Talk:2016 United States presidential election

Consensus on pre-election discussions about presentation of candidates

Anachronistic Trump portrait

Today I restored the campaign-time consensus portrait of Donald Trump,[1] but Jean-Jacques Georges reverted.[2] During the campaign and until a few weeks after the election, there was a stable consensus to use the 2015 picture of Trump. This consensus is documented in the talk page headers, for portraits of Trump, Clinton and Johnson. We shouldn't replace this campaign picture by an anachronistic presidency picture taken in 2017. Comments welcome. — JFG ^talk 14:24, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Election mug shots should be as they were at the time, hence the differing images of George Bush Sr. between United States presidential election, 1988 and United States presidential election, 1992. Neither is a picture of him as he looks now.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:30, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, dear. I don't feel there is a "consensus" about this portrait or that there has ever been one : on the contrary. People were just tired of the discussions and wanted to wait for the official portrait. As we all know, the official portrait can not, for now, be on commons because of that copyright debacle (as a reminder, before it had to be deleted, this page used Trump's official portrait which was no less "anachronistic" than the current one and nobody seemed to have issues with it). The fact that we cannot use the official portrait for now is not a reason to put back an inadequate picture. We have this picture on commons, which was also taken before the election, and many other pictures where he at least does not make a "grumpy" face.

Now what we had with the 2015 photo was a page with Clinton smiling and Trump looking like a goof (and/or a comic book villain) : the effect was simply a "good guy vs bad guy" image. IMHO we should at least try to have a page that look a bit neutral, whether we like Trump or not (and I don't like him at all). The portrait is not that "anachronistic" (not less than the 2015 image which was taken well before the actual election), it is Trump's current "stable" portrait as long as his official photo does not become public domain, he faces the camera and he has a relatively neutral expression. I don't want to participate further in that discussion, nor do I want to start a war. I just think we should have a neutral image, and the version before JFG's edit was just fine. That's all. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 14:35, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Badass presidents don't smile.

Jean-Jacques, I understand where you're coming from and it can feel frustrating. However, all these debates about Trump's supposed "goofiness" are water under the bridge now. Fact is, there was a widely-seen campaign picture which was "the face of Trump" for about a year on wikipedia. Our articles about the 2016 campaign must preserve this and we should not re-litigate whether that picture was better or worse than others. PS: As demonstrated by FDR: badass presidents don't smile. — JFG ^talk 14:49, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't care about him smiling or not (he doesn't on his "badass" official portrait which, IMHO, makes him look even worse), I just think we should have a neutral iconography in which he would look at least a little bit dignified. Water under the bridge or not, the "Grumpy and goofy Trump vs smiling Hillary" is more detrimental to Wikipedia's credibility than to Trump's image. It just makes us look like a bunch of Clinton supporters. Not that I have issues with anyone being anti-Trump, but it's just not very "NPOV". Now I don't want to argue indefinitely on that matter, which I will happily leave to other users : I just deplore that we should go back to the previous situation because the Trump administration can't handle image licenses correctly. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 14:58, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

That was a deplorable way to handle picture licensing, indeed! For the rest, let's wait for input from other editors. I shall note that several commenters had noted that the 2015 campaign picture actually gave him a rather positive, attentive and serious image, whereas Clinton's smile looked artificial and aggressive. I suppose æsthetics are in the politics of the beholder. — JFG ^talk 21:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Probably, yes. Still, I think that the "grumpy" picture (especially when juxtaposed with Clinton's "happy" picture) did not only make Trump look stupid : IMHO - and more importantly - it made us look stupid, as it gave the impression that we were striving to make him look like the villain of the piece. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 07:23, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Again, editors' opinions on that particular picture were split. I wish we had more commenters here, will try announcing the discussion at Talk:Donald Trump and the wikiproject. — JFG ^talk 00:20, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Seeing no further comments after two weeks, I restored the campaign-time portrait, per prior consensus documented in talk page header. — JFG ^talk 15:59, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

