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Map Beef

Y'all, Matthew McMullin & 沁水湾 figure out your differences here not in edits. Thanks. Also, since I simply must give my two cents on this, I personally use the circles because they're aesthetic, even though I recognize issues of readability. They work in small quantities and cease to serve any functional use after a certain point. However, I also think the bar charts have limitations as well. They are, in my opinion, a bit clunky. This is why I prefer to use pie charts for things like this, but they too fail to meet the function we all desire. Talleyrand6 ( talk) 21:18, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Thanks for your invite :)
There’s always a tradeoff. I’ve already stated my issue with filling in circles when the district magnitude is large. I’ll not repeat them here.
Regarding pie charts, we should steer clear of them in most cases. While it’s true they are more compact and display relative sizes as percentages between a small # of categories somewhat well, data visualization should prioritize intuitiveness over aesthetics. Pie charts have garnered its infamous reputation for good reasons. Long story short, our brains aren’t very good at differentiating the sizes of pies (as oppose to say heights of bars).
Here’s an article on why you should almost never use a pie chart. I’m going to make a convert out of you two:): https://theconversation.com/heres-why-you-should-almost-never-use-a-pie-chart-for-your-data-214576 沁水湾 ( talk) 21:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
Of the two map types (2019 vs 2024), I prefer the 2019 one. Having a legend taking up a third of the width of the map isn't a great use of space.
Also, yet another reminder to fellow editors that it's not cool to complain about/link to a dispute you are having on Wikipedia from your social media accounts, which is effectively WP:CANVASSING. This seems to have become a recurring issue for E&R articles in the last year and at some point it's going to end up at WP:ANI. Number 5 7 23:16, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
the 2019 legend takes up the exact same 3rd width of the image, what are you trying to get at? Matthew McMullin ( talk) 23:40, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
In fact, comparing them exactly the 2019 one takes up MORE space (about a 1/3) compared to the 2024 one (about a 1/4) Matthew McMullin ( talk) 23:41, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
The issue is it's a third of the width – moving it to the bottom (like the 2019 election) would allow the map to be the full width of the infobox. Number 5 7 23:53, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I believe you're mistaken, the 2019 infobox is on the right hand side of the image & as you can see it takes up 1/3 of the width. the individual party voter strengths are what is on the bottom. something I took out of my 2024 map because I believe things such as that to be no more than clutter. Matthew McMullin ( talk) 23:56, 10 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I'm not sure how I can make this clearer: In the 2019 image the legend is fitted into the map in a way in which doesn't reduce the width of the country outline and the seat bloc is shown underneath (again not affecting the width of the country outline), whereas in the 2024 one the legend and seat bloc are not fitted in and take up the left-most third of the image, reducing the width of the country outline. Number 5 7 00:03, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I'm not sure how I can make myself clearer: if you look for yourself at /info/en/?search=2019_South_African_general_election you will see the infobox is on the RIGHT. if I cannot make you see that which is on the wikipedia page itself then I am powerless, such furthur endeavours or communications would only result in the repeat of previous interactions & experiences I have had with yourself, best of luck to you and good day. Matthew McMullin ( talk) 00:09, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply
BTW. Is it possible for you to upload your map under a slightly different name (such as “South African general election, 2024”)? All of my previous maps were uploaded under the “insert year South African general election” format. I want to keep it a set. Thanks for your generous considering. 沁水湾 ( talk) 20:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I support the circles. That seems to be the closest thing to the wikipedia standard on the matter. XP6287 ( talk) 19:57, 2 June 2024 (UTC) reply
File:South African election map comparison.png
I'm not sure why what side of the page the infobox is on is relevant, but here's a screenshot to demonstrate my point about the relative width of the map images from the two articles – as I hope can be seen, the 2019 map is significantly wider (and taller) than the 2024 one because it isn't being squeezed by the legend/seat bloc. Number 5 7 00:28, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I second this. This is exactly why I downsized the legends, moved the nation-wide lists seats to bottom, and removed the top-8 party-vote strength maps from the main one. A bonus of doing this is the map width/length ratio remains 1:1. 沁水湾 ( talk) 02:50, 11 May 2024 (UTC) reply
For the sake of space, I usually make my map templates to include all the parties that could win a seat or area, even if they don't. Usually, it's an educated guess based on polling & previous results. I also only give a vote share gradient to parties or coalitions winning a geographic area. I would also say, in the context of this year's SA election, since there's a coalition, Matthew's organization is bloated. The multi-party charter led by DA should have one gradient for the geographic areas, and the coalition parties should only have the bars showing names, votes, and seats. I know this is no place to self-insert, but for the French Legislative elections, I keep the coalitions within one bar and distinguish the individual parties within. Something like that could work here, too. For example, you can show the individual parties winning individual seats on the particular province and national lists, but you needn't do that in the legend area.
I agree with Number 57 here that the geographic areas are the most important and should have prominence over the party legend and seat illustrations. I also agree with 沁水湾 on the need for compactness. A good map doesn't need all the bells and whistles we would typically like to attach. For instance, her Japanese maps are a prime example. Compact and detailed. I don't want to show any partiality towards anyone here; these are just my private opinions. I, of course, celebrate newer map-makers testing their hand at making new maps and developing their styles. Still, in a place like Wikipedia, specific unspoken guidelines developed by the mass of mappers are generally a wise place to start. Accuracy, detail, and compactness are all important, but you needn't sacrifice one for another. Matt's maps are lovely, but they often stray into the territory of extra detail. Again, that's wonderful. I commend him. It's just a wee bit too much for an infobox map. Talleyrand6 ( talk) 18:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC) reply
obviously I won't have *every* bar showing when the final election results are done, I've just made every one of them now as a "better safe than sorry" situation because it's easier for me to remove bars than it is to add them back in Matthew McMullin ( talk) 19:13, 15 May 2024 (UTC) reply
The issue for me isn't the width of the bars, it's the location. If they were placed under the map rather than to the side, the map could be made full width of the image (like the 2019 one), which I think would be easier for readers to digest. Number 5 7 20:58, 15 May 2024 (UTC) reply
I've just uploaded a new version of the map with the change you requested, please tell me how it looks now Matthew McMullin ( talk) 22:18, 15 May 2024 (UTC) reply
Much better, thanks! My only comments is that if there was any chance the legend could be fitted a bit more tightly with the western border of Northern Cape (so the map could be almost totally full width), I'd do that. Cheers, Number 5 7 23:12, 15 May 2024 (UTC) reply
ok how about now? I've made it the full width of the page Matthew McMullin ( talk) 04:00, 16 May 2024 (UTC) reply
Looks great, thank you! Number 5 7 01:02, 17 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Campaign issues - issues

