I definitely think they have a stronger relationship than most political parties, but reliable sources don't list them together and didn't at the time of the election, and the Electoral Office didn't give them access to the ballot under TUV/Reform UK. If that had happened or there was reliable reporting of the 6 MPs as under one banner during the election and/or immediately after it, you'd have, to me at least, a much stronger case. AnOpenBook (talk) 05:01, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

  It has now been announced that the TUV's 1 MP will not be taking the Reform UK whip, although they will work together on some issues: [11] Bondegezou (talk) 08:36, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

  Understandable. Hopefully this will help bring consensus closer, and we can get a step towards closing this RfC. DvcDeBlvngis (talk) 19:02, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support Option E with secondary preferences for Option C. The election was pretty big for a wide range of parties and may be influential in the future e.g the DUP falling declining behind that if Sinn Féin . Oppose Option F and Option A as sort of concealing the big picture of election and the figures behind it behind a rather uninspiring blank table. Fantastic Mr. Fox (talk) 07:54, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• Option A or Option F. Option D as a third option as it includes all the vote share outliers. This RFC has too many options and there’s a good chance there will be no consensus for any of them. Cherry-picked lists of parties, that ignore RS, such as those in Options B and C, fail to adhere to the WP:NPOV policy; local opinion here cannot override the site-wide consensus to maintain neutrality. Cambial — foliar❧ 04:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• A or D. A keeps it simple – the top three by seats. However there are good arguments to make for SNP, Reform, and (to a lesser extent) the Greens all being included. All three of those parties have been prominent in the news because of their impact on this election (Reform especially) and the major change in parliament's makeup. Strong oppose to F for reasons others have said; extended details can already be found further down in the article, and the extra parties in TILE haven't received the coverage that parties in option D have. — Czello ^(music) 08:03, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support A, because 1) respects past precedent and consensus from previous UK election articles; 2024 is a return to pre-2015 politics with three strong national parties and no strong regional one, so there is no reason for behaving differently (this is why B is not suitable, as there was a strong SNP in 2015 and 2019, nor C, as that is based in 2017 which was a DUP-dependant hung parliament), 2) is the least conflictive one (everyone may agree to Lab, Con and LDs being in the infobox, but it's absolute chaos and disagreement on which parties should be next. From past precedent we also know that, of all of the options, this is the one that will be less prone to edit warring; adding more parties would mean some people would fight to get the Greens in and SF/DUP out, others would want to put Reform in fourth place... etc.). Strongly oppose F. TILE is only suitable for elections where there is a massive fragmentation with many smaller parties and the larger parties are not that large (here we have the first on 411, the second on 121, the third on 72... and then the next ones on 9 or less. It's clear there's quite a difference there). TILE has also created lots of conflict throughout Wikipedia because of its inability to properly show as much information as TIE does (as well as being, basically, a minimalist "results table", which is something you already can find in the "Results" section). Impru20^talk 08:30, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

As a side note, I also oppose any 3x3 option as it means cluttering the infobox too much (which means I oppose E). Strongly opposing B because of the wide different in seats and vote share between Lab/Con/LDs and SNP, weakly opposing C for the aforementioned reasons, since 2017 was a hung parliament election which made the government dependant on DUP (but it's not as bad a solution as other proposed ones; this does not mean I support it) and strong oppose D because of it specifically excluding parties depending on the nation/region they were contesting (which looks rather discriminatory). This would mean my preference order would be: A > C > ... > B/D (in no particular order) > E > ... > no infobox at all > ... > F Impru20^talk 10:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree about you saying there isn't a strong regional party - Sinn Féin is the 5th largest party now and the largest in NI, and isn't aligned with any of the mainland parties. Fantastic Mr. Fox (talk) 08:33, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Strongly agree with Fantastic Mr. Fox's point. The question should be one of proportionality when it comes to considering the four nations: Sinn Féin won 39% of seats in Northern Ireland - a strong regional party if ever there was one! By contrast, the Liberal Democrats won 12% of seats in England, 10.5% of seats in Scotland and 3% of seats in Wales. Even the Conservatives only won 19% of all the seats they were contesting. 31.111.26.25 (talk) 09:12, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

When I talk about "strong regional party", I mean the SNP's 56, 35 and 48 in 2015, 2017 and 2019, which is a large chunk of the seats even by UK-wide standards. SF is currently 7, and pretending that it's even close to the 2015, 2017 and 2019 situations to manipulate my words is deliberately misleading. The % of the seats elected in a particular nation/region is irrelevant to my point, as the election was held through the whole UK. Impru20^talk 10:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This election the highest percentage of people ever vote small parties instead of the big 2. I think making it look like there are only 3 big players here is a bit of a slap in the face in that regard. Especially considering the fact Reform UK had the 3rd largest vote percentage. Fantastic Mr. Fox (talk) 13:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This is precisely why proportionality is important. Northern Ireland only elects 18 MPs in total - are you saying that even if Sinn Féin won all 18 seats (translation: border poll tomorrow), the result would still not be worthy of an infobox because it's only a drop in the UK bucket?

2024 is the first time in history that any nationalist party has won a plurality of NI seats, as well as the first time in history that unionists have been in the minority there. This, coupled with a similar situation in Stormont and the fact that there is an RoI election taking place no later than March 2025, means that - although this result may seem insignificant to most people in Great Britain - it could well be the sort of thing that goes on to change the entire meaning of 'UK-wide standards' in years to come. 31.111.26.25 (talk) 14:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

1) This is absolutely irrelevant; 2) What you propose (enforcing SF's inclusion into the infobox) because of the (future) political situation in another country violates WP:OR, WP:NPOV and WP:CRYSTAL; 3) You should still not manipulate my words: SNP was included in 2015, 2017 and 2019 because it got 56, 35 and 48 seats (which are way more seats than SF's 7), meaning that the SNP was included there because of its sheer number of seats, not because of any seat proportion in Scotland. Impru20^talk 14:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support A, Weak support for B and D. A is the simplest to use because it includes the parties that won the vast majority of seats, and it avoids a situation where you have to argue over whether to order parties by seats. It is also consistent with e.g. 2010. I could be okay with option B on the basis that showing the SNP allows depicting the large loss of seats it had, which is a significant story. I can get behind D on the basis that those parties were clearly the 6 largest by vote share. Excluding Sinn Fein could here be justified not because of it only contesting constituencies in Northern Ireland, but because its vote share is very low. That being said, I recognise other users will disagree with such an approach.

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Labour Keir Starmer 33.8 411 +209 Conservative Rishi Sunak 23.7 121 −244 Liberal Democrats Ed Davey 12.2 72 +61 Scottish National John Swinney 2.5 9 −39 Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald 2.5 7 0 Reform UK Nigel Farage 14.3 5 +5 Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson 0.8 5 −3 Green Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay 6.4 4 +3 Plaid Cymru Rhun ap Iorwerth 0.7 4 0 SDLP Colum Eastwood 0.3 2 0 Alliance Naomi Long 0.4 1 0 Ulster Unionist Doug Beattie 0.3 1 0 TUV Jim Allister 0.2 1 0 Independent — 2 6 +6 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle 0.1 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. A hex map of the results of the election Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Rishi Sunak Conservative Keir Starmer Labour

• Support option F in modified form. I happen to have mocked-up a TILE version of the infobox last night to see what it would look like, so this RfC is well-timed from my perspective. I've included it to help editors visualise what a change to this format would look like (please excuse any errors).

It seems clear that this election contained more than three significant parties, but it is not clear what the cut-off for inclusion should be. If 2x3 format is used, then the options above exclude either Sinn Féin or the Greens of E&W, which is not satisfactory, and a 3x3 still excludes significant information such as the increased number of independents. Three-column formats are also very wide, which makes the lead rather narrow on desktop.

