Talk:2008 United States presidential election in Vermont

Official Obama portrait

Why not stick to election picture which is what the article is about instead of trying to insert later but more impressive pictures? Student7 (talk) 14:09, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding inflammatory pov wording

Please do not use WP:POV and media terms when describing material for the encyclopedia. The intent is not to inflame readers, it is to inform them. Boldfacing is reserved for article titles in accordance with WP:MOS. While we all depend on the media for information, we try to avoid media terms which are seldom informative. "Blue", for example, means nothing to someone from another country. Material should be written so a member of any party can read the material and say "that is a fair description." If you feel smug at the end of editing, please re-read it. The material may be slanted. Student7 (talk) 20:07, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

• I think your over-reacting. What I put had zero POV whatsoever. As far as Vermont being a blue state, I was simply stating a fact that Obama won the state and therefore was a "blue" state in 2008. No big deal. Every presidential election article has the same exact wording and many other editors have no problem with it.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 20:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

"Blue" is an American media label. It has little or no meaning to a foreigner. It is slang. The article is about 2008. "Reliable" is WP:POV and WP:OR. These are not only not useful in this article, they tend to thwart further progress because they appear intended to annoy rather than to inform. Let's stick to informing in logical, formal, encyclopedic language and reserve the rest for blogs or other venues. ````

"Blue and red states" has its own wikipedia article. It is not slang and not POV or OR. That's rediculus. Not to mention that every other presidential election article has it and that no one else has any problem with it except for you.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 18:02, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

calling a state a blue or red state persnally does not make alot of sense as a british person and is i just want a quick summary of the subject reffering tp unknown terms is time wastinng and frankly inefcieint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ekul81 (talk • contribs) 16:14, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment

Can past elections be mentioned in 2008 election article? non-WP:ARTICLE Can unreferenced material be placed in article? Can apparent WP:POV, original observation WP:OR material be placed in article? Can material whose only intent is to annoy rather than inform, be placed in article?Student7 (talk) 18:27, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

First of all, have you actually read the RfC guidelines? I think you'd be more likely to get a good response if you try to sum up the dispute in a neutral way without assuming bad faith. Pending an explanation of what this RfC is actually about, I'm going to ay that I see no problems with the 'Campaign' section which Student7 doesn't seem to like, but that Jerzeykydd needs to calm down and not make personal attacks. – Hysteria18 ^{(Talk • Contributions)} 20:23, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

• Notwithstanding the above dispute about the status and wording of the RFC, here's my opinion. Past election results are relevant for discussion in an article about a particular election, insofar as they shed light on how the contestants chose to campaign, what result was expected, and the general view about who performed well. I see no problem in adding a mention of the fact that Vermont has generally voted for Democrats in recent Presidential elections. Opinion polls leading up to the election are relevant for the same reason, although it's best never to talk of anyone "winning an opinion poll" because no-one wins anything. Instead say that the candidate was shown to be in the lead. The amount of campaigning resources directed by political parties are highly relevant. Sam Blacketer (talk) 21:39, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Further comments

• The paragraph is uncited and WP:OR. Even if a footnote can be construed, it is still OR for this level of article unless by a scholarly WP:RELY source.

• Polls - Polls are a media institution. Yes, politicians use them to make decisions but these aren't necessarily in the public domain. They have nothing to do with elections per se. They are a media substitute for elections. "We don't need an election because we have taken this poll..." Polls are not elections. It is off WP:TOPIC.

Furthermore, they are often useless and therefore irrelevant. Polls showed that Carter was going to win the 1980 election. When Reagan won, the media later claimed that the "polls had changed." In 2000, Florida was "too close to call." How did that help?

They are useless, because when the poll is close, they don't mean anything at all, except how someone wants to later analyze it. When they aare not close, what good are they?

While the poll-takers pretend confidence, their dirty little secret which doesn't emerge when they get lucky and the election is not close, is that more and more people are not answering their questions, or won't anwwer the phone in the first place, requiring that other people be chosen into what was supposed to have been a representative control group. They looked good in 2008, but this is supposed to be about the Vermont election and not about some poll that someone took who had nothing whatever to do with the government, nor national election nor state election.