Whilst it is great to see the Campaign issues section is there, that section also needs to be both shortened and rewritten. The most significant problem I currently see with it is that sections of it come very close to being analysis thereby violating the no original research rule. The following sentence is a good example of this:

"The issue of racial justice becomes particularly salient when looking at disparities in agricultural production and environmental harms. With the majority of land in South Africa being owned by white people. Reports from the South African government indicate that whites own 72% of total farms of agricultural holdings."

This analysis needs to be sourced before it can be included in a Wikipedia article, at the moment it just vaguely quotes the 2017 Land Audit, if it is to be included then it would be better left on the land reform article. For example, no where in the quoted reference (2017 Land Audit) is "land justice" even mentioned. The last sentence is also vague and needs to be better worded, what does "farms of agricultural holdings" even mean? Does it mean commercial farms, all farms, economically active farms, privately owned farms? This is not clear and very likely misleading. This is just one example of a section that can be reduced in length and improved in writing to make the article shorter, easier to read, and more accurate. Discott ( talk) 11:07, 21 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Agreed that parts of this section is not written in an encyclopaedic style, and could be more concise. I think you should go ahead with your proposed changes, if you are able to. Gk sa ( talk) 15:18, 25 May 2024 (UTC) reply
There is still a lot of unsourced opinion throughout the Campaign issues section, not only in the Land reform subsection. Roger (Dodger67) ( talk) 07:32, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Just made some WP:BOLD edits there. Borgenland ( talk) 17:38, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Independent Candidates