An easy way around this would be to switch to the table format, which allows all parties to be listed in a relatively compact way. The information currently missing from the template which creates this form of infobox is 'leader since', 'leader's seat', 'last election seats', 'last election percentage', 'popular vote', and 'swing'. Of these, I would not include the first four; details on the leaders are not vital this high in the article, and while 'last election seats' and 'last election percentage' are useful for at-a-glance reference they ultimately repeat the information conveyed by 'seat change' and 'swing'. All four categories could be included in the body instead. I would include 'popular vote' and 'swing', as this is important information not otherwise conveyed. If it makes the infobox wider then at least it will be wide and comprehensive, rather than wide and incomplete. A.D.Hope (talk) 09:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I fail to see why this option isn't the obviously superior one - it displays all the necessary information in a fair way in a relatively compact format. We lose the portraits of the party leaders, but so what. NPOV is more important. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 22:12, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Support A as this election has effectively returned us to the pre-2015 situation in terms of seats. There's no need to include all information in infobox as that's not what it's for, per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. If somebody wants a fuller picture of the election we have an entire article for that. I would support option F in principle, as it avoids this hoopla of deciding and is well suited to parliamentary elections, but only if it was used for all the historical GEs which is a decision outside the scope of this RFC. I oppose E, as it would make the infobox much too cluttered and seem to make to strong a statement about the power and importance of e.g. Plaid as opposed to SDLP. Cakelot1 ☞️ talk 09:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support A, B, or F. Neutral E, Oppose D, and strongly oppose C. C and D are making value judgements on which parties are "more important" when their seats won are very similar to each other. We shouldn't be doing that. Black Kite (talk) 09:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support B or E so as not to put the break at a point where there will be justified disagreement about the relative rankings of the medium-sized party blocs. As an aside, the colour-density shading on the hex map in the sample infobox makes it very hard to read. The SNP/LD and Conservative/Reform pairings aren't sufficiently distinguished if the colour saturation is variable. GenevieveDEon (talk) 10:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, I thought that. I didn't make it, but in general I do think a hex map is preferable to a geographic one as it avoids the need for all those boxes to show the areas with large numbers of small seats. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The hex map is already further down in the article, but anyway, this is not a big deal since the infobox can be adapted to accomodate more than one map (see 2023 Spanish general election or 2024 French legislative election as examples). Not the discussion's topic, though. Impru20^talk 10:20, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Oh, that's handy. Yes, we should include several maps showing different things. A.D.Hope (talk) 10:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• I would strongly approach options E and F. Pretending all parties matter equally is just not an accurate way of summarising the election. TILE also just aesthetically doesn't look as appealing. It should not be used when there is no absolute need to show all parties. The issue with both options E and F is that if they are adopted, this article would be inconsistent with the approach used for previous articles. You could then argue that other articles should similarly have to include all parties winning at least 4 seats in the infobox. Gust Justice (talk) 11:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support A, clearest one given the massive gap in seats between 3rd place (72) and 4th place (9) DimensionalFusion (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• We know that seats under FPTP are not a very good measure of the underlying political dynamic. In theory, a party could win every seat with 33.3% of the vote or less. Should that election be represented as a coming from a one-party state? Of course not.

We need some unbiased, objective rule. I suggest Effective number of parties in term of votes (rounded up).

In 2024 it was 4.75 (5). In 2019 it was 3.24 (4). So in 2024 we should show the top 5 parties by votes.

With the additional adjustment that a party that was in the group last time, but is not this time should also be included. That would add the SNP, which logically leads to Option D. RodCrosby (talk) 12:07, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not unbiased just because it's a metric. I notice that you added an uncited claim about this metric to the lead of the article a few minutes before making this proposal. I don't think we should be referencing this metric for this election at all unless you can find a specific discussion of its relevance to, and calculation in, this election, in a reliable independent source. The existing article on the metric itself is very technical, and badly needs rewriting for a general audience; I really don't think this is a good basis for a rule for this infobox. GenevieveDEon (talk) 12:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The reliable sources will come in due time, don't worry. ENEP statistics are collated across the world, and have been for decades. Neither do I think that the reciprocal of the sum of squared percentages is "very technical". I calculated it with a pocket calculator in under a minute...

https://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/about/people/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/Docts/ElectionIndices.pdf

I note that I am the only contributor to offer an independent third-party solution, and not just my own preference. RodCrosby (talk) 12:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

You can't just add a claim to the article and justify it by saying 'there will be sources in time'. That's the essence of what WP:CRYSTAL is about. And the relevance of this metric to the specific problem we're grappling with in this RfC is a claim that you're making, rather than a demonstrable fact. The wiki article on ENEP is not, in my opinion, particularly clear that the number in the metric corresponds to specific uniquely identifiable parties, and indeed the article is about two different 'effective number of parties' metrics, one of which you have selected to make your argument here. You are stating your own preference - and the relevance of the third-party material you're relying on to the question we're addressing is not clear. I'm also not sure why you think 3.24 rounds to 4.

The typical reader of this article - of any article - is neither a mathematician nor a psephologist. I've got some experience in both fields, but I am also a professional editor, and I know unclear prose when I see it. GenevieveDEon (talk) 12:54, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I will add it, when the references have updated with the 2024 result, as they soon will be. I'm not making a claim. I'm making a suggestion. The suggestion is based on the commonly-used Laakso/Taagepera index since 1979. Most people with experience of mathematics and psephology are familiar with it. Again the rounding up is a suggestion, in the interests of liberality. You've no doubt heard of the Floor and ceiling functions.

I repeat I'm the only contributor to offer an independent solution. Otherwise, it will be decided only by whoever shouts loudest, for no objective reason, to the disgruntlement of many. RodCrosby (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Editors should remember that the infobox cannot do everything. Nor need it. We also have a WP:LEAD section. The infobox should cover the most basic information that a casual reader wants, and that’s the basic result: who got how many seats. We shouldn’t worry about second order details (parties with large falls, parties with big vote shares but few seats). An infobox cannot tell the full story of the election: we do that in the prose. (I wish there was as much focus on the prose as there is on the infobox!) MOS:INFOBOX says infoboxes should be compact and they should only repeat content already in the article (so it shouldn’t cover leader’s seats). We also need to obey WP:NPOV. I think the best way to do that is with option F, particularly A.D.Hope’s version, although I could live with something like what M2Ys4U highlighted. I don't have any strong preference between options A, B, C and E, but I’m fine with sticking with Option A. Option D is absolutely unacceptable: you cannot just ignore parties because you feel like it. That would be highly misleading and fail verifiability. Bondegezou (talk) 12:48, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

All of this is good and fair comment. I don't share the enthusiasm for option F, but that's an aesthetic thing. Your points here are well-made. GenevieveDEon (talk) 13:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that the biggest aesthetic loss with option F is the images of the party leaders, and I'm not immune to it myself. However, given the UK doesn't use a presidential system is it arguable that de-emphasising the party leaders better reflects the nature of the election? As far as I'm aware, in this election the SNP, Plaid, Sinn Féin, and UUP party leaders didn't even stand. A.D.Hope (talk) 13:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

No, it's because TILE has many flaws and because, funnily enough, it doesn't function as an actual summary (you are basically adding all parties there and excluding most of the info that TIE does provide. Why'd we want what would essentially be a copy-paste of the "Results" table into the infobox? That's not what infoboxes are meant for, for a table of results just click "Results" in the table of contents). Overall I agree with Bondegezou's remarks here (other than the preference for F; otherwise, I agree that A is the best choice, B the less bad of the remaining ones and D being entirely unacceptable under the provided basis). Impru20^talk 14:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Well, the results of the election are the most important bit, so that's one reason to want them in summary form in the infobox. Anything in the infobox must also be somewhere else in the article, of course, so I'm not sure that the existence of a fuller 'Results' section is an argument against including results in the infobox. A.D.Hope (talk) 14:59, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

A summary is a summary. MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE is clear in establishing that The purpose of an infobox is to summarize, but not supplant, the key facts that appear in an article. It doesn't mind how you want to put it: TILE means basically putting the full results table, which we have already available at 2024 United Kingdom general election#Summary of seats returned and 2024 United Kingdom general election#Full results, as an infobox (even at the cost of other information), so it's not a summary. Are two tables not enough that you need three? Why not four or five then? That's not what an infobox is intended for and that is why TILE is typically reserved for exceptional situations (Israel, Netherlands) and has been met with widespread opposition elsewhere. Impru20^talk 15:58, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Proposal F is a summary, as it only includes parties which won a seat in the election; the full results include all parties which stood candidates. A.D.Hope (talk) 16:04, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

No, that's 2024 United Kingdom general election#Summary of seats returned. You are proposing a third results table in the article (and, along the way, mutilating other info that TIE provides). If you want to check that, just click on the table of contents to the proper section; the infobox must summarize the entire article, not just results (even if those are its main feature). Impru20^talk 16:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, proposal F duplicates part of the 'summary of seats returned' table. I think that's an acceptable use of the infobox, as those results are the most important feature of the election. A.D.Hope (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option A, otherwise option C. Seeing all the different infobox layouts that have been edited into this article simply confirms to me that Option A remains the best option. Fundamentally, the results of the election were determined by only these 3 parties, none others were significant enough to influence the end result. I'm otherwise strongly opposed to Option D, as this would be a serious violation of WP:NPOV. What NI parties do with their seats or not remains irrelevant to the election result, and excluding these parties due to this, or otherwise because they didn't field candidates in all UK countries, is also irrelevant to this result. Option B otherwise doesn't appear to add any value to the infobox in hindsight, and Option F appears only relevant to PR elections (per examples provided) and not FPTP, which only factors in seats gained as relevant. The example provided in this RfC confirms how much irrelevant information would be included. CNC (talk) 13:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  none others were significant enough to influence the end result. Well, it depends what you mean by that. Labour would still have gotten their majority anyway, for sure, but the scale of the Tory defeat would be far less severe if it were not for Reform. — Czello ^(music) 13:14, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  Hence I'm not opposed to option C as it does provide context, but otherwise is subjectively not relevant to the end result being number of seats won. Fundamentally including Reform in the infobox doesn't explain Conservative % vote share decline, only words can do that, thus I think generally it's better being covered in analysis section, as it currently the case. CNC (talk) 13:28, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  The example of proposal F only includes parties which won a seat, not all the parties which stood candidates. A.D.Hope (talk) 13:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Moved to #Discussion CNC (talk) 14:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support A or C as A is the expected and C would solve the whole "largest vote share / largest seat share" discussion. Oppose D as exclusion of parties carries information not found in the sources. Prefer modified F above by User:A.D.Hope to F, as modified F includes more of the information that should be available at a glance. OJH (talk) 15:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support C, it strikes a balance between showing the main picture and staying compact enough. Both the SNP losing massively and Reform garnering more than 14% of the vote (thus being a major spoiler towards the Conservatives - as many as 166 of 241 Conservative losses could at least be partially attributed to Reform's surge) are major nationwide events in this election, as well as preserving WP:NPOV by keeping Sinn Féin in the infobox (also helps in that this is the first time they became the largest party in Northern Ireland).

