User:Returningofficer

About me

UK-based history and politics geek, generally editing to try and overcome writer's block. Can usually be found baking, walking, playing board games or relaxing at the pub (and combinations thereof, though rarely all at once).

Disclaimer: not actually a returning officer.

Political Views

As a general rule I tend to stick to editing election results, polls etc. rather than more qualitative material on UK politics articles, so as not to allow my own political views to influence my output too much. Nonetheless, I recognise that even relatively mundane questions such as the order of political parties in an election box can often take on a party political nature, so in the interests of transparency I offer a breakdown of my own political history below:

Returning Officer's Voting Record
Party		Votes	%	±%
	Liberal Democrats	10	55.6	+8.9
	Conservative	4	22.2	-4.5
	Green	3	16.7	-3.3
	Labour	1	5.6	-1.1

What I edit

I mostly add and edit election results and polling information to UK politics articles. I'm particularly a fan of any information that can be shoved in a colour-coded party table!

I'm most active in editing the article Opinion polling for the next United Kingdom general election, primarily adding new polls as they become available. I'm also quite active on the associated talk page. I also tend to edit the pages for UK parliamentary by-elections.

Additionally, I generally keep an eye on and occasionally edit the following articles:

• Next United Kingdom general election
• Scottish Parliament election, 2016
• National Assembly for Wales election, 2016
• Northern Ireland Assembly election, 2016
• London mayoral election, 2016

I have it in mind at some point to go around filling in some of the gaps on various constituency pages and local election results pages, but haven't quite got round to this yet. If you can think of an article that could do with some work on it, let me know!

Rules of thumb

Notwithstanding the need to go by consensus and adopt consistent practice across the Wiki, here's my outlook on some of the recurrent editing disputes which seem to crop up again and again on UK election articles. These are not intended to be hard-and-fast rules as such, but more general rules of thumb for dealing with questions of including parties in certain templates and tables.

Parties included in election boxes

For elections to a legislature parties should be included if either of the following conditions are met:

• The party obtained a significant number of seats at the election.
• The party obtained a significant number of seats at the previous election (and thereby the reduction in their number of seats represents a significant change in the composition of the legislature).

Obviously, the definition of significant will vary according to the circumstances - for elections to the UK House of Commons, I would generally suggested that anything above 20 seats might be considered significant, though smaller parties might be included in this if reliable media sources consider their parliamentary presence to be significant.

On this basis, I support the current Conservative/Labour/SNP/Lib Dem box in use on the United Kingdom general election, 2015 article. Ideally, for the article on the next UK election I would use the standard election infobox template with only the Conservatives, Labour and the SNP included, although I accept that the slimmed-down 'all parties' version might be the only way to prevent continual edit wars.

Parties included in opinion poll tables

For parties to be included in opinion poll tables, both of the following conditions should be met:

• The party is polling at meaningful levels of support for at least some of the period covered by the table (i.e. generally not within the implied margin of error, and certainly not at 0% or asterisk levels of support).
• The party's performance has been recognised as significant by a number of reliable polling companies and/or media organisations.

Again, significance will vary according to circumstances: evidence of significance might include inclusion of the party in headline polling figures by reliable polling companies or media outlets, or wider recognition of the party's significance (e.g. inclusion in election debates).

As of Autumn 2015, under this test the SNP and the Green Party qualify for inclusion in GB-wide opinion polling tables (meet both conditions). Plaid Cymru does not (fails the first condition), nor does any minor party at present (fails both conditions).