Wikipedia:Style for yyyy U.S. presidential election

In accordance with general Wikipedia:election coverage standards:

Wikipedia has a page named yyyy United States presidential election for each year yyyy in which a presidential election took place in the United States (or for the next scheduled presidential election). This page defines a consistent format that can be applied to these presidential election pages in the hope for making them easier to read, use, write, and edit. As the Wikipedia Manual of Style notes:

Clear, informative and unbiased writing is always more important than presentation and formatting. Writers are not required to follow all or any of these rules: the joy of wiki editing is that perfection is not required. Copy-editing wikipedians will refer to this manual, and pages will either gradually be made to conform with this guide or this guide will itself be changed to the same effect.

Each of the presidential election pages should have the following basic structure:

Introduction

1. Background
2. Nominations
3. General election
   1. Campaign
   2. Disputes
   3. Results
4. Contingent election
5. Consequences
6. Electoral college selection
7. Timeline
8. See also
9. References
10. External links
11. Navigation

The introduction is the one-to-three paragraph text that appears prior to any section header. Any of these sections (except for the introduction) may be omitted if no information is available.

Introduction

As with all wikipedia articles, the article should have an introduction of no more than three paragraphs before the first section title. The first sentence should employ "U.S. presidential election of yyyy" as its subject, if at all possible, and it should be in boldface type. Both "U.S. presidential election" and the year yyyy should be links. According to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (links), "Do not link words in article titles; find other ways to include and then link those words." (boldface in original). Since it is difficult (if not imposssible) to create or link to a page with square brackets in it, "article titles" in this case must refer to the boldfaced "U.S. presidential election of yyyy" in the first sentence. This means that the struck out portion of this paragraph was exactly wrong: there should be no links in that boldface "U.S. presidential election of yyyy".

There should also be a map of the electoral vote results by state, and this map should include a caption which begins, "Presidential election by state." (The caption may consist only of those four words.)

Background

This section should describe the state of the United States at the start of the nominating process.

Nominations

This section is for the portion of the election campaign in which the various parties nominate candidates. The section should be decomposed by party, so each level 3 section title under nominations should read "X Party nomination" or "Other nominations", where X is the name of the party.

General election

This section is for the period in the election campaign between the nomination of the various candidates and the resolution of the general election. (The resolution of the general election generally occurs on Election Day, but disputes can make this last quite a long time.)

General election: Results

This should be the location of the HTML table indicating the results of the general election.

Basic table

A set of templates has been created to make it easy to create this table and to keep the tables on the different pages consistent. Each table should start with "{{start U.S. presidential ticket box| pv_footnote=| ev_footnote=}}" and it should end with "{end U.S. presidential ticket box| pv=| ev=| to_win=}}". The former defines the header of the election results table; the latter defines the footer of the table. For each presidential ticket, there should be a row, which is defined by "{{U.S. presidential ticket box v2 row| name=| party=| state=| pv=| pv_pct= |ev=| vp_name=| vp_state=}}". Here are the meanings of the parameters:

ev

For a row, this should be the electoral vote received by the ticket. For the footer, this should have the total electoral vote for the whole nation.

ev_footnote

This should have the symbol, such as an asterisk or superscripted number, that links to a footnote for the whole electoral vote column. If you have multiple footnotes, you should have multiple symbols.

name

This is the name of the presidential candidate. It should be a link.

party

This is the name of the ticket's party.

pv

For a row, this should be the popular vote received by the ticket. For the footer, this should have the total popular vote for the whole nation.

pv_footnote

This should have the symbol, such as an asterisk or superscripted number, that links to a footnote for the whole popular vote column. If you have multiple footnotes, you should have multiple symbols.

pv_pct

This is the percentage of the total popular vote received by the ticket.

state

This is the state of the presidential candidate.

to_win

This should have the electoral votes required to win in the electoral college. Prior to 1804, this number is the smallest integer exceeding one quarter of the total electoral vote; from 1804 onwards, this number is the smallest integer exceeding one half of the total electoral vote.

vp_name

This is the name of the vice presidential candidate. It should be a link.

vp_state

This is the state of the vice presidential candidate.

For instance, here is the code for the election results table for the 1844 election (on an 80 column edit box):

{{start U.S. presidential ticket box
| pv_footnote = <sup>(a), (b)</sup>
| ev_footnote = }}
{{U.S. presidential ticket box row
| name     = [[James K. Polk]]
| party    = [[United States Democratic Party|Democratic]]
| state    = [[Tennessee]]
| pv       = 1,337,243
| pv_pct   = 49.6%
| ev       = 170
| vp_name  = [[George Mifflin Dallas]]
| vp_state = [[Pennsylvania]]}}
{{U.S. presidential ticket box row
| name     = [[Henry Clay]]
| party    = [[United States Whig Party|Whig]]
| state    = [[Kentucky]]
| pv       = 1,299,062
| pv_pct   = 48.1%
| ev       = 105
| vp_name  = [[Theodore Frelinghuysen]]
| vp_state = [[New Jersey]]}}
{{U.S. presidential ticket box row
| name     = [[James G. Birney]]
| party    = [[United States Liberty Party|Liberty]]
| state    = [[New York]]
| pv       = 62,300
| pv_pct   = 2.3%
| ev       = 0
| vp_name  = [[Thomas Morris]]
| vp_state = [[Ohio]]}}
{{end U.S. presidential ticket box
| pv     = 2,698,605
| ev     = 275
| to_win = 138}}
<sup>(a)</sup> ''The popular vote figures exclude [[South Carolina]] where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.''<br>
<sup>(b)</sup> ''The popular vote total omits votes for candidates besides those listed, which skews the popular percentages up slightly.''

which generates the following table:

Electoral results

Presidential candidate	Party	Home state	Popular vote(a), (b)		Electoral vote	Running mate
			Count	Percentage		Vice-presidential candidate	Home state	Electoral vote
James K. Polk	Democratic	Tennessee	1,337,243	49.6%	170	George Mifflin Dallas	Pennsylvania	170
Henry Clay	Whig	Kentucky	1,299,062	48.1%	105	Theodore Frelinghuysen	New Jersey	105
James G. Birney	Liberty	New York	62,300	2.3%	0	Thomas Morris	Ohio	0
Total			2,698,605	100%	275			275
Needed to win					138			138

^(a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.
^(b) The popular vote total omits votes for candidates besides those listed, which skews the popular percentages up slightly.

Multiple VPs to a president

<< Under construction >>

Complex elections

On occasion, the election pairings are too complex to work with the "U.S. presidential ticket box" templates. Specifically, if one ticket consists of a presidential candidate who has multiple vice presidential candidates and a vice presidential candidate who has multiple presidential candidates, then the "U.S. presidential ticket box" templates cannot be used. In this case, the "Election results" section should have the following structure:

1. Presidential election results table
2. Vice presidential election results table
3. Breakdown by ticket

The "Presidential election results table" is simply a table generated by the "U.S. presidential election box" templates: "{{start U.S. presidential election box| pv_footnote=| ev_footnote=}}", "{{U.S. presidential election box row| name=| party=| state=| pv=| pv_pct= | ev=}}", and "{{end U.S. presidential election box| pv=| ev=| to_win=}}". Similarly, the "Vresidential election results table" is simply a table generated by the "U.S. vice presidential election box" templates: "{{start U.S. vice presidential election box| ev_footnote=}}", "{{U.S. vice presidential election box row| name=| party=| state=| ev=}}", and "{{end U.S. presidential election box| ev=| to_win=}}". These should be fairly self-explanatory to anyone who has used the "U.S. presidential ticket box" templates, as they are just stripped down versions of that template.

"Breakdown by ticket" should get a subsection heading, followed by a table generated by the "U.S. electoral vote box" templates: "{{start U.S. electoral vote box| ev_footnote=}}", "{{U.S. electoral vote box row| name=| vp_name=| ev=}}", and "{{end U.S. electoral vote box}}". This table should only list candidate pairings which may have gotten votes. More precisely, if you know that a given ticket received zero electoral votes, it doesn't go in this table.

Contingent election

This section is for those rare occasions (at the time of this writing, 1800, 1824, and 1836) in which a President or Vice President isn't decided by the general election and the House or Senate has to determine the winner.

Settlement by judicial review

This section is for those rare occasions (at the time of this writing only the election of 2000) in which an election for the selection of electors, the electoral college vote, or a contingent election is contested and ultimately settled by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Electoral college selection

This section should contain a table indicating what methods were used to determine the Electors for each state.

See also

This section should contain a link to "History of the United States (xxxx-zzzz)" where xxxx-zzzz is the year interval that yyyy fits into.

References

If there is more than one type of reference (e.g., both books and external links), then this section should be subdivided by reference type.

Navigation

This section should contain "{{USPresidentialElections}}" which generates the box of links to other presidential election articles.