How do we categorise independent candidates that only appear in the regional ballots to be represented in the National Assembly map and in the table? ChangingDepresso ( talk) 16:07, 30 May 2024 (UTC) reply

I would say treat them like parties. It's worth noting that the regional vote also counts when determining the distribution of all 400 seats. So a vote for an independent is a vote that otherwise could have gone to a party. Ideally we would have a table that depicts both the national and the regional votes, including the sum of those two votes, since the sum of those are what matters. Gust Justice ( talk) 16:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC) reply

Infobox legislative election instead of Infobox election

( non-admin closure) Result was to retain TIE. Note that there were several new accounts who may have been canvassed here owing to a twitter thread, and so I've given their comments little weight in the decision making here.

Arguments in favour of retaining TIE mention that there is too much superfluous information in the TILE infobox; there's a number of very small parties that weren't impactful in the election. Meanwhile, there were only 5 parties in double digits, which can be represented in TIE. There is also the argument that more detailed information isn't suitable for the infobox, and should be moved to a "Results" section in the article; having TILE effectively duplicates this. In short, TIE's format suits an election of this kind with a small number of impactful parties, and the precedent of TIE being used across other articles makes it hard to justify changing to TILE. There were also comments about UX/readability/aesthetics being made, but I feel these are subjective and should carry less weight.

Comments in favour of TILE included highlighting the limitations of TIE, the fact that several smaller parties gained in the election, and the compact nature of TILE. I do not, however, believe these arguments managed to counter the vast number of arguments highlighted above in favour of TIE; it appears that the consensus is that TILE is more appropriate for elections where multiple smaller parties have more impact on the result, such as Italian and Israeli elections. — Czello ( music) 08:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC) reply

The following discussion 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.

Since there are more than 6 parties gaining (and may gain this time) seats in South African NA, but only 6 of them are presented in the infobox, I propose replacing the current infobox with Infobox legislative election in this article and other articles about legislative elections in South Africa. By analogy with Russia and some other countries, the number of parties in parliaments of which usually exceeds 6. I would love to hear your thoughts on this change.  PLATEL  ( talk) 02:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC) reply