By the same token, oppose A, B, and D as they either fail to adequately show the whole picture (A, B) or violate NPOV (D). B may also run into NPOV issues (SNP favoritism?) as the seat difference between the LibDems and SNP is far wider than that of SNP with Sinn Féin or Reform.

Neutral on E as it also adequately shows the main picture but may run into conciseness issues.

Strongly oppose F as it breaks convention for British election infoboxes.

If I must rank all six options, C>E>A>D>>B>>>F. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 15:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think convention should be thought of as an important factor. We can change the previous infoboxes if we must, but we need to stick to the established rules set out to preserve fairness. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 22:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This is true, but we also are not at a situation where there are more than 9 electorally significant parties in the General Election. I still oppose F on that grounds. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 04:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Electoral significance matters for determining the party order, yes, but media noteworthiness is what matters for the decision of inclusion. There are examples where parties that won no seats have been included in infoboxes, like the 2021 Canadian federal election, because of the PPC's media noteworthiness and vote share increase. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 08:46, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• D - add in all parties with both seats and 5 per cent of the votes cast, plus the SNP to show the scale of their collapse. Nothing else is needed other than that, I think. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 15:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Strongly Support D, as it displays the parties that got a decent amount of support in the election. Slightly Oppose C, because the SF result is out of context with no other NI parties. Support B as an alternative, because it shows the 4 parties with a reasonable seat amount and shows the SNP fall off. Oppose A for being too small, and Oppose E and F for being to big, as well as F looking bad. Rahcmander (talk) 13:49, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Speaking as someone that does not live in the UK, I strongly support the use of Option D as the parties included here I thought made the most movement in terms of seat share as well as vote share and I thought the parties listed here made the most news. With a significant minor party vote and minor parties having a somewhat significant seat share I believe it is a very good idea to switch to a new layout in the infobox that represents the state of the major players better—in my definition being a major player just means the party would have made the most news and vote share attention rather than having achieved a large share of seats in the House of Commons.

I don't think the Northern Ireland parties should be included in the infobox as they only represent local issues that I don't think would be easy to understand at a glance from the infobox.

Qwerty123 (they/them) (talk) 06:21, 2 August 2024 (UTC)

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Opinion polls
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader Keir Starmer Rishi Sunak Ed Davey Party Labour Conservative Liberal Democrats Leader since 4 April 2020 24 October 2022 27 August 2020 Leader's seat Holborn and St Pancras Richmond and Northallerton Kingston and Surbiton Last election 202 seats, 32.1% 365 seats, 43.6% 11 seats, 11.6% Seats won 411† 121 72 Seat change 211‡ 251‡ 64‡ Popular vote 9,704,655 6,827,311 3,519,199 Percentage 33.7% 23.7% 12.2% Swing 1.6% 19.9% 0.7%   Fourth party Fifth party Sixth party   Leader John Swinney Nigel Farage Carla Denyer / Adrian Ramsay (co-leaders) Party SNP Reform UK Green Leader since 6 May 2024 3 June 2024 1 October 2021 Leader's seat Did not stand Clacton Bristol Central (Denyer) / Waveney Valley (Ramsay) Last election 48 seats, 3.9% 0 seats, 2.0% 1 seat, 2.6% Seats won 9 5 4 Seat change 39 5 3 Popular vote 724,758 4,117,221 1,943,265 Percentage 2.5% 14.3% 6.7% Swing 1.4% 12.3% 4.1%
A map presenting the results of the election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency
Composition of the House of Commons after the election † excluding the Speaker ‡ owing to electoral boundaries changing, this figure is notional
Prime Minister before election Rishi Sunak Conservative Prime Minister after election Keir Starmer Labour

But then you are misleading the reader. The reader will see Reform UK in 5th place and presume that means Reform UK came in 5th place, but Reform UK did not come 5th (in seats or votes). You cannot expect the casual reader to look through a Talk page to understand that you've imposed a complex set of criteria (won seats and >5% votes, or lost lots of seats compared to last time). If we put a party in 5th place, it has to be the party that came 5th, as per WP:V. Bondegezou (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

No, I am not misleading the reader. The IB will say that a party got x number of votes and x number of seats. There's nothing misleading about that. It's not meant to be a league table, it's not numbered "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6": it's showing how many votes and seats a party got if they are deemed notable enough for inclusion in the infobox. Infoboxes are allowed to leave things out and they do all the time. We have a results table at the bottom for a reason. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 16:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The infobox has a clear ordering. Open it and these are called party1, party2, party3, etc. Practically every other election article infobox strictly follows the results. The party that is 5th in the infobox did 5th best on other election article infoboxes. If the casual readers sees a party in 5th in this infobox, they will read that as meaning the party came 5th. They will not have any idea that you mean this is the party that did 5th well out of a subset of parties defined by certain criteria only used on this article. Bondegezou (talk) 16:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Once again, it is an infobox and not a comprehensive list of parties. Infoboxes only include essential information, as decided by consensus. The six proposed parties here are the six largest parties by vote share as well, just ordered by seat number. It's not as offensive as you're making out. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 16:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option A is the strongest. These three parties hold more than 90% of the seats, include every party in government and the official opposition, and there is a significant drop-off in the number of seats held by the next party, the SNP. I think there is a weaker argument for Option B, but it does do a good job of documenting the significant fall in the number of seats held by the SNP. I oppose C as written: the sixth highest number of MPs goes to independent candidates, varied as they are. There is a weak case to modify this to include Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, the SNP, Sinn Féin and the independent MPs. I oppose D absolutely. It's not justifiable to exclude a larger party because it doesn't contest seats in every part of the UK—it should not be excluded if any party with fewer seats is included. E is too big (and should include independents instead of Plaid). F provides near-equal weight to every party with seats, so is a less effective summary of the results of the election. So I would order them A >> B >> C_I > F. I agree that as a community we should be considering alternative infobox layouts to the ones currently available to us. Ralbegen (talk) 15:34, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think independents are independents. You need to be careful about representing them as a group. In this election, 4 of the independents are very similar, but they didn't choose to stand as a party. A 5th independent (Corbyn) is probably close to them, but a 6th (Easton) has completely different views and was elected for very different reasons. Bondegezou (talk) 15:38, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

That's not an unfair point, but we include them in the sixth row in the results section, as do other recordings of the results—we'd presumably also include them in the sixth row of a TILE infobox. I and others have previously counted independents together in infoboxes for local elections and think there's a strong case to do so here. (That said, by far the most natural cut-off for including only a subset of parties is A.) Ralbegen (talk) 17:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support C first, then D second. Oppose A and B. Treating this election as fundamentally like those from 1950-2010 is ill-advised, as Reform really is a 'fourth party' in terms of the national picture. Certainly I agree that the infobox doesn't need to convey all information, but the point of an infobox should be to summarise the election visually at a glance. As much as I disagree with them, one key piece of information that needs to be communicated is Reform's place in this election. If C worked for the 2017 election, in order to communicate the role of the DUP, then I think similar accommodations can absolutely be made for a party that got more than 14% of the national vote. Of course the election is determined by seats rather than votes, but as Reform UK came second in 98 constituencies I think it is absolutely significant enough to warrant inclusion. Sparkledriver (talk) 15:37, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option D since the Greens received millions of votes and stood candidates nationwide. Maurnxiao (talk) 17:29, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Option D seems like the most practical, the SNP/Reform/Greens were all major players in this election and all had rather dramatic election results, nothing against NI parties (as I am from there myself) but they don't really get media attention or make an impact unless it's something like the 2017 election. Matthew McMullin (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

This makes sense, but one thing I'd like to say regarding media coverage is that of the three sources I found looking at the results on the article, the Guardian page [12] had all parties other than TUV, the BBC [13] had the four in option B and Sinn Féin, and Sky News just had the four in option B [14] AnOpenBook (talk) 23:25, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I strongly support A, but C or D are suitable as well. I feel like anything more than a 3x2 clutters the box to a point where it's useless, and strongly oppose F due to the fact that TILE is not needed when only three parties won the vast majority of seats. TILE is only necessary on systems such as the Dutch. For that reason, I would support A, C, or D. River10000 (talk) 19:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support A given past precedent with pre 2015 elections, as people have mentioned above. 66.99.15.163 (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

