Talk:2004 United States presidential election

Dick Gephardt

I changed the description of Dick Gephardt in the caption under his picture from former minority leader to former majority leader because even though he was more recently a minority leader, majority leader is a higher position. Soxrock24 (talk) 04:41, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Ohio court disclosures

Is this a credible source? If so, it seems the article needs to be updated to cite this source: New Court Filing Reveals How the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election Was Hacked. WilliamKF (talk) 16:06, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Bad data in table of popular vote counts by state

It seems that the data in the by-state tally is incorrect.

The button for the link: http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2004/federalelections2004.pdf states: "Note also: Official Federal Election Commission Report, with the latest, most final, and complete vote totals available."

For Arkansas, the table lists 573,182 votes for Bush, but the FEC report (p.27) at the link I mention lists 572,898 votes for Bush. There are discrepancies for Illinois also.

Is there an explanation for these apparent errors?

Thanks.CountMacula (talk) 02:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

File:Al Sharpton by David Shankbone.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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Issue of Kerry's decision to dispute the win being in the lead

Should this text be in the second paragraph:

The winner was not determined until the following day, when Kerry decided not to dispute Bush's win in the state of Ohio. The state held enough electoral votes to determine the winner of the presidency. Both Kerry and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean have stated their opinion that voting in Ohio did not proceed fairly and that, had it done so, the Democratic ticket might have won that state and therefore the election.<ref name=RS>{{cite news|url= http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0601-34.htm |title=Was the 2004 Election Stolen? : Rolling Stone |publisher=Rollingstone.com |author=Kennedy, Robert F.|accessdate=November 3, 2008}}</ref>

It would seem to be rather notable as it may have determined the outcome of the election. Jim1138 (talk) 08:30, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Anyone else that should be included in the discussion? Jim1138 (talk) 08:35, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Jonathanfu (talk) 08:39, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

The source is an opinion piece, written by a partisan author, housed on the website of a partisan organization, and originally published in a magazine whose specialty is music and pop culture, not political news or NPOV analysis. I have a lot of trouble considering this a reliable source, especially for assertions with probable BLP implications. Actual news reports of statements by Dean or Kerry, on the other hand, are probably appropriate in the main text of the article (I haven't checked recently, but I believe similar comments about Nixon not disputing his loss based on alleged improprieties in Illinois were either in his article or the 1960 election article at one point). Fat&Happy (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

You are making the uncertainty over the election's outcome a lot more significant and widely discussed than it actually is by giving it its own paragraph in the lead. I cannot find any mainstream news source disputing the outcome of the election, or assigning a different outcome a high probability. If you have one, show it. And there are many, many factors that affected the election's outcome, such as the Swift Boat attacks or allegations of Kerry's flip-flopping, that are not in the lead.

My proposed change would be: "As in the 2000 presidential election, voting controversies and concerns of irregularities emerged during and after the vote, particularly in the state of Ohio. However, there was far less controversy about this election than in 2000." That seems entirely fair, considering that dispute over this election is mostly expressed in far-flung conspiracies, and that Kerry himself declined to seek a recount and has barely talked about the election ever since. --24.13.213.40 (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Article from a source politically similar to Rolling Stone completely debunking the cited article in the lead: http://www.salon.com/2006/06/03/kennedy_39/. I don't think conspiratorial, distorted views and isolated statements made by the election's losers deserve a place in the lead. --24.13.213.40 (talk) 00:00, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Presidential elections in 2004

2004 Presidential Election presently redirects here, but 2004 Presidential election redirects to a dab page at 2004 presidential election. I think that all three capitalization should lead to the same place, so I have nominated both redirects at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2012 November 19#2004 Presidential election. Your comments in that discussion would be welcome. Thryduulf (talk) 12:41, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Somewhat related, a page that links here uses the term, "presidential election 2004", and a candidate from that election's page John Kerry uses the term, "presidential"-(w/o capitalizing the "P" which in the Wikipedia MOS appears to recommend using "P" in these cases)[[1]]. Due to this problem I am hesitating on changing anything there24.0.133.234 (talk) 23:03, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

bin Laden tapes' effect on polling mis-represented

Having taken a new interest in the subject, I reviewed Real Clear Politic's aggregation of 2004 US Presidential Election polling, specifically the dates 10/28 - 11/2. In the current Wiki page, it says Bush opened up a larger lead on Kerry following the bin Laden tape release on 10/29, when in fact the opposite is true. According to RCP's aggregate, the margin closed slightly. There is a similar mention of this on the bin Laden tape's page. It specifically mentions a 6 point lead, but doesn't address what poll they are referencing, nor does it address the (more accurate) aggregation of polls showing no significant influence of the tapes. Should this be edited? Laboxter (talk) 00:40, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Demographics section addition

Hello, all. I'm interested in adding demographics information to this election page. To specify, demographics on voter turnout regarding things like gender, age, income, race, etc. I have found a credible source, and was thinking of making fancy pie-charts to add somewhere in the results section. Please let me know if there is any feedback.