• The colors were chosen by American media some years back. To a former Communist-bloc resident, red means Communist. Not too push a point, the reason that red wasn't selected for the Democratic Party by the compliant media! When I go to election results abroad, I don't expect local slang like "Yellow" or "Orange" to be used out of context. Third world countries use pictorials for their parties, meaning little to an American reader. Using colors is highly Amero-centric which Wikipedia was supposed to be getting away from.

The paragraph supplies an analysis based on prior years. But the article is about 2008 and invites no such analysis. What is "reliable" anyway? West Virginia was once "reliably Democratic." Now what is it? Unreliably Democratic? New Jersey was once "reliably Republican." The names are foolish media pretensions. States vote the way they are going to vote and no one really knows right up until the lever is pulled. There is no "straight-lining" voting patterns from year-to-year. Only the media does this sort of stuff.

More of the same

A paragraph reads:

"Vermont was won by Democrat nominee Barack Obama by a 37.0% margin of victory. The state was generally considered as "solidly Obama" or a safe blue state during the final week of the 2008 election, by The Takeaway.org, which assessed 15 different news organizations that made state by state predictions.http://vote2008.thetakeaway.org/2008/09/20/track-the-electoral-college-vote-predictions/ Obama carried every county by more than 60 percent of the vote with the exception of Essex County, which he won with 56 percent."

What does a poll, and the takeaway radio have to do with elections? They are not run by the state. They are just media, attempting to do what all media do, which is to draw attention to themselves. So what if there were 50,000 polls or no polls? So what? A poll is just a small segment of the population. Polls are not elections. If you want to start an article "Polls in Vermont" and cover all polls done down through the ages, I'm sure you would have interested readers.

The comment seems to confuse the poll and the actual election. Did Obama win each poll with 60% of the vote?

Why can't vote count be given once? Why does it have to be given over and over? What is the point? He had a 37% margin of victory. Does the vote count not reflect this? He won by more than 60% of the vote. Does the vote count not reflect this?

The point seems to be, "How many times and in how many ways can we say that Obama won the election in Vermont?

The article borders on boring to start with. 11 people read it a day. Mostly editors, I would guess.

Some of the stuff in the bottom seems useful. Fundraising. Student7 (talk) 19:26, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

• I understand what you're saying. But the point is to state facts in wikipedia. The fact is that the media labeled the state as solidly Obama. The fact is that pre-election polling, whether you think it's relevent or not, showed Obama winning. The point of having this article is to present as many facts as possible. How the media looked at the state prior to the election and the pre-election polling are facts that need to be presented. Also, the polling and the media does have an effect on the voters. Also, Vermont to the first called state for Obama on election night. This may mean nothing to you, but it is a fact. If you don't like the term "blue state" so much than delete it. But don't delete all the info about polling and the takeaway radio, because it presents relevent facts.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 20:53, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

In what way are polls part of government elections? Where in the constitution is this mentioned? electors are mentioned which is why they are here. Polls are not, nor should any made-up construct to pretend to predict the election. If a fortuneteller had predicted the election would it be here? Why not? It is a) not in the constitution; b) made up; c) had a great following up until the time when their predictions are well off; d) magnify all the wrong people (pollsters and the media) as opposed to the candidates or the parties or platforms.

Why should Wikipedia promote the media indiscriminately? Why are we obliged to give them space? Because they were right?

The election of 1980 had bad polls and polls were mercifully in decline after that for a long time. But why should they be "revived?" They are not part of history. The media wants to be part of history. They want to make history. They want to be responsible for it. But why, because they are ambitious and overweening, should we grant their desire (any more than "seers", some of whom were right)? Student7 (talk) 20:31, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