• Option F As I think is demonstrated clearly above, TILE is by far the most concise form of infobox – it conveys the results of all 15 factions to win seats in less space that the current infobox shows the results of just three. Number 57 21:12, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  I was wondering if there were any other reasons for your decision for option F? It'd definitely be helpful for me to better understand everyone's reasoning. AnOpenBook (talk) 22:47, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I support D, which focus on the national implications of the election with the large increase in Reform voters and an increase in Green seats, while being amenable to B, C or E as options with similar themes but focus on parties that don't provide a quick, national understanding of the election, but opposed to A as relatively ineffective in conveying information and strongly opposed to F, which is deeply unnecessary for the low amount of major parties winning seats (seven out of the fifteen represented in the TILE are Northern Irish parties, which I believe suggests a relative importance in British politics that Northern Irish parties generally don't have) and the disconnect from how we represent the rest of the British elections. TILE is not a one-size-fits-all solution and I think it'd poorly used here. QRDavis (talk) 21:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

2024 United Kingdom general election

4 July 2024
All 650 seats in the House of Commons 326 seats needed for a majority
Turnout	59.9% ( 7.4 pp)
Party Leader Vote % Seats +/– Labour Keir Starmer 33.8 411 +209 Conservative Rishi Sunak 23.7 121 −244 Liberal Democrats Ed Davey 12.2 72 +61 Scottish National John Swinney 2.5 9 −39 Reform UK Nigel Farage 14.3 5 +5 Green Carla Denyer Adrian Ramsay 6.4 4 +3 Plaid Cymru Rhun ap Iorwerth 0.7 4 0 Independent — 2 6 +6 Speaker Lindsay Hoyle 0.1 1 0 Northern Ireland results (18 seats) Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald 2.5 7 0 Democratic Unionist Gavin Robinson 0.8 5 −3 SDLP Colum Eastwood 0.3 2 0 Alliance Naomi Long 0.4 1 0 Ulster Unionist Doug Beattie 0.3 1 0 TUV Jim Allister 0.2 1 0 This lists parties that won seats. See the complete results below. A hex map of the results of the election Prime Minister before Prime Minister after Rishi Sunak Conservative Keir Starmer Labour

For the "Northern Irish" problem, it wouldn't be impossible to separate those parties into a separate section, as was done to separate the coalitions in the latest Italian election article's infobox. I've attached what this may look like, as a concept. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:00, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Support anything but F. Particularly supportive of A and secondarily of C or D Bejakyo (talk) 04:38, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support A: the SNP aren't included at October 1974 United Kingdom general election, where they won 11/635 seats, so they shouldn't be included when they won 9/650 here. Additionally, including Reform when not including Sinn Fein would also be an NPOV issue. I appreciate Reform did well in vote share, but we typically go by seats, not votes. Sceptre (talk) 21:16, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  I would just mention that the Liberal Democrats were included for the 2015 United Kingdom general election with only 8 seats. They were part of the government before the election. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 13:05, 16 August 2024 (UTC)

Well maybe, just maybe, that "typically", that typical treatment, which is irrefutably obviously undemocratic, needs to change, don’t you think, Sceptre ? Boscaswell talk 21:16, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

• Support A: I'm not convinced we should include the SNP just because they lost seats but I would be fine with B also aligning with the 2015,17,19 articles. Opposed to C, D, and E for including such minor parties and especially F as an unneeded break with every UK election before. Yeoutie (talk) 21:45, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  On F, I don't know if "we don't do it that way" is a good enough reason to disregard an option. I'm replying to you as you've made the point, but it's come up a few times in the discussion so consider it a more general observation. A.D.Hope (talk) 22:11, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not the first commenter here, but I agree that "we don't do it that way" isn't enough of a reason to disregard F, however the fact that it's a sharp break from consensus, to me, means that we need to take that into consideration and there needs to be a clear reason why it alone reflects the electoral results better than any form of the current consensus for us to change to it. There are certainly situations where that reason exists, but I personally believe that the benefits TILE brings can be better brought about via the article itself rather than by replacing the infobox. AnOpenBook (talk) 22:30, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  It alone is the only option that truly preserves WP:NPOV. It also presents information far more efficiently. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 22:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  That's a fair point, even if it's one I disagree with. However, does that mean there's no reason to ever use TIE in your mind? AnOpenBook (talk) 23:05, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  Of course - if less than 9 parties either won seats or were in some way "noteworthy". AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

  In what sense do options A & B betray NPOV? They are simply emphasizing the parties that won seats in the election; they are summarizing, based on number of seats, who has what position in the new legislature.

  "Efficiency" is also in the eye of the beholder here. For the reader who is not interested in the dozen parties that have seats in the single digits, TILE is not especially efficient. Mxheil (talk) 19:28, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  In my opinion, B (as well as the other options aside from TILE) violates NPOV because it puts in an arbitrary cut-off. There's no particular reason to include SNP and not, say, Reform UK, even though the latter got only 4 less seats and a far larger share of the popular vote and media attention.

  You can make a better case for A, but I nonetheless think it's unfair to pretend that new, smaller parties weren't a big "story" from the election night - vote splitting between Labour, Tories, Reform, and Greens in large part caused the Labour landslide. The smaller parties should be represented, and thus to avoid violating NPOV I would go with option F. AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 19:37, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• Strongly support Option G - pooling other party data - see below. The complexity of the result is one of the main features of the 2024 election, but we don't want an Infobox that is too unwieldy. Roy Bateman (talk) 10:37, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• Option C (at minimum), not A or B they're too short. C includes SNP, SF and Reform, three parties more important in this election than the others remaining. SNP facing a sharp decline of MPs, Sinn Féin largest in Northern Ireland for the first time, and Reform having millions of votes and its first elected MPs. Nor do I like the idea of selectively excluding parties on opinion, sources don't treat NI as a separate election, even if many regard them as minor. I would however support another infobox format being developed to list all or many more parties in a more condensed format, for example on the french version, but not in the current format which would be overwhelming. DankJae 19:02, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support C or D: I think it is right that the infobox shows a more complete overview of the election results than just the first three parties.--Scia Della Cometa (talk) 21:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
• Strongly support A, which does the job of showing, at a glance, the key information about the outcome of the election. B-D unduly de-emphasise the Liberal Democrats by putting them onto a new row, which is unjustifiable given just how many more seats they won than the parties placed 4th and beyond. Strongly oppose F which looks cluttered, unappealing, and is not in line with how UK Parliamentary elections have always been infoboxed on Wikpedia. CuriousCabbage (talk) 11:47, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support A for its simplicity or F for it's clarity. Strongly oppose B, C, and D as which of the four parties that 4–5 seats to include shouldn't be decided by editors preference. Oppose E as it's simply to bulky and displays poorly for some readers. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:00, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Strongly support option F (as first and primary choice) and also support D, strongly oppose A, B and C. Use the "TILE" / Infobox legislative election format as is done on 2023 Dutch general election and 2022 Italian general election. This is the most neutral and fair way of doing things as it stops editors bickering and edit warring over "why didn't you include party X" or "why did you include party Y". List each party that won one seat or more, which would look similar to the 2023 Dutch general election article. We absolutely shouldn't go with option A, B or C which are counter to a fair and balanced infobox. Millions of voters voted for other parties that got a large number of seats. So severely limiting the infobox of key information is completely unfair, imbalanced and unnecessary when we have options where more parties can be - and are routinely - included. It's a completely unnecessary and self-imposed restriction when we have election pages across Wikipedia consistently having more than 3 parties in the infobox. While my vote was and still is for option F, my second choice would be D, as while it’s not as fair or neutral as F, it far exceeds A, B and C in terms of neutrality and fairness. Helper201 (talk) 21:44, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

2022 Italian general election is not as suggested as of replying. Furthermore, as already referenced above in discussion, 2023 Dutch general election is another example of PR and why TILE is used, because the results are determined by PV. CNC (talk) 22:12, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

DemocracyDeprivationDisorder your point is in violation of WP:OTHERSTUFF. We don't avoid doing something just because it hasn't been done previously. This seems to be a point other editors are making to when trying to counter option F (essentially saying it hasn't been done on prior UK election pages) but as said, this violates Wikipedia guidelines. Hopefully this is taken into account when the merits of arguments are taken into account and a consensus is concluded, as it is not a valid reason not to use this format of infobox. Helper201 (talk) 11:43, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for sharing your viewpoint but I do not feel comfortable being singled out for an attack. DemocracyDeprivationDisorder (talk) 00:54, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

This was not an attack. Helper201 (talk) 13:05, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Discussion

Opening discussion section to centralise discussion now that an RfC on this topic has been opened.
Recent archived discussions (July 2024 unless otherwise specified):

• 2024 election series template (below infobox) - May 2024
• Infobox - May/June 2024
• Infobox suggested edit - June 2024
• Time to switch the infobox? (or not?)
• Post-result infobox
• What parties should be included in the infobox?
• Third party
• Reform Party in infobox?
• What parties to put in infobox
• Reform Party not shown
• Shouldn't the SNP be in the infobox?