  • Support This had been on my mental to-do list for a while – all post-apartheid elections should have the format given the number of parties winning seats each time. Number 5 7 01:17, 1 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Number 57: If this discussion reached a consensus and was accepted, then I would be grateful to help you replace the infoboxes. I just want to ask you something. In the article about the 1999 election, there is a note about the New National Party (NNP)'s percentage and number of seats, explaining that it was the successor of the National Party (NP). Hence, its seat change and swing were calculated using the NP's number of seats and percentage in the 1994 election. Similarly, the Democratic Party (DP) was reorganized into the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the 2004 election. Thus, there was a note explaining this succession/renaming in the 2004 election. Is there a way to deal with cases like these in the legislative election infobox? You often give me some useful tips. Cheers. RyanW1995 ( talk) 07:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    Seat changes generally take predecessor parties into account where there is a single successor (so the NNP's seat total would be compared to the NP). Number 5 7 15:36, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Support I also fully support this idea. The current template would be more useful for countries with presidential elections. Not really as useful in this case. Janneman27 ( talk) 10:55, 1 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose The argument in favor of this isn't any stronger for this article than for previous South African elections. While there are 15+ parties winning seats in this election, the vast majority of seats (~370) will still be won by the six largest parties. While the standard infobox can't depict the full set of results, it is still more suitable at giving readers the substantial picture. In addition, the standard infobox allows us to show both types of votes (national and regional ballots), while the legislative infobox requires only showing one percentage of the vote. Gust Justice ( talk) 12:51, 1 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    I know that the majority of seats will go to the majority of parties, this is usually the case in elections. I gave the example of Russia earlier, where one party got a huge number of seats in the last elections, but this template is still used there (not on my initiative tbh). So I see no problem in listing all parties, even if they are less relevant than, say, ANC or DA. Considering also that small parties are more likely to participate in coalition negotiations with large ones, this gives me another argument to include them in the template. Regarding the argument with two types of votes, I have an opinion that it is mainly the national vote that should be taken into account, as is done in the vast majority of legislative election templates where there are both national electoral lists and regional constituencies.  PLATEL  ( talk) 05:13, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    I don't know why the Russian article uses TILE, and in any case I don't see how it should be decisive for which template to use. INFOBOXPURPOSE says that we should "present information in short form wherever possible, and exclude any unnecessary content". Not including all parties is more in accordance with this policy. Listing all the minor parties winning 1 or 2 seats is just not needed to get a summary of what happened in the election. This is further supported by the fact that most media coverage has not listed all 18 parties winning seats ( this article for example only mentions the five largest parties). The fact that they might participate in a coalition (which remains to be seen, there is not much precedent for what happens next) is in any case not an argument for applying the format to previous articles, where the ANC won a majority of seats. Regarding the vote types, I won't insist that both must be shown. Combining the two, like 2023 Bavarian state election does, might also be a viable option. Gust Justice ( talk) 12:56, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Support the TILE infobox can cover more parties in a more compact way. MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE is clear in recommending smaller infoboxes. Bondegezou ( talk) 05:49, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    Oppose because it's ugly at the moment and it looked cool before. If you want to see all the political parties, surely just put the legislative infobox or equivalent thereof in the "Results" section? Dhantegge ( talk) 11:34, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose A detailed summary is already at the results section. An infobox is supposed to be a short summary of the results, and the 7th to last parties are mostly irrelevant Troopasturbador ( talk) 12:01, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    The new infobox is significantly shorter/smaller than the original one, so this doesn't really make sense as a rationale. Number 5 7 15:36, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    It is shorter by a bites pov, not from amount of conveyd information pov, which is actually what matters instead. Siglæ ( talk) 21:03, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Comment @ Number 57: It seems that this issue is causing an edit war in the articles about post-Apartheid general elections from 1994 to 2024 (including this article) between those who are in favor of using the Infobox legislative election and those who are in favor of using the Infobox election. The infoboxes in these articles sometimes change back and forth between these two templates. RyanW1995 ( talk) 14:15, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    Yes, unfortunately we have a problem editor blindly reverting a whole range of edits... Number 5 7 21:03, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Number 57: I have reverted all edits by Dylan Fourie ( talk). It seems that this user is very opposed at this proposal on changing the template with the Infobox legislative election. Hopefully, the latest edits won't be reverted again. RyanW1995 ( talk) 08:31, 8 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Number 57: Unfortunately, my edits have been reverted again by Dylan Fourie. They claimed there is no consensus. I have tried to warn them on their user page ( [1] [2]). RyanW1995 ( talk) 05:47, 9 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Support But as I said before, the legislative election template is still too rudimentary. We need to update it to include more potential fields. 