So 5000 news organizations thought Obama would win the election? So what? What does that prove about the election? The media, BTW, wants you to think that you don't have to have elections "anymore". They have been rendered obsolete through polling, despite the fact that polls change drastically, Just ask President Hillary Clinton! Student7 (talk) 22:42, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The 2008 U.S. Presidential election does not just have the election results: it has the primaries, debates, issues, etc. So should we eliminate everything in the 2008 election article and only keep the election results?--Jerzeykydd (talk) 00:28, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Pretty much yes, IMO. IF (and only if) the polls were commissioned by the candidates and can be shown to have some affect on their campaigns, maybe then they can be used. "The Obama campaign polled Vermont voters, finding they had x support. On that basis, they decided to spend $y dollars in the market during the final week of the campaign.(ref)" Or whatever. Something that is obviously linked to the election, not some pollster trying to attract attention to himself. The campaign was not about Gallup or Roper or TV7, it was about Obama and McCain. Anything beyond that is off WP:TOPIC IMO. Or use of poll results. "In a mailing to potential voters, the Obama showed that he had 'momentum' by presenting statistics over x weeks, showing his numbers increasing." Most campaigns aren't going to do that! Too risky, but anyway, it would be candidate-oriented and election-oriented rather than media-oriented. Student7 (talk) 20:03, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

If it could be shown that the media itself deliberately presented polls to influence the election, that would be noteworthy as well. While this is probably true, it would be hard to find a reliable source. Conservatives all suspect this. Liberals would say the media was "just presenting the facts." Student7 (talk) 20:07, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Obama better than Kerry

Referenced material says that Obama performed better than Kerry. This would mean, at the same time, that "McCain performed worse than Bush." To me, this is not encyclopedic. It is the type of thing a researcher might write after reading material in verious places. It seems WP:OR even though it quotes somebody as saying this. It does not seem scholarly to me because it begs the opposite question about McCain. Anyway, the elections were held at different times.

For example, in 1972, Nixon beat the daylights out of 1968 Nixon. So what? The observation is unhelpful. If someone else (the reader, for example) chooses to make it, fine. But it is silly and we should not quote it IMO.

Anyway, it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2008 election per se. Student7 (talk) 02:13, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• I think you are over analyzing this, not to mention you are not even presenting a legit argument. An encyclopedia gives the facts. It does not matter how to word it, whether Obama performed better than Kerry, it is still a fact. Not to mention that almost every other U.S. election article has wording like this.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 02:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what the United States Presidential election in Vermont 2008 has to do with United States Presidential election in Vermont 2004 except some newscaster wanted to keep us listening to him. The "overanalysis" is being provided by your local news source who will shrivel up and die if we stop listening. But what they say has nothing to do with these two topics, separated in time by four years, race, experience, money, residence of the candidates, record of both national parties, height, looks, etc. etc. Comparing them on any level just doesn't make sense. Like comparing your record in school with your brother's (unless he was an identical twin!). Student7 (talk) 04:51, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Another point is that Correlation does not imply causation. The only reason to make this statement is WP:OR, that is, that Kerry was not a good candidate or whatever. This is analysis that is best left to an other venue, not an encyclopedia, which is why we have the WP:OR policy, no matter who is quoted as doing it. Student7 (talk) 05:00, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Extended scope of article

Editors have tried to extend the scope of the article well beyond what the article is supposed to comprise. There is a reason for confining the scope to what the article is named. For starters, please see WP:TOPIC. If expanded scope was allowed for all articles, all articles would require extended maintenance. Restricting the scope to the title allows editors to focus on the topic of the article instead of being concerned with giving extended compass to all articles. It does not make sense to talk about all other elections here. Confining the issue to one topic should be sufficient for each article. Focusing on that one topic should allow us to be quite accurate for each instead of trying to squeeze all topics into every article. Student7 (talk) 18:09, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you're misstating the nature of the text in question. It's quite clear that nobody's "trying to squeeze all topics into every article." I don't particularly care whether the text stays, but I find it disingenuous to characterize it as anything other than a (possibly excessive) attempt to provide context. – Hysteria18 ^{(Talk • Contributions)} 21:09, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Rather obviously promoting a political pov IMO. Wikipedia standards should be maintained throughout. Time might better be spent on developing articles on the many presidential elections that Vermont does not yet have defined instead of trying to "enhance" this one with off WP:TOPIC material. Student7 (talk) 20:30, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, what? Have I misunderstood your half-formed sentence or are you accusing me of "promoting a political pov"? – Hysteria18 ^{(Talk • Contributions)} 00:28, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Student7, you need to stop making these outrageous accusations. There is nothing wrong with having background information included in the article. Should we get rid of the lead because it explains presidential election in the U.S? No. All information in the article is on topic.--Jerzeykydd (talk) 00:54, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

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