Consider using Template:Moved discussion from to continue discussion from there. CNC (talk) 13:13, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I will take this opportunity to say again that the infobox has to respect the actual results, as per WP:V. Option D above proposes listing Reform UK in 5th place. Reform UK came 6th in seats and 3rd in votes. They did not come 5th. It fails WP:V to show Reform UK in 5th. We can't just make up a different ranking to reality. Bondegezou (talk) 13:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The RFC is not about the order in which they appear. The order is not mentioned in the RFC question. Cambial — foliar❧ 13:34, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The order is a significant question here - Option D suggests disregarding the Northern Irish parties in favour of the GPEW. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 13:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The order is clearly implied in the RfC. Option D entails putting Reform UK fifth in the infobox, and the Greens sixth (despite Reform UK not coming 5th and the Greens not coming 6th). I see no other way to interpret Option D. Bondegezou (talk) 14:47, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The word "clearly" doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There's no clear implication that the order listed is part of the RFC question. If subsequent editing indicates it will be a matter of dispute that can be settled in a separate RFC after the constituent parties are decided. Cambial — foliar❧ 15:52, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

If a choice includes party A and excludes party B, then it has an ordering that is putting A above B. I don't understand what you're not getting about that. How can option D respect the actual order of the results if it excludes a party (Sinn Fein) that did better than parties that are included (Reform UK, Green)? Bondegezou (talk) 15:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The RFC is about which parties to include, not a notional "ordering". I don't understand what you're not getting. Other than Conservative, Labour and Lib Dems, none of the parties have any significance to the makeup of the legislature, given they all have fewer than 2% of the seats, and fewer than 7% of the seats collectively. They are for all practical current purposes irrelevant. So beyond those three we are only considering inclusion of parties based on their vote share, or their prominence in RS. Vote share is used by psephologists and other analysts to examine electoral shifts: that is its only relevance here. As SF have a completely insignificant number of seats, and a completely insignificant vote share (.7%), it's perfectly reasonable not to include them. Cambial — foliar❧ 16:37, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I did not suggest they be shown 5th, but only that they be included in the top five because the ENEP indicates almost five effective parties. Whether their ranking within the six (including SNP because they featured in the set [of four] in 2019) should be based on votes or seats in another question... RodCrosby (talk) 13:40, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to say it again: the use of ENEP in academic research does not mean that your opinion about infoboxes becomes academically backed just because you mention that research. GenevieveDEon (talk) 13:43, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

You can say it as many times as it pleases you. But no-one has offered anything better, except their own personal preferences, based on no objective criteria, with no sign of agreement.

The suggested ENEP formula would have also worked well going back further. 2024 was clearly a big change in the political landscape [which things like ENEP were designed precisely to pick up]. For the first time we had effectively 5 parties. Some people are clearly unhappy with that, resulting in many unsupportable contortions to justify including/excluding XYZ. Let mathematics decide instead. RodCrosby (talk) 14:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

@RodCrosby: No election infobox ranks on votes over who won. We don't put Clinton above Trump in 2016 United States presidential election. We don't put Labour before the Conservatives in 1951 United Kingdom general election. Legislative election infoboxes rank on seats won (with ties split by vote share). If you have Option D, you can put Reform UK 6th, which is where they came. But where do you then put the Greens, who came 7th? Putting them 6th or 5th would be lying. The party who came 5th is Sinn Fein, yet Option D excludes them entirely. Yes, let maths decide. Sinn Fein won 7 seats, Reform UK 5 seats, the Green Party 4 seats, as did the DUP. My maths says 7>5, so we have to list Sinn Fein before Reform UK. Bondegezou (talk) 14:47, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

The argument against, I suppose, that such parties don't compete UK-wide in the UK general election. Neither does the SNP, but in 2019 they were the 4th biggest vote-getters nationally in an arguably 4 ENEP system. They've now dropped out of a 5 ENEP system, if top 5 vote getters is the cutoff as I suggest. As I stated previously, the question of ranking by seats is different, within this set, and one I can live with either for 2019 or 2024.

In the 1992 United States presidential election#Results the ENEP was 2.7. Call it 3. Ross Perot won no ECVs but (rightly, imho) appears in the infobox. RodCrosby (talk) 19:49, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Moved from #RfC: Inclusion of parties in the Infobox CNC (talk) 14:17, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, am aware. I still think including beyond the main 3 parties in infobox is unnecessary, and beyond 6 parties is irrelevant to FPTP elections. For PR it's highly relevant and that format should be followed by default. CNC (talk) 13:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Is it not skirting original research for us to claim that there were three 'main' parties this election? On the one hand, the Lib Dems and arguably even the Tories had no impact on the result, and on the other the election saw a shift in votes to smaller parties and independents which could be considered significant. Rather than trying to interpret which parties are important by a given metric, is it not easier to include all those which won at least one seat? A.D.Hope (talk) 13:57, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I didn't mean that there were only three main parties in the election, only that the results of the election were dominated by three parties, based on seats gained. To me the infobox should highlight the summary result of the election, not an overall in it's entirety, that's for the lead and content to cover. I'm aware that's a subjective opinion, as is saying that a combined 200 seats "arguably [...] had no impact on the result", whereas I see that as a considerable impact. CNC (talk) 14:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

As I see it, while including all the parties might not be everyone's first choice, it is at least an objective and reasonably impartial bar for inclusion – if you win a seat, you make the list. Excluding parties means making subjective decisions about their relative importantance, which is where things get tricky. We'd be better off avoiding that issue entirely. A.D.Hope (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree. Either include everyone, or if a paring exercise must be done, some commonly-used metric must be used, rather than unsupportable partisan and uniformed opinions. ENEP says there were 5 "electoral" parties in what was a UK election. Add the SNP because they were a UK electoral party last time, but have dropped out this time. They may come back next time, so remain in contention. If they don't come back next time, they should be dropped. The others, whether or not they won seats, are objectively also-rans. RodCrosby (talk) 14:32, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

ENEP produces a number, but you can't interpret the number as you are doing. Several small parties can add up to >1 in the ENEP calculation. It is not saying there are actually 5 parties.

It is also somewhat odd that you argue for an objective approach using ENEP and then subjectively add the SNP to your list! Either stick to your beliefs or not, but you can't have it both ways. Bondegezou (talk) 14:53, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

If ENEP did what Rod is saying it does then it would be great, and I could understand the inclusion of the SNP based on it fitting the criterea in 2019. However, as I understand it ENEP is a measure of party diversity rather than one of measuring which parties are objectively more important than others. A.D.Hope (talk) 15:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

One can see that the votes of the first N ranked parties contribute the overwhelming majority of the components in the calculation CEIL(ENEP) = N.

Any party with below 1% vote share has an infinitesimal impact on ENEP, for example.

I think it would be useful to also indicate the fates of the parties which have joined this set, and those which have left this set (e.g. SNP 2024), from one election to the next.

It seems, to me, to be the perfect unbiased metric, aside from listing all parties. RodCrosby (talk) 19:59, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I am trying to be helpful, liberal, and not dogmatic. ENEP is saying there are (almost) 5 "electoral" parties. Sure, it's not a perfect measure - neither is any measure - such as indexes of disproportionality, but they are commonly used as comparators to distinguish one result from another. If ENEP is used as the base metric then it is only sensible to show the best-performing five in the five in the infobox.

Adding the SNP is again me trying to be helpful. There were (liberally) four electoral parties last time, and the SNP was one of them. Since the infobox is trying to summarise and convey meaningful change between elections, I presume, it would be odd for the SNP to simply disappear from the infobox this time, without showing what happened to them. RodCrosby (talk) 15:10, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't have any doubt that you're acting in good faith, Rod, and trying to find an objective measure of whittling down the parties is welcome. I'm just not sure ENEP does what you want it to do. A.D.Hope (talk) 15:12, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

If anyone can suggest another independent metric, I'll gladly absorb it. RodCrosby (talk) 15:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think a simple, independent and objective measure that is used by many reliable sources is "parties winning at least 1 seat". Bondegezou (talk) 15:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

As I've said, I've no objection to that, except you'd probably have to include those who won >=1 seat last time.