• I agree with User:Jean-Jacques Georges that the picture does make us look stupid, I would prefer changing the picture of Clinton as well as the one of Trump to make it look neutral. Also, it should be worth pointing out that there is no consistency as to which photos are used on presidential election articles, for example, although the 1988 election article uses a pre-presidency portrait of Bush Sr, the photo of his son as used in the 2000 election article is in fact dated January 2001, and is the same image as used in Texas gubernatorial election, 1998 (Texas gubernatorial election, 1994 uses a different picture also dated 2001). and the same image of Bill Clinton (dated 1993) are used on both the 1992 and 1996 election articles, therefore, the above argument that the image is anachronistic is weak and completely misses the point. - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 02:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

  I don't think there was ever any consensus about the campaign-time picture : back then, it was just kept precisely because there was no consensus about which picture we should use~here (and probably because many wikipedians don't like Trump - I don't blame anyone for that, actually). IMHO we whould go back to the current Trump "portrait" portrait. We coould also change the Clinton portrait like CHAMPION suggests. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 06:19, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

There was a very clear and hotly-debated consensus. This picture "won" against dozens of others that were submitted repeatedly all along the campaign season. Same debates happened with the Clinton picture, athough with less acrimony. The concluding consensus – reached on 12 December 2016 with the close of the last RfC on the issue – was properly documented at the top of this page, in a section that is now collapsed but should still be valid unless we can prove by RfC that consensus has changed. I'm open to starting a new RfC over anachronism, but in the meantime the campaign-season picture must stay. — JFG ^talk 06:56, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The picture only "won" because everybody was exhausted by weeks - if not months - of debate. That was a distaster IMHO, as Wikipedia seemed to scream "He's the bad guy, don't vote for him !". So much for NPOV (even though I may not disagree on a personal level)... As we all know, alas, it did not work. Back then, it made us look stupid, now it looks like we're keeping it out of spite. I don't see any valid reason why the campaign-season picture should stay : some time has passed, we now have better images and, as Champion demonstrated above, the "anachronism" argument is weak. If other users think that Clinton's "grin" poses a problem, we may also change her photo to one were she has a more neutral expression. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 08:07, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Your opinion or mine on the picture don't matter. (For the record, I don't particularly like it either.) My point is that in addition to the anachronism, we need a new widely-advertised RfC is we want to overturn a prior widely-advertised RfC which was closed by an uninvolved experienced editor according to process. — JFG ^talk 10:57, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

You may do whatever you think is best to solve the problem. Jean-Jacques Georges (talk) 13:36, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Well, thanks! As I do not think upholding prior consensus is a "problem", and having spent enough energy on those debates, I'll leave it to others to take action if they wish to. — JFG ^talk 17:02, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request

In the lede, the article quotes Trump as tweeting:

"The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?"

This tweet contains a grammatical error. A corrected version would be

"The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax; when will this taxpayer-funded charade end?"

Since the error was in the original tweet, could someone please mark it with "[sic]"? Thanks, 2601:240:C400:D60:DD44:2986:D3CB:D38F (talk) 21:49, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Don't think that punctuation errors in a Tweet deserve a pair of [sic]s. — JFG ^talk 08:11, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

See MOS:PMC. Frankly, I find the use of sic as often pedantic or denigrating. Objective3000 (talk) 17:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

60.2% voter turnout per Thehill.com

"...60.2 percent of the voting-eligible population, cast a ballot in November’s elections, according to data compiled by the U.S. Elections Project. That compares with 58.6 percent of eligible voters who turned out in 2012, but it’s below the 62.2 percent who turned out to help elect Obama for the first time in 2008."

Wikipedia says 54.7%, 54.9%, 58.2% instead of 60.2%, 58.6%, 62.2%. Why is there a difference?

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/324206-new-report-finds-that-voter-turnout-in-2016-topped-2012

Durindaljb (talk) 09:12, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

No mention of Clinton's health issues, but links to an entire article on Trump's Billy Bush tape?

