Talk:2020 British Columbia general election/Archive 1

Archive 1

Do we need a section on the 2018 electoral reform referendum?

Do we need a section on the 2018 electoral reform referendum? Given the referendum was unsuccessful, and will therefore have no impact on the conduct of this election, it seems unnecessary to me to give a full section (even if only a few paragraphs) to outline it. I think it would be better to condense the pertinent information into a few lines, and include it in the Background section instead. — Kawnhr (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

• It should be integrated into the Background section with due weight to its relevance on this article's topic. More consequentially, new rules that have been put into place since the last election, such as those from Election Amendment Act, 2017 should also be explained in the Background section as affecting this article's topic. maclean (talk) 20:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Northern British Columbia section

Should there be a column for the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, or both? I would prefer that we include a column for the Green Party, one of the three major parties, and that we do not include one for the Libertarians, for the reason of consistency with the other sections. Blah 03:16, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

We have set policy on this, see Talk:2014_Ontario_general_election#Libertarians?. Parties that have candidates in at least half the ridings in a region get to be represented in the table. -- Earl Andrew - talk 03:42, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

• I am in favour of additional columns for other parties. These tables are 'lists of candidates by electoral district'. For ease of understanding and convenience, they are further organized by their party. The "Other" column is a failure of this organizational scheme. It should only be resorted to when technical limitations are hit with MOS:ACCESS or MOS:TABLE. maclean (talk) 04:10, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Whomever keeps removing the Greens column from the list of candidates needs to stop. The greens received over 16% of the votes in the last election and were represented in the Legislature before dissolution. The Libertarians by contrast, received less than 0.5%, and had no representation. Whether the Libertarians should be included or not, the Green column should not be removed, and there is no way the Libertarians should be given prominence over the Greens.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 17:56, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Darryl Kerrigan. Even though the Greens aren't running many candidates in the North, excluding a major party (ie: a respectable share of the popular the vote, seats in the legislature, a large slate of candidates and ample media attention), while including the much smaller Libertarians, looks utterly bizarre. I think major parties should be 'grandfathered in' in situations like this. — Kawnhr (talk) 18:21, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

The 2020 New Brunswick election included the PANB and NDP in the "Northern" section despite neither party running any candidates. Additionally, the 2013 election for BC also had cases of the Greens and Conservatives running fewer than half of the candidates. From a visual perspective it makes sense to include the major (non-regional) parties in each section to avoid confusion. 19:35, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Party order

I noticed an editor unilaterally switched the order of the NDP and Liberal candidates in the chart and infobox. Doesn't it make sense to to order the charts by who won the most seats last time, regardless of who the government is? -- Earl Andrew - talk 13:33, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I am fine with either order. It is confusing to have Andrew Wilkinson first because he is not the Premier, and people think the Premier or governing party should be first. But people also assume that is always the party with the most votes. I am fine putting the party with the most votes first (ie Wilkinson/BC Liberals), or the governing party (Horgan/BC NDP).--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 16:57, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted it to the previous version since there wasn't any consensus for the change and because it's well-established practice everywhere in Wikipedia that infobox sorting is decided on the basis of previous election results, not on whoever is in government. Impru20^talk 17:16, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The NDP is still first in the list of candidates though. Do we have consensus to change that back as well? -- Earl Andrew - talk 17:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah I missed those, but since those were part of the same edit, those should have been reverted as well. Impru20^talk 18:01, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Sure, revert them both.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk) 18:10, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

What's the point? We'll have to revert this back when the NDP wins the election. Blah 18:15, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

The point is that Wikipedia does not aim at predicting the future. These edits are not hard to conduct. Those should be conducted when (and if) the NDP wins the election, not before. Impru20^talk 18:23, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

If the NDP wins, they should still be second on the candidates list. For other elections, we've always listed the parties based on how well they did in the previous election. -- Earl Andrew - talk 18:25, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Impru20^talk 18:56, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

--Typically the incumbent is the party who won the most seats last time- however, this is an exception due to westminster parliamentary rules, that the party currently in power is the one who did not- it would be more consistent to show incumbant first, because the NDP were the government prior to the writ-drop. Keeping it based on the previous election numbers doesn't show the current party dynamics heading into the current election— Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.71.232.55 (talk) 04:26, 12 October 2020 (UTC) -->

There is precedent on Wikipedia to listing the parties in order of seatsregardless of which party formed the government, including for upcoming elections. For one such example, see 2020 New Zealand general election (after the next few days you will need to look at an earlier revision): NZ Labour is listed second, despite forming the government, because they won fewer seats than National. — Kawnhr (talk) 22:41, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Debate Section

I created this section with a table but maybe it would be better just as prose. Thoughts? With only one debate scheduled, the table may be unnecessary and not the best way to communicate details of the debate, perhaps a bit too prescriptive.--Darryl Kerrigan (talk)

Yes, I think this information should be folded into the campaign section. Blah 06:24, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it is fine to keep it, but consider moving it to the "Campaign" section. - Eric0892 (talk) 17:59, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Results sections

Hello. Should we add a empty table in preparation for tonight's preliminary results? Also, past BC elections seem to have the "Opinion Polls" section on top of the results section (below "Background" section). Should we move the Opinion Polls section? Thanks - Eric0892 (talk) 17:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to add the table so that it can be populated. maclean (talk) 19:33, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I would be very careful with adding preliminary results to this article. At the end of election day during the last election, the article stated that then-incumbent Suzanne Anton had won her riding, but this was before all the votes were counted thoroughly by Elections BC. In fact, George Chow had been elected, but the article claimed for two weeks that Suzanne Anton had been reelected. I'd imagine that this election's results would be further delayed by the unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots requested, and I'd urge people to be patient and wait for all the official counts to be done. Otherwise, a disclaimer at the top would be helpful to readers. CentreLeftRight ✉ 20:18, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Very much agree with CentreLeftRight on this. —Joeyconnick (talk) 20:29, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

That would be a deviation from past practices. Elections BC provides an initial count for preliminary results on election night and then 13 days later provides a final count for official results). In 2017 the preliminary results were published on May 9 and the official results on May 22-24. This year will be the same with the preliminary results provided Oct 24 and the final count Nov 6. It has been past practice for these WP articles to report the preliminary results once available and then edit after the official results are provide - this is consistent with Wikipedia:Verifiability with the referenced preliminary results. Slow editing Anton/Chow editing a couple years ago is not sufficient rationale for slow editing now. maclean (talk) 22:13, 24 October 2020 (UTC)