Suppose Reform lose all their seats next time, but still come third in the popular vote [not impossible], will they just disappear from the infobox in 2029? RodCrosby (talk) 15:34, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

We can worry about that bridge if/when we come to it. I think the UK has a stupid electoral system, but it is what it is. Elections are about electing people. If you don't get anyone elected, you don't get bonus points for a high vote share. A results table in an infobox needs to show the casual reader what the results were. These more complex, second order issues (e.g. a party losing lots of seats compared to last time) are better handled in the WP:LEAD and the main text of the article. The infobox can't do it all. Bondegezou (talk) 15:43, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it's important to realize that there is a subjective decision in this, even if it may be an obviously correct one for a lot of people. Namely, deciding not to include parties which failed to win a seat. We are are excluding parties based on relative importance, even if that measure of relative importance is more objective than others. AnOpenBook (talk) 23:01, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

If you accept that the infobox can't include all parties which fielded candidates as there are simply too many, then I do think that 'parties which one at least one seat' is the most objective cut-off in a UK context, where seat total is much more important than vote share.

The discussions above are almost entirely about how to categorise the parties which won seats, and including them all sidesteps the issues that such categorisation entails. A.D.Hope (talk) 08:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that many of the issues raised here can be resolved with a simple link other party results (Option G below) as proposed below (and note MOS:INFOBOX discourages but does not prohibit links). This is clearly an exceptional election. On the one hand, displaying just 3 parties has the advantage of simplicity, but the number of objections by editors above (not to mention 8.2 million voters) cannot be dismissed in this way. Roy Bateman (talk) 02:01, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment Far too late now, but can I recommend that whenever a discussion is held about infobox style, the options are displayed side-by-side at the top of the discussion. I think this would help clearly highlight the differences between them and I suspect lead to a more informed debate about what does and doesn't work well. Cheers, Number 57 00:15, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  I agree - and why is it too late? This page is very difficult to navigate and what about other suggestions? (I have made one below). Brgds. Roy Bateman (talk) 11:43, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Parties with big losses

Several editors above have argued that it’s important for the infobox to include a party that has seen a big fall in seats in order to tell the full story. I’ve argued contrarily that the infobox should focus on the current results and not worry about including parties with large falls just for that reason. I thought I’d review what other election articles do. It’s not that common for parties to have large falls in seats. However, I found several examples, and the pattern was not to include parties with big losses if their "current" result did not support inclusion. Practice does not support these arguments for including parties merely on the basis of having big losses. Stand-out examples are below. (For comparison, the SNP lost 39 seats out of 650, or 6% of all seats.)

• 2014 Slovenian parliamentary election: Positive Slovenia lost 28 seats (out of 90, so 31%) and are not in the infobox.
• 2007 Polish parliamentary election: Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland lost 56 seats (out of 460, so 12%) and League of Polish Families lost 34 seats. Both are not in the infobox.
• 2022 Bulgarian parliamentary election: There is Such a People lost 25 seats (out of 240, so 10%) and are not in the infobox.
• 2019 Greek legislative election: Golden Dawn lost 18 seats (out of 300, so 6%), while the Union of Centrists lost 9. Both are not in the infobox.

Other examples include:

• 2023 Bulgarian parliamentary election: Bulgarian Rise lost 12; not shown
• 2021 Bulgarian general election: Stand Up We are Coming lost 12; not shown
• April 2021 Bulgarian parliamentary election: IMRO lost 12; not shown
• January 2015 Greek legislative election: Democratic Left-Greens lost 15; not shown
• 2022 Slovenian parliamentary election: List of Marjan Šarec lost 13 and Let’s Connect Slovenia lost 10; not shown
• 2022 Israeli legislative election: Meretz lost 6 and The Jewish Home lost 7; not shown
• 2019 Indian general election: All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam lost 36; not shown

Other election articles do not include parties in their infoboxes merely because they showed big losses with the previous election. Bondegezou (talk) 19:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I've not suggested "big losses" as a metric (too subjective).

What I do note (admittedly not having checked all the examples you post above) is that the number of parties displayed is at least CEIL(ENEP). That would appear to rule out Option A and Option B. RodCrosby (talk) 20:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

You said above that Add the SNP because they were a UK electoral party last time, but have dropped out this time. That approach wasn't taken in the articles I could find. I suggest there is no reason to apply that reasoning here. (There may be other reasons to include the SNP in the infobox.) Bondegezou (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

You're free to disagree. I was just trying to suggest an impartial set of rules which everyone might agree on. I'm well-known for my psephological ramblings, here and elsewhere. RodCrosby (talk) 08:12, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if this is quite as clear-cut of a comparison, since in all but one of these (the 2019 Indian general election), the party in question lost all of their seats, which isn't the case for this election, and in the 2019 Indian election, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam lost 36 of their 37 seats and weren't present in the previous infobox. Also, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if we decide that the SNP shouldn't be included because of their loss of 39 seats from 48 to 9, then it'd be hard to reasonably argue that the Liberal Democrats should be included in 2015 when they went from 57 to 8 for a loss of 49, which would have a lot of knock-on effects for this conversation, too. AnOpenBook (talk) 22:19, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

There are other infoboxes that do this such as the 1993 Canada federal election, there is no standard for when a party should or should not be included. Rather, what matters is whether reliable sources (in this case, media) cover the party despite the low showing. For Canada, the Progressive Conservative loss was very notable and thus merited inclusion. In this instance, there is more than enough coverage of SNP's loss to make a case similar to Canada in 1993. See the examples below for coverage of SNP in this election, both from domestic broadcasters and international ones.

HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 02:24, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Canadian election infoboxes tend to show every party that won seats. The Progressive Conservatives won seats, so they are included in the 1993 infobox. I don't see the evidence that they are included because of their large loss. There was a lot of reliable source coverage when Positive Slovenia crashed out of the Slovenian parliament. Bondegezou (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

This is not always the case, look at the 1980 Canadian federal election and the Social Credit party. The party's loss of all seats in this election was notable and thus merited inclusion in the infobox. As for Slovenia, I would argue they should be included as well (The party was up there until July 2023 when an editor removed it. They provide no removal reason for a party which had been there the past four years at least).

In the first place, Labour and Tories are included on UK info boxes not because of any inherent right to be included but rather since they are widely covered in every election. For these two parties, there is no contesting they are very notable in reliable sources. I then argue the same principle applies to Scottish National Party for this election specifically. With the news sources provided above they have passed a threshold of notability that merits inclusion in infobox. HetmanTheResearcher (talk) 18:18, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, you are right that 1980 Canadian federal election includes the Social Credit party after a fall to 0 seats. Canadian election articles often include parties that won no seats, sometimes after notable losses and sometimes not. Parties with 0 seats are included in 2021, 2019, 2008, 1980, 1968 and 1958 (I didn't look back any further). This is not something you see very often for other countries. It seems to be a reflection of the number of parties winning seats in Canada being low (often 3 or 4), so even including a party or two that hasn't won any seats doesn't make the infobox too big.

I haven't been involved in Canadian election articles. I have no objection to what they're doing in broad terms. They're not excluding better performing parties while including worse performing parties. I'm not certain they provide much of a model for UK elections and the situation we're in where 13 parties have won seats. Bondegezou (talk) 09:51, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

An example

2013 Grenadian general election

ENEP 1.96, say 2. ENPP 1.0

The infobox did not try to present Grenada as a one-party state, based on the seat outcome alone.

Another

1992 United States presidential election

ENEP 2.8, say 3. ENPP 1.75

The infobox did not try to present the US as a two-party state, based on the EV outcome alone. Perot gets in the box.

Neither should we try to present the UK as a three-party state, when it is now closer to five. ENEP c. 4.8 RodCrosby (talk) 06:21, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

I ran the numbers, and for the US presidential elections from 2000-2020, the ENEP of all of them rounds up to 3, despite none of them including a third party. Do you think one should be added to each of those? Also, I was wondering why ENEP should be used over ENPP? AnOpenBook (talk) 02:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I would uses CEIL(ENEP), and include the top-ranked parties by votes, ordered by seats/EVs etc. I think it's a very good rule, which explains the election result by some fair, liberal, objective yardstick. Alternatives to me just seem ad hoc, based on nothing but personal preferences. Under FPTP and variants, the ENPP can be extremely disproportional compared to ENEP, and would often conceal the pluralism of the electorate, if there is a wide disparity between the two measures. It seems, by accident or design, many election infoboxes do follow the suggested rule, e.g. 1980 United States presidential election https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/1860_United_States_presidential_election RodCrosby (talk) 16:51, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

While multiple US presidential election infoboxes do match what we'd expect from taking CEIL(ENEP), that isn't the case for any of the six most recent US presidential elections, which is why I was wondering if you think that should be changed. Also, I think that the reason there is some overlap is that when there are more than two candidates receiving above 5% of the vote, the ENEP is likely to be greater than 2, so perhaps somewhere in between accident and design. AnOpenBook (talk) 20:47, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• This is WP:NOTAVOTE, of course, but by my reckoning the current lie of the land is:

A: support 16, oppose 6

B: support 6, oppose 6

C: support 11, oppose 3

D: support 10, oppose 9

E: support 3, oppose 5

F: support 9, oppose 11

It's important to remember that editors have been under no obligation to rank their votes, and indeed many have not given an opinion on all the options.