For a bit of quick evidence of relevance, the most viewed videos on Trump's Bush tape on Youtube have 2.2 million and 3 million views (from an independent uploader and Late Night with Seth Meyers), while the videos analyzing Hillary's health by independent uploader Dr. Ted Noel and Paul Joseph Watson have 4.6 and 5.9 million views collectively. TWICE as many. Which isn't even counting the footage of her being unconscious and carried at the 9/11 Memorial, which received multiple explanations from her campaign including the heat and pneumonia. Nonetheless, the words "health," "collapse," "faint," and "pneumonia," appear NOWHERE in this article. Not once. There's no mention of it then explanation of why it wasn't an issue. It *conceals* it, as though it *never even happened*. And I repeat, by objective numbers, this received *twice* the actual views from the public that Trump's Access Hollywood tape did. This is not currently an honest account of the issues surrounding the 2016 Election. At the very least, include both or neither. 173.2.64.195 (talk) 12:03, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

YouTube views are not meaningful. YouTube videos made by independent uploaders to state their views are not reliable sources WP:RS. Also, Snopes has rated this false [3]. Objective3000 (talk) 12:24, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Hillary Clinton collapsing in an unconscious state on video is a documented, factual event. It was discussed on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and many other mainstream media outlets as well, commented on specifically by Bill Clinton, caused Hillary Clinton to miss several days worth of campaign events, AND Clinton's campaign released supplementary medical records and held a special PR appearance specifically to address it. None of this is a matter of a "Youtube video made by an independent uploader." Those views simply verify through objective numbers that this was a visible issue to over 10 million people. Whether Snopes determined it to be Parkinson's or not, there is no mention of the collapse (unprecedented in American election history) and whatever the explanations may have been. To conceal this is to simply not honestly represent the issues that shaped this campaign. 173.2.64.195 (talk) 12:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

No one is “concealing” anything. It’s in another article. Also, I saw nothing about losing consciousness. And, YT views are meaningless. Objective3000 (talk) 13:47, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, there are multiple articles (including of course Gangnam Style and Pewdiepie) that reference Youtube views as objective evidence of notability, and Youtube virality was wholly responsible for Grubergate (which is covered here on Wikipedia but to this day has 1/4th as many views as just one of the ones on Hillary's condition) and the fallout of the "Innocence of Muslims" video. But beyond that, you were given multiple examples from the mainstream media (Fox, CNN, MSNBC and more), former Presidents, the candidates campaigns, missed dates, PR appearances, the release of supplementary medical records and more that indicate just how relevant this event was to the campaign and how much it effected. Furthermore, you claimed that the information is in another article so it's not concealed. Donald Trump's Billy Bush tape is referenced on BOTH his personal campaign article here AND in this article. Clinton's collapse is referenced on her personal campaign article but completely absent here. Despite all the notability and relevance it had to the campaign by every measure. It belongs here also and so far you haven't provided a single decent reason why it shouldn't. 173.2.64.195 (talk) 16:05, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

If you Google "buy youtube views", you will see four ads for buying views. Interestingly, these ads are purchased from Google and Google owns YouTube. You should avoid using words like “collapsed” and “unconscious” unless you can provide reliable sources for such words. I haven’t seen any. This is a WP:BLP, and negative exaggeration is a no-no on such articles. Objective3000 (talk) 17:31, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Generally we do not comment on suspected health conditions on BLP articles. While it did receive wide spread coverage, since there was not a verifiable way to know what was going on it was left out. PackMecEng (talk) 12:48, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Actually, this exact issue is mentioned with its own section, in the article for Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign, 2016. Which is far more biography-centered than a general article on the 2016 Election. 173.2.64.195 (talk) 12:16, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Intelligence communities.

According to the article, "On January 6, 2017, the United States government's intelligence agencies concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 United States elections."

This is not correct. Only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies signed off on the intel report (CIA, FBI, NSA, DNI) alleging Russia interfered (in some way), not all of them as implied in the article. The New York Times and the AP have both released corrections.

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/pageoneplus/corrections-june-29-2017.html?_r=0

https://apnews.com/6f05b3a81e134568902e015e666726f6

Semi-protected edit request on 21 August 2017

In the table "2016 Presidential vote by demographic subgroup" in this article, 24% of the jewish voted trump, and 5% other/don't know. According to the source attached (cnn exit polls http://edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls/national/president) 23% of the jewish people voted for trump, and 6% answered other/dont know. Yoavik (talk) 13:39, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Not done: The data in the table is averaged from a collection of reliable sources