沁水湾 ( talk) 18:38, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    Support @ Number 57: @ PLATEL: I seconded this more moderate opinion about the legislative election template! I also feel that it is better to use the legislative election template, but this template could certainly be improved in the future. RyanW1995 ( talk) 04:06, 8 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    Mild support. I think these new boxes are pretty ugly, but all parties who won seats deserve their little line. This box needs A LOT of work and A LOT more information could be presented. Ideas for another time though. Carlp941 ( talk) 04:06, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • OPPOSE Don't know why I need to explain why I am reverting edits that make pages look hideous. There is a reason why they were originally made with that template, and will therefore remain as the template where you can see photos of each major party leader. Unless you make templates that can house every represented party in parliament with a photo of their leader, we will keep it on the 6 major political parties. Don't understand why you guys want to interfere with pages that everyone has always been happy about, but now that teeny tiny popcorn parties are in parliament, you all of a sudden want to change what makes the South African election pages beautiful and recognizable. If you gonna change the South African elections, then you will need to change ever single election page for every single country. Can't want to change South African when you don't change every other country's election pages. Dylan Fourie ( talk) 14:39, 8 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Dylan Fourie: do you really not know why you need to explain your reasoning? Perhaps Wikipedia is not for you. Here we try to disagree respectfully, without screaming in caps, without rants about foreigners, without ridiculous demands that show you are not assuming good faith. I happen to agree that the old template looks better (without claiming nonsensically that the new template looks "hideous"), but I can also see the counter point that the new template contains more information. I don't have a strong enough opinion to venture further comment here, but all you're likely to do with your edit warring and the aggressive nature of your edits is get yourself blocked. Greenman ( talk) 13:00, 9 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose all other Westminster-based systems use TIE. This would break consistency with all other articles and go against WP:INFOBOXPURPOSE by including too much unnecessary information- there's a very large number of one-person parties that are essentially irrelevant to national politics. There are only 5 parties with seats in the double digits, and these could easily be shown on TIE. I see no reason why it should be changed DimensionalFusion (talk) 09:00, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose since South African ballot papers have photos of party leaders on them Smartypants2006 ( talk) 09:24, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Comment While i understand both sides of the argument in post-apartheid elections, removing the „illustration“ from Apartheid-Era election results, which some have been doing, does not work under that same logic. Most elections during Apartheid feature a much lower party count, making them fully functional and orderly in the larger display style.
Additionaly, reverting the "simplified" infobox of the 1989 election which shows results for all chambers to the previous „nicer looking“ version which only shows the results for one house of parliament is not helpful, irrelevant of personal opinion. RandonDjion ( talk) 11:07, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose TIE is widely used for all other Westminster-based government systems, even with the large number of parties with at least one seat (see India's latest election). It would not be difficult to determine which of the parties is among the 4 or 6 most important, either by number of seats or by editor consensus. For consistency, information, and visual appeal I would much prefer TIE. LivinAWestLife ( talk) 13:37, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose Notwithstanding the fact that I do personally think the plain tables look bad, there seems to be some kind of movement here to change wikipedia precedence and consensus on infoboxes for only these foreign elections, which makes it seem like only a handful of editors are in favor of these changes to the infobox, while everyone else is opposed, as most other elections have proper photos and a nice infobox to nicely include all the info, but instead of trying to improve it, we seem to be just trying to completely strip it down, which is not the right move. LordEnma8 ( talk) 14:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose Since I have most of these articles bookmarked, I have been obviously aware of the issue going on here and in other articles since my watchlist has become full of edit warring alerts. I can see sensible arguments for both positions, but from my experience I'll say that the bulk of this issue arises not from these but from a matter of personal preferences, actually. I'd like to highlight that, as a frequent editor of election articles across Wikipedia, I have noticed the (mal)practice of attempting to subtly introduce such changes in infobox templates across a number of countries for many years despite there being no consensus for these (and when opposition arose, these were either rejected with some rude arguments, discarded because the editor(s) opposing them were casually blocked for other issues or refuted because "look at these other articles using these" (most of which happened to have been unilaterally edited by the same editor(s) bringing up these arguments)).
From what I can discern, the aforementioned behaviour has created a situation where there is now a massive edit warring across a large number of articles, with the issue seemingly spilling over to social networks (which I noticed because it got into the timeline of my-personal-Twitter lmao), which is factually crazy. While I neither commend nor support the behaviour taking place at Twitter (which is basically aggravating the edit warring by bringing a lot of users into the fray) it has been fairly obvious for years that this issue was going to explode some day, considering how unconsensuated this was being carried out. Worth noting is that, if there wasn't a consensus for the changes to be implemented in the first place for South African articles, and this discussion is the one attempting to secure such consensus, why are the changes being implemented anyway? There is no consensus as of yet. This is under discussion. Yet some people are unilaterally imposing the change. Why? This is far from how consensus-building should be done in Wikipedia.
The way this is being enforced, as well as the fact that TIE has been the long-standing consensus version (surely with a lesser backlash than the one we are seeing with TILE, which was originally intended only for Israeli elections), that it is more complete and that infoboxes are not meant to show every small party (they are meant as summaries; for the full election results you can just go to the proper article section), makes me oppose the use of TILE and support the use of TIE in this case. While I don't oppose this being addressed in a case-by-case basis, this has obviously spiraled out of control and the local acceptance of TILE for some cases without good reason has been used as a free-hand to unilaterally impose it elsewhere. This is just unacceptable and should have been handled much better from the start in order to avoid such a situation as we are seeing today. Honestly, I am appalled to see how this has degenerated so much. Impru20 talk 14:47, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
I did not have this background information. Changing my position to oppose. I was duped by the appearance of consensus, and I am pretty aghast by how much consensus is being stomped on by the dictatorship of people with the most free time. Consensus is not made because a few people have enough free time to edit thousands of articles on a particular subject and gets to call it precedent. Changes like this should be much, much slower. Carlp941 ( talk) 16:04, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose This change is simply bad UX and does a disservice to readers. It should only be used when rendered necessary by an unusual legislative situation, and this is not one of those. NotBartEhrman ( talk) 15:22, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose @ PLATEL: other Westminster infoboxes use TIE. It is not super difficult, nor is it Wikipedia taking a side to deliberate over what parties are major enough to appear in the wikibox, the TIE box looks better and is used more consistently, unless we're going to reformat the election box template entirely. CaelemSG ( talk) 16:34, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose TIE has been consistently used on almost every election page for over a decade so I don't understand why people would want to change it to something that reads worse. I prefer seeing the pictures and the stats for each party, even if it means there's multiple parties because it reads well and gets the biggest points across, including swings and previous results to compare to. The table format should be reserved for the RESULTS section where a table reads better. It's the opening for article, it should be pretty and attention-grabbing, not so bland and uninformative. Civilbeegee ( talk) 17:38, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose The trade-off between conveying, in the introduction, a extremely minimal more precise information at the expense of readability, general clarity and Ux experience isn’t worth it in any way. The more precise results can be inserted in the body of the voice, they don’t need to ne the first thing you see while opening the page. Siglæ ( talk) 17:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Exactly. That's the whole point of the article! Tables are generally found within the body of the text where it can properly explain the info and give insight and analysis. The opening section, info box, is not for this because you cannot properly explain everything in that small of a window. Why it's always been the TIE previously is because people immediately see a photo and are drawn in naturally. People see numbers as the first thing and they become suddenly less interested because they feel that it's going to be complicated or require more effort to read or understand. Civilbeegee ( talk) 17:51, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose I concur emphatically with @ Impru20: above. Besides the systemic effort to implement the legislative election template across vast swathes of elections without clear cause, there is a point where the effort to change the template becomes so disruptive that the drawbacks in subsequent conflict and edit warring outweigh any benefits that may be gained. We are far beyond that point. This needs to be stopped, frankly. Erinthecute ( talk) 18:47, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose I also concur with the point made by @ Erinthecute: TIE is pretty consistently used for national elections like this, and I don't quite understand why we're changing this now. I see the use of TIE in elections stretching from interwar Romanian legislative elections to the articles of many recent elections in modern nations. The change to using TILE doesn't seem to make sense for me considering that it makes the most sense in a scenario where there are both a large number of political parties active in the parliament, and also where the largest party has a small plurality of the vote. I can see the merit of using TILE in Knesset election pages, where the largest six parties might not even compose a majority, much less a super-majority of votes cast. The same may be the case with elections in the Netherlands. But in the case of South Africa, the six largest parties make up more than 90% of the votes cast.
Regardless, the purpose of the lede should be as a summary, giving the reader a quick understanding of the subject, while the rest of the article expands where the lede started. As such, something as cluttered as an infobox in TILE style just doesn't fit. We might be able to accommodate the TILE style in the results section, but for the lede, we should keep the TIE infobox as it already exists. The only cases where we shouldn't do this are cases like the original case that the alternative was meant for, such as elections to the Knesset. I don't think that this article fits that category for the reasons stated above.
To finally resolve this issue for all articles involved in this dispute, we should really set ground rules through the Elections Wikiproject. Maybe this discussion might be where we start making these decisions. Jerry ( talk) 20:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Oppose -
to be frank not all parties are equal in election based on the amount of votes and much more information is quickly gained from the original view (TIE), rather than the new one, which loses both visual flow and readability in addition to not adding any new information. Best would be getting an adjustment to the original template which allows optional view of the smallest parties, rather than losing the photo one.
If we want to change what should be the template overall, it's not for a few editors who encourage each other, or for a talk page of a single election to decide.
All articles should be reverted to its original TIE state. LadislavLouka ( talk) 21:49, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Oppose for reasons that have already been thoroughly enumerated: aesthetic considerations, readability, and the non-necessity of including tiny parties (which get covered in the results section.) CipherRephic ( talk) 22:43, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose I acknowledge that TILE probably works better for some elections/electoral systems. But here, where there are a few clear, major parties, it just seems to repeat detailed info better suited to the results section, where it can be presented with better formatting anyway. TIE to me fits better the idea of a summary - the major parties, their results and their leaders, who, for better or worse, are a significant part of how politics operate. I also agree with Jerry that perhaps some overarching discussion should be had at Elections Wikiproject? I've never seen a formatting issue generate such interest off-Wikipedia, suggesting something here is amiss. Lilactree201 ( talk) 23:11, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
    @ Lilactree201 I would concur for a wider discussion because clearly something here has hit a nerve, and it's bleeding over into a bunch of other articles. CaelemSG ( talk) 23:17, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
@ PLATEL
Oppose, there's no need to display on the infobox, which is meant to be a short and easy to read summary of the article, precise information regarding every party that got 1 or 2 seats, especially since that is already present in the "Results" section. Eduluzsci ( talk) 00:11, 16 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Oppose These results can be found in the body of the body, which is generally used to give more insight. Infoboxes are much better at conveying information and allow people to gain an interest in these elections. 2 brown eyes ( talk) 22:43, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply
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.

Live Clock

A minor point but why is the live clock showing the time as being 5am. Surely, it should be written as 5:XX pm or 17:XX not 05:XX. 2A02:8084:609B:4100:D904:22B1:D3DF:A380 ( talk) 16:26, 1 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Seats per region table wrong

Current seat allocation seems to be here: [3] [4] -- 109.43.48.174 ( talk) 17:29, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Thanks for flagging it up – have fixed it. However, someone had been adding seat totals to the provincial results tables based on the incorrect tables, which I assume means they must have been calculating them themselves rather than using sources? Number 5 7 22:27, 3 June 2024 (UTC) reply

No photographs

Why are there no photographs of the party leaders? BlueBlurHog ( talk) 01:24, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply

CONSENSUS NOT REACHED

Dont know what your definition of consensus is, but whatever was reached in the "Infobox legislative election instead of infobox election" was clearly not a consensus. Change the infobox back, the current one makes this page look hideous. Dylan Fourie ( talk) 05:39, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Calling other people's edits "hideous" or "horrendous" ( as you did here) without any constructive discussion and starting an edit war is not a good, but a very bad solution to wiki disputes.  PLATEL  ( talk) 06:09, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply
how about joining the discussion first? Braganza ( talk) 07:01, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply
because Platel locked the discussion and went on to change the stuff Dylan Fourie ( talk) 09:31, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply
I did not lock and/or close the discussion.  PLATEL  ( talk) 10:03, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply

I wouldn't say it looks bad, but I feel like the old infobox felt like it had more info. This version feels so compact, that it's so easy to miss the important information. Edwyth ( talk) 19:10, 4 June 2024 (UTC) reply

I also agree that infobox election is better since it contains more info and doesn't look too compact. - Bokmanrocks01 ( talk) 22:09, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Alleged MMP electoral system

The new electoral system is called Mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) on the page, but the source here doesn't call it this way, and the system described isn't MMP. With MMP, there's one vote for a fixed number of consistuency seats, and a second vote for proportional, which is used to add as many seats as needed to correct the results in seats to achieve a proportional repartition of the total seats by parties as close as possible to the repartition of the second votes. Here in SA, the system described is two proportional system acting independently to get a fixed total of seats which then add up to each other. That's Parallel voting, not MMP. Aréat ( talk) 05:51, 5 June 2024 (UTC) reply

does this page say it's MMP? Rankedchoicevoter ( talk) 11:36, 5 June 2024 (UTC) reply
The Electoral system section seem to, and the MMP page has South Africa on its map.-- Aréat ( talk) 12:17, 5 June 2024 (UTC) reply
It's on the map as it uses MMP on a local level only (different shade than Lesotho, which uses it on a national level) - is this incorrect?
I interpreted it as MMP was considered and maybe accepted in some preliminary vote in 2021, but that section doesn't say anything more recent, it should be added with up-to-date information Rankedchoicevoter ( talk) 12:21, 5 June 2024 (UTC) reply
It's not parallel voting either. All 400 seats (minus independents) are distributed at the national level (by sum of national + regional votes). National lists receive what is left after the regional lists of the same party got their share (same as with MMP, but without majoritarian representation). -- 109.43.48.104 ( talk) 00:58, 6 June 2024 (UTC) reply
It's not MMP. The system broadly is like that used in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway - i.e. proportional representation with some MPs elected in subnational constituencies, with the remaining then being elected through levelling seats allocated based on the national vote totals. MMP (where FPTP is used to elect half the seats) is used for municipal elections in South Africa, but not for national or provincial elections. Gust Justice ( talk) 11:15, 15 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Regional results and Provincial elections

Went WP:BOLD and separated the regional results into the Results of the 2024 South African general election, and the results of the provincial elections into the 2024 South African provincial elections articles respectively. Thought it would be best to cut down on some of the denseness of the article and allow for deeper analysis to be sectioned into the respective articles. I know this is something that several other elections have done before so I thought it would be best to inform editors of this. Ornithoptera ( talk) 20:12, 5 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Deeper analysis elsewhere is fine, but if there's one thing this page should contain, it's the results of the elections, rather than endless polls and trivia! Greenman ( talk) 07:04, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Restored from 2024 South African provincial elections. Greenman ( talk) 10:17, 9 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Results not matching

The results as displayed on this page don't match the actual IEC results given in the source. It looks like they were taken from an earlier version, probably just the national ballot, excluding the regional figures? For example, the ANC is given as 12,698,759 here. Greenman ( talk) 07:04, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Same. The table of popular vote in the result section doesn’t match the IEC’s figures. It’d be fabulous if someone fixes/update that. 沁水湾 ( talk) 18:36, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply
Looks like the IEC figures are wrong again (they're showing the combined totals, but not the combined percentages). Greenman ( talk) 11:53, 8 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Jacob Zuma's eligibility

I see there is a footnote re: Jacob Zuma being on the ballot. This is unnecessary, there is no need for a party leader to be eligible for Parliament, it was perfectly legitimate to be MK's leader and be on the ballot. His eligibility for Parliament is a different matter. I recommend removing the footnote. TheWaylander ( talk) 21:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Election Results Summary needs further clarification

Under the summary of election results, it states that: 

"...the MK achieving a plurality in KwaZulu-Natal and the ANC being forced into second-largest party status in KwaZulu-Natal for the first time since it first won the province in 2004."

In terms of votes received on the national ballot, this statement is correct; however, the ANC came in 3rd place on the both the provincial and regional KZN ballots, behind the IFP.

Because of this, it would be more accurate to state that the ANC is in fact only the 3rd largest party in the province. Stating otherwise gives a false impression of their actual performance. KA Weinert ( talk) 14:42, 13 June 2024 (UTC) reply

Highly Contested Provinces needs updating

The KwaZulu-Natal subsection fails to mention the performance of the IFP in the province. The IFP received more votes on both the provincial and regional ballots, and received a comparable number of votes to the ANC on the national ballot in the province as well.

The IFP saw large gains in KZN and their performance should be noted in this section of page. KA Weinert ( talk) 14:46, 13 June 2024 (UTC) reply

List party or coalition for "president after"

I was gonna change it, but this has never been the case before: It says ANC-DA-IFP-PA... but the president is still a member of only the ANC. So what should be listed? Coalition or party? 2600:8800:2C09:3200:389D:BBC9:7DD0:24F6 ( talk) 17:37, 14 June 2024 (UTC) reply

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