If I had to give an analysis, it seems that A (the status quo) is currently the most popular option, but this does not necessarily mean it has consensus. Option E appears to be the least popular, both because it has negative approval and has attracted the least interest, but option F has attracted more opposition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by A.D.Hope (talk • contribs) 19:46, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

A.D.Hope you can add one more to support for D and one more to oppose for A, B and C, as I've now more succinctly lined up my vote as requested (see my above comment/vote for details). Helper201 (talk) 21:44, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't think those examples are effective arguments against inclusion of the SNP. In most of those instances the party in question lost all of its seats. The SNP at this election still won 9 seats and is the 4th largest party by seat total. Its inclusion here would be more similar to the Liberal Democrats in 2015. While that party's collapse in 2015 is more notable, you could very well argue that the situation is similar enough to justify the inclusion of the SNP. The main argument against would be the relatively low vote share of the SNP. Gust Justice (talk) 18:08, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

The SNP came 4th in the election. There are arguments for including them in the infobox. I don't have a strong view on that. However, the idea that some editors have put forward here that one should include a party specifically because it has lost big is not well supported by current practice. We should be wary of creating some WP:LOCALCONSENSUS and align with practice on other election articles, as well as with the manual of style (MOS:INFOBOX, WP:AUDIENCE), and policy like WP:V and WP:NPOV. Bondegezou (talk) 20

54, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

While I agree with this, I think it's important to mention that the examples you gave are of different situations, and not this one. There may be consensus on this specific case, and I will go looking for some in both directions, but those aren't them. There are arguments for and against option B, definitely, but I don't think we've established there's a consensus against it. AnOpenBook (talk) 02:20, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with this - and there would be room to incorporate the 4th place SNP in the suggested alternative lay-out below. Roy Bateman (talk) 06

19, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Worth pointing out that this is not a similar case to the 2015 election: the LibDems were added there not because they had big losses (or at least that was not the stand-alone metric), but because 1) they were still a relevant national force in terms of vote share (8%), 2) they were part of the outgoing government. The fact that they ended up in 4th place easened their inclusion, because should they have fell down to, let's say, 6th or 8th place or disappeared from the Commons altogether, I'm fairly sure they would not have been included (based on the arguments laid down in the discussions back then), no matter how many seats they had lost. "Big losses" seems a rather ad hoc argument to let the SNP into the infobox in this case, because without that their position is the same (even slightly worser) than the one of DUP in 2005/2010, UUP in 1992/1997... Impru20^talk 10:18, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I'd add in the Slovenia case that I would have very strongly supported including Positive Slovenia in the infobox, even though they lost all their seats, since the defeat of the previous winning party was a very significant part of the election. Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 19:32, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Suggested graph to show big losses and wins, not for the info box, but for chapter Results:

100

200

300

400

500

Labour

Conservative

Liberal Democrats

Scottish National Party

Sinn Féin

Independents

Reform UK

etc...

 

gained seats

 

maintained seats

 

lost seats.

Uwappa (talk) 09:24, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

This looks good but it seems like there's some independents who have lost seats? No independents won seats at the last election so we'd need to work out what we're comparing Eastwood Park and strabane (talk) 11:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Independents corrected, thank you. Uwappa (talk) 14:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Other countries' election infoboxes

I thought it useful to look at what other election articles do. There are a lot of countries! So I reviewed the most recent legislative election for 10 countries near to the UK. Half use TILE (option F): Iceland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Luxembourg. All of these list every party that won seats, the number of parties varying from 7 in Luxembourg to 16 in Denmark (split into 3 subsections). 13 parties were elected last week in the UK.

Half use TIE: Ireland (9 parties included), Spain (6), Norway (6), Germany (6) and France (4). In Ireland, 9 parties won seats and they are all included. All the other TIE infoboxes exclude some parties. They vary from Germany (6 out of 7 parties who won seats included; parties in the infobox won >99% of seats; gap between last party included and first party excluded = 38 seats), Spain (6 out of 11 parties who won seats included; parties in the infobox won 96% of seats; gap = 1), Norway (6 out of 10 parties who won seats included; parties in the infobox won 91% of seats; gap = 0), and France (4 out of at least 11 parties (it's complicated) who won seats included; parties in the infobox won 90% of seats; gap = 12). For comparison, Option A would be 93% seat coverage; Option B would be 94%; Option C would be 96%; and Option E would be 98% coverage.

No infobox included a party while excluding a party that won more seats (as Option D proposes).

I note that, contrary to some arguments above that TILE is unworkable, that TILE is widely used. TIE is also widely used, with a range of parties included from 4-9, which cover between 90%-100% of the seats won. Bondegezou (talk) 07:18, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

On the other hand, no western European country uses FPTP, so - there - seat ranking should follow vote ranking as a matter of course.

It's unlikely any party from Northern Ireland will win more than 10 seats, the votes are minuscule, they march to a different drum, and Sinn Féin are abstentionists in any case. They are literally irrelevant to the UK general election, aside from slightly reducing the effective size of the House of Commons. RodCrosby (talk) 10:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

France uses FPTP, but over two rounds, so seat and vote ranking don't always match. You may consider Sinn Féin irrelevant to the UK general election, but Sinn Féin, many voters in Northern Ireland, and many reliable sources do not. I don't think WP:OR or WP:NPOV allows us to make such a judgement of irrelevance. Bondegezou (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I would be cautious about using some wiki examples on TILE because there is past precedent of abuse in which it was added unilaterally without discussion and/or in a concerted effort, then subsequently used as examples of TILE-use themselves elsewhere; as far as I'm aware, there is only a clear and undisputed consensus for its use on the Netherlands and Israel. Nonetheless, TILE has proven its usefulness for extremely fragmented systems, but not for others. Each country is very different and making comparisons with the circumstances of other countries may be misleading: what works for some may not work for others.

I can speak on the case of Spain since that's a field I'm familiar with: infoboxes for general elections in Spain use 6 fields. No more, no less; the combination of both the electoral system and vote trends through decades has led to 6 being an optimal number for representation (3 would be too few, and 9 could end up including very minor parties at times). I'm not opposed to this scheme being applied to the UK, but then it'd have to be applied to all (or most, at least) elections for consistency (post-1945, only 2017 uses this; pre-1945 it is a more common arrangement: 1935, 1931, 1918, Jan. 1910...). Impru20^talk 10:42, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

There have been some brutal editing disputes over election article infoboxes in the past (and I appreciate you have suffered some outrageous attacks during these!), but I don't think you can dismiss the widespread use of TILE as all being abuse. TILE is and has been used stably on a large number of countries' election articles, far beyond Israel and the Netherlands. Bondegezou (talk) 10:47, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

I reviewed and saw no dispute over the use of TILE for the Netherlands, Iceland and Belgium articles. One person on the Danish article's Talk asked why TIE wasn't used, but I saw no edit-warring over that. However, yes, there was a big edit war over the Luxembourg article. (Traditionally, past Luxembourg elections articles have all used TILE, I believe.) Bondegezou (talk) 10:55, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

That's why I said "some" of these. I also pointed out to how this change was done and then used to justify the change in further articles in an apparent show of a general consensus existing in favour of TILE (when there wasn't). In many cases you didn't even require edit warring: smaller countries get less notice than larger ones, and an engaged editor may do as they please there without dispute, probably for years. This was used in the past to enforce TILE through edits and/or low turnout discussions using the edits in other countries as an example, when there was no actual consensus sustaining those in the first place and when many of these previous edits were imposed by the same editors who then went on to use them as an appearance of consensus.

Not that I'm actually complaing about this (which I already did where appropiate), but rather, I'm using it to point out that other countries' using it could be falsely representative of actual consensus on the use of TILE and that each country is its own system with its own dynamics and circumstances. Experience tells us that "what other countries do" is not a good take because neither the context nor the reasons justifying the use of TILE there may be of direct application. Impru20^talk 11:15, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

The article I draw the most comparisons to in my mind is for the 2021 Canadian federal election. In the talk section, a few others and I held discussion surrounding the inclusion of the People's Party, which was notable since the party neither won seats, lost seats, or reached 5% of the popular vote. The consensus was to include the People's Party because of it's media noteworthiness - they got quite a bit of press coverage before and after the election as a possible vote-splitter that helped to create the Liberal minority government after the election. Essentially, it was decided that to be included in an election infobox, at least in the case of a Westminster parliamentary system, a party must satisfy at least one of the following criteria:

• Win or lose seats
• Win a substantial share of the popular vote
• Get a noteworthy amount of coverage by the press

I think we should apply the same principles here. Both the UK and Canada of course share the same Westminster FPTP parliamentary system, with two major parties, a sizable and important national third party, a sizeable and important regional party, and a collection of smaller parties vying for seats. In the past, the unspoken consensus has been to not particularly care about this, and leave as is because of the fact that the UK and Canada are separate countries. However, I can't think of any rational reasons why we shouldn't harmonize the two countries' infoboxes, since their electoral and media landscapes are so similar. Nor do I think the principle of sticking to the status quo "for the sake of it" applies here. The fact that this discussion exists, combined with the fact that it is generating many various opinions, shows prima facie that there is a genuine desire for change. And sometimes we have to collectively be bold to improve the site, even if it means "going against the grain".

Additionally, I think the best harmonization would be to apply the Canadian principles to this article. NPOV has been mentioned in this discussion quite a bit, and my understanding is that while no one will be perfectly satisfied with how an article or infobox looks or reads, the best and most effective way to keep people happy is to lean towards inclusion, not exclusion. As such, it makes sense for both countries' infoboxes to have "broad" principles like those mentioned above. The burden should generally be placed on why a party should not be included in the infobox, rather than the other way around.

This all leads me to the conclusion that Option F is the best path forward. It does the best job at satisfying NPOV, would align the UK's infobox standards with Canada's, and tells the best story of the election. Choosing F would likely mean an impetus is on us to change the previous UK (and Canadian, if necessary) election infoboxes to meet this standard if necessary, including using TILE if >9 parties satisfy at least one of the conditions above. However, I believe it is worth it - and I am happy to help with harmonizing the infoboxes as well.AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 23:23, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe it's the case that the discussion over the inclusion the People's Party led to a decision over the entirety of Westminster parliamentary systems. That is certainly the consensus decided upon for Canadian election infoboxes, but to extrapolate that to all Westminster systems would be a strange position. We should attempt to harmonize consensus on election infoboxes and election articles in general, it can be vastly different across Wikipedia. However, doing so on the basis on a consensus developed by the editors for a single country would place too much focus on that specific country.

I also wouldn't say that Canada and the UK have a similar electoral landscape, despite having some similar characteristics. For example, Canada has not had an election this century where more than 5 parties won seats, while the UK has not had an election this century where fewer than 8 parties won seats. The two countries call future election articles different names and have result tables formatted in different ways, to name a few differences between them. While reaching a unified format would be a good goal, we are a long way away from that and there are many differences we would need to find new consensus on first.

Also, the Canadian election doesn't use TILE, it uses TIE. So, by the consensus formed, why wouldn't we have a 13-party TIE infobox based on the Canadian consensus? It seems as if that's a new consensus and not one based on the Canadian decision.

Finally, WP:NPOV covers the inclusion of multiple sources, but throughout this RfC, we've extended it to the results of the election from a single source, which I think is fair. However, this does mean that we would also need to apply WP:UNDUE and avoid giving equal weight to election results that lack equal results. I believe there is a very credible argument that option F does so to a strong degree. Now, you may think that WP:UNDUE doesn't apply because it says that articles must "represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources." However, the primary text of WP:NPOV itself reads that articles must represent "fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Both refer to the same thing, and are in fact a part of the same article, so to include one in discussion is to include the other.

It's also important to note that we aren't discussing reliable sources in this measure, as the summaries of the results provided among 2 of the 3 election summaries presented in the article agree pretty closely that the four parties included would be Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP, disagreeing on whether or not to also include Sinn Féin ([15] and [16]), while the third [17] includes all parties with a primary focus on Labour and the Conservatives.

Hopefully this is helpful! AnOpenBook (talk) 00:52, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Canada doesn't use TILE because of the reason you mentioned: there are fewer "small parties" in Canada than the UK. I only recommend TILE in this case because >9 parties met one of those criteria. If that wasn't the case, it would make more sense to use TIE.

While the Westminster system as a concept was not discussed in the Canada discussion, I state above why I believe it applies. There aren't enough differences between the UK and Canadian electoral landscapes for it make sense not to harmonize the infoboxes between the two, other than a status quo-bias which I also believe isn't warranted. I of course agree that a unified format is a good pursuit, but I don't think this means abandoning one area of change because not all the others are done yet. Something has to be done first at the end of the day.

In terms of NPOV and UNDUE, there is of course a delicate balance to be reached. In this case, I'd say the point of an election infobox is to present the information of "how did the election turn out" simply and clearly to the reader. As such, I think NPOV's general principle should be more "strictly" followed than UNDUE. Readers looking for how a noteworthy party like Reform, Sinn Fein, or the Greens performed in the election should be able to do so as quickly as possible, and from this principle it doesn't make sense for us Wikipedia editors to make editorial judgements on which parties we believe "deserve" to be most easily accessible and which don't. We'd be forced to do this on any system that leans more towards exclusion than inclusion, which is the primary reason that it's hard to come up with a consensus for this whole discussion. It's just a hard decision to make that's fundamentally difficult to create a consensus on. Along with this, in a way, election infoboxes handle UNDUE by themselves: you only have to look at the won seats and popular vote to see which parties performed more strongly than others. Breaking UNDUE for this article might mean writing about Sinn Fein just as much as Labour or the Conservatives - which we all can agree would be ridiculous - but wouldn't apply to the infobox itself.

As a closing note, it seems that the infobox option that lines up most with the articles you linked is Option G, which ironically seems to be the least popular option of all! AwesomeSaucer9 (talk) 05:32, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

It has been pointed out that most of the countries in my first review use PR rather than FPTP. So, I went to First-past-the-post_voting#Legislatures_elected_exclusively_by_FPTP/SMP. There are 41 countries using FPTP for their lower house, including the UK. I excluded various small island nations and countries with poor democratic standards to leave 15 countries for review.

Several African countries have legislative elections at the same time as presidential elections. These all use a combined infobox with a TIE component for the presidential election and then a TILE component (with all parties winning seats) for the legislature: Ghana (3 parties), Kenya (23 parties), Liberia (12 parties in the lower house and 4 in the upper house), Nigeria (8 parties in the lower house and 7 in the upper house), Uganda (8 parties) and Zambia (4 parties).

5 countries used TIE and showed all parties that won seats, but the number of parties was low: either 2 parties for Belize, Bhutan, Jamaica and the US, or 4 parties for Botswana.

4 countries did other things. Gambia just used a plain TILE for 6 parties. India used a TIE with 2 coalitions shown, out of 9 in total winning seats; which was 97% of seats covered by coalitions shown in the infobox. Canada used a TIE with 6 parties. This has all 5 parties that won seats, plus a party that won no seats (and won no seats at the previous election) but which got just under 5% of the vote share

Finally, there's the 2022 Malaysian general election infobox. It has a TIE infobox with 9 coalitions. 8 coalitions and 2 independents won seats in the election. The top 4 parties by seats and votes are included. The party who were 5th on seats, but 6th on votes, is shown 5th. The party who were 6th on seats, but 5th on votes, is shown 6th. So far, so good. The final row of the infobox is then PBM (1 seat, 0.11%), GTA (0 seats, 0.71%) and PERKASA (0 seats, 0.41%), but the Social Democratic Harmony Party (1 seat, 0.34%) is not shown. GTA and PERKASA didn't get any seats in the previous election either. There were also 2 independents elected and not shown. I've asked on their Talk about the exclusion of the Social Democratic Harmony Party.

That's a mixed picture. Most of the non-African infoboxes have a small number of parties winning seats, so there is less of a problem. India seems the best comparator to the UK in 2024. India has 9 parties/coalitions and solves this with a TIE with 2 parties covering 97% of seats. Option A seems closest to that. The African infoboxes with more parties just go TILE (Option F). Bondegezou (talk) 10:48, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• D I think the Greens, SNP, and Reform should be included. I think vote share matters more than seats; Ross Perot was included in 1992 AND 1996 infoboxes. A Socialist Trans Girl 04:53, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Perot was standing in a presidential election. There was only one "seat" up for grabs. It's not that comparable to a legislative election. If we are going to talk about US Presidential elections, I note 2016 United States presidential election, 2000 United States presidential election, 1888 United States presidential election, 1876 United States presidential election and 1824 United States presidential election all put person who was elected above the person with the highest vote share. US Presidential election articles do not support putting the Greens (fewer seats, more votes) above Sinn Fein (more seats, fewer votes): they support putting being elected above getting vote share. Bondegezou (talk) 08:06, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

@A Socialist Trans Girl if you want your !vote to count, it needs to be in the right secton of the RfC. CNC (talk) 12:09, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support E, but in reduced form. It was a complex election, not just the two behemoths having at each other: the infobox should refect that. But TIE is bloated beyond all requirement. Drop the following fields: leader since, leader's seat, swing, maybe even leader's photo for (second and) third rows; combine seats won and percentage (as is done for last election: makes comparison more obvious). TIE puts far too much emphasis on the leader: it is not a presidential election, and for those parties that do not have ambitions to government, then the identity of the party leader, unless you are in their constituency, is of minmal importance. For some parties, Westminster is of a very secondary importance (hence we need tortuous explnanations in footnotes). My vote is something of a compromise, in all honesty I would prefer F, but reluctance to change here would seem to make that a spoiled ballot. Kevin McE (talk) 12:15, 2 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support D. As things are right now, Reform has the honour of being given the shortest mention possible in the lead. Just 12 words in total! Despite winning more votes than the LibDems. And as they won more votes than the LibDems, leaving the infobox as it is is obviously just plain wrong. Boscaswell talk 06:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.