Talk:2010 United States elections

Added neutrality/removed OR/debating from lead

Per here. I thought i'd add a comment here just to see what the general view is. I found the wording biased so I made some changes, does anyone object to the changes? Is it just a matter of it being a not-often-reviewed page (for whatever reason), or the type of editors who have contributed, or perhaps americans think i'm understating the situation? If anyone has objections to my changes i'd be happy to hear. Timeshift (talk) 21:47, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The previous wording was pretty slanted, and really not in an encyclopedic tone. I think it could still use a little work, since there are several terms that are fairly subjective ("significant", etc). However, I think it certainly is a drastic improvement.Jbower47 (talk) 16:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

2:23PM EDT: Just deleted "liberal" from "Obama's liberal agenda," as this phrase didn't seem to be NPOV.

More basic info

I am not entirely familiar with how elections work in the United States, but I'm even more lost with midterm elections (which I didn't know existed until recently). United States midterm election is not linked to anywhere from the 2010 elections (except far down in the info box), but that article doesn't tell much anyways. I'm having trouble understanding:

1. the reasons for midterm elections
2. the possible repercussions of midterm elections (for example, could Obama have lost his presidency?)
3. the difference between senate, house of representatives, gubernatorial, "other state-wide officer" and state legislative elections
4. are the local elections really part of midterm elections? Are the mayors part of a federal/state political party? If not, are they really part of the "middterm" election?

There is more information in various articles, of course, such as United States House of Representatives, but a two-liner summary would be nice for each of the different elections, such as "The United States Senate is... The 34 seats of the senate were up for election..."

All the world is hearing stuff about your midterm election on the news and it's on the main page. Do assume that many who come to this article have absolutely no knowledge of politics in the US. Links to other articles are fine, but try to make the article somewhat readable as an entity.

Note that I'm not asking for clarifications on the discussion page (I understand this is not a forum). I'm only writing down what I think is lacking on the article.

206.248.134.99 (talk) 19:04, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

These are generally understood terms. As for your questions (may this help others that need a United States Constitutional structural primer, too):

1. Representatives stand for election every two years. Senators stand for election every six years, but they overlap in two-year increments so one third of Senators are elected every two years. When Senate seats are vacated, there is normally a special election for the remainder of the term. (Which is why there were 37 Senate elections.)
2. The article makes no mention of a possibility of Obama losing the presidency. The repercussions were that offices up for election could switch hands.
3. (This one's a multi-parter:)
   1. The United States Congress is bicameral. As a result of the Connecticut Compromise, there are two Senators for each U.S. state and each state has at least one Representative, but they are apportioned according to population.
   2. Gubernatorial elections are for the governors of the states; they head the executive branch of the state government. Each state has its own constitution and the laws vary from state to state.
   3. Some states have more state-wide offices, like State Attorney General, stand for direct popular election.
   4. 49 out of 50 states maintain bicameral State Legislatures, similar in form to the federal Congress. In most states, they are elected at the same time as during Congressional elections.
4. Some local elections are part of midterms in many parts of the United States, but there is no federal law mandating that (or authority for the federal government to mandate it), and states (and in some states, counties, towns, villages, cities, etc.) schedule elections according to their own laws.

It's called a midterm in reference to it being the middle of a Presidential term, which is misleading to those who think midterm indicates a type of election, rather than the time of it and I hate it, but the media love the term and it has stuck.

No other page about any election (including in other parts of the world) has had to include detailed explanations of the country's constitution; it would dramatically lengthen the article and make it unwieldy.mcornelius (talk) 23:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

> These are generally understood terms.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Most people are struggling to even understand their own political system and the US strikes me (imo) as more complicated than others.

> (may this help others that need a United States Constitutional structural primer, too)

Thanks for that. How easy would it be to integrate this in the midterm election article? It definitely cleared up a few things for me.

> which is misleading to those who think midterm indicates a type of election, rather than the time of it

This was actually the most helpful bit of your comment :)

> No other page about any election has had to include detailed explanations of the country's constitution

True, and of course I'm not proposing to add "detailed explanations". Actually, what I feel is missing right now is a link to the midterm election article in the lead section and clarifications in that article. Although I understand your primer is not encyclopedic, it's exactly the kind of information I was missing.

206.248.134.99 (talk) 02:52, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

As for generally understood terms, see what I mean by looking at Canadian federal election, 2008. It consistently uses terms that are unique to its particular federal Westminister constitution. "The election yielded a minority government" and "opposition parties bringing down the government on a vote of confidence," parliamentary dissolution by the Governor General of Canada, prorogation, etc., are all phrases found in that article, which make no sense to someone who's not already familiar with the Canadian Constitution and there's no attempt there to explain it. It would weight down the article with trivia that are irrelevant to what most users are looking for (actual data about election results, not the structure of the system, for which there is another article.

Articles about particular elections are about the data. For the process in the United States more broadly (which is not specific to any one year), see Elections in the United States, which is similar in substance and structure to Elections in Canada and the like.mcornelius (talk) 05:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

> by looking at Canadian federal election, 2008

Darn, geolocation got me.

> Articles about particular elections are about the data

True, I stand corrected. I never thought of the separation of data and process.

Thanks. 206.248.134.99 (talk) 05:45, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

I could have used a different example, but Canada is the closest to me. (I'm just a few hours south of Lake Ontario, on the NY/PA border, but IP geolocation says I'm in Rochester.) (And I wanted an excuse to use the {{flag}} template just now, because I never thought of a way I could work it into something before and it's neat.) mcornelius (talk) 06:00, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Turnout

I dunno if election pages typically list turnout or not; it seems relevant to me... but I agree comparing it to 2008 was trivia. swain (talk) 13:39, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking on this again 1.5 years later: this page http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html seems more comprehensive and gives the turnout number as 90.7 million. Anybody think this source is reliable enough to change the number in the article? Wainstead (talk) 16:28, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Total Seat Count Results

I can't find the end result of this election for either the House or the Senate. (IE. How many seats Republican/Democratic/Other now hold in the House or Senate)

Seeing how this info is the effective result of the election I'm very surprised that it's not in the article.

I've never edited Wikipedia before, can somebody familiar with Wikipedia please add this data in? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.214.175.1 (talk) 19:57, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Graphics of Maps and key colours

Are the colours in the key different to those shades that are on the maps? Can those be corrected? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biomimicron (talk • contribs) 13:49, 25 August 2016 (UTC)