All the best. -- 7partparadigm ^talk 06:02, 1 December, 2013 (UTC)

Over use of color

unfortunately, a significant portion of the information is conveyed exclusively using color, which is inaccessible to the blind and color blind. In particular, using red/blue to indicate states won by republicans and democrats. any ideas of how to fix this problem? Frietjes (talk) 14:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid there's really no easy solution for that without making the whole article very messy and cumbersome. It's just such a universal standard to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, the colors are used on the main electoral college map, on the congressional district maps, on the county-level maps, the shading of the states by party on the state-by-state result table, and in indicating the state victory margins in the Close States section...and this color-based format is used in every single article in any way related to an American election. It's pretty much impossible to replicate all the data communicated by that color without really making a mess of the article, having to write out "Democratic" and "Republican" in every spot where blue or red is used. In some cases it would be pretty much impossible, because going through say a county map and putting a D or an R in each of 3000+ counties would be very tedious to make and not very useful since you'd have to zoom in very close to actually see the result.

I agree it's very unfortunate for colorblind users, I wonder if Wikipedia would consider possibly adding a Colorblind version of Wikipedia where all that information could be conveyed using exclusively non-color based methods, because it would be too messy and very difficult (in some cases impossible) to try to provide a colorblind solution on top of the color scheme system used in the main articles. If we can get a Colorblind version of Wiki, I would be happy to help contribute in making at least state-level maps and tables and communicate party data without relying on color. Inqvisitor (talk)

it's really not that hard to fix. so long as the information is not conveyed exclusively using color (see WP:Color) there is no problem. for example, the Close states section would just need some additional text. Frietjes (talk) 00:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

But Close States is just one minor section. Color is used all over every single election page in so many different sections. It would look kinda silly and pointless to edit just one small section to be colorblind accessible when the rest of the page is all so clearly not colorblind accessible, plus again it would look cumbersome to add "Democratic" and "Republican" next to each state, while right now the Close State section looks neat and orderly. Plus the winner color is not the important information being conveyed by the Close States section, the important information from the section is simply to inform the readers which states were closest in margin. But what about all the maps and tables which all depend on color? It would be extremely difficult to make them colorblind accessible. Wiki's color guidelines regarding colorblindness simply require that colors used be of sufficient contrast, the colors used in the Close States section both pass the Color Contrast Analyser found at WP:Color. Inqvisitor (talk) 02:02, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Reading over my post I want to apologize if I appear to be coming across as insensitive to those who are colorblind. But I genuinely don't think there is an easy solution to making election articles accessible to colorblind users. The red-blue color scheme is thoroughly ingrained in how we process election data. It would make the article very messy and cumbersome to write out "Democratic" and "Republican" every time blue or red is used, and again, there is nothing that can be done about the many maps and tables. Again I would strongly recommend the idea of trying to get Wikipedia to create a Colorblind version of Wikipedia, there is already precedent for same-language Wikis like the Simple English version. And I'd be happy to contribute the best I could to election articles (my personal project for the moment) for a colorblind version, complete with maps using Rs and Ds instead of red and blue if that would work for such a purpose. Inqvisitor (talk) 04:25, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

per WP:Color "Ensure that color is not the only method used to convey important information". if the information is not important, than there is no problem. the parts of the article that fall under WP:NOT#STATS are probably not important. Frietjes (talk) 15:28, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Well I think the articles do accomplish that to the best possible extent that they could. In the Close States section, the winner is not the important information, it's simply included for reference, the important information is simply the margin that made the states close. One can easily check the full state-by-state results table for the margin along with the full state result (I personally took the time to create numerically detailed state-by-state result tables for every election from 2000 going back so far to 1872, and I eventually hope to create them for all elections); while a colorblind user might not be able to tell who won a state by the party shading the information is also clearly conveyed by simply checking the numbers for the state. Similarly, I think the tables allow a colorblind user to find out, in numerical format, who won which state and by what margin, even if they can't tell by looking at the main electoral college map or the party shading on the table. So personally I think the most important and most detailed information about the election results are actually provided in a non-color-based format, the numbers on the state-by-state election results table. Inqvisitor (talk) 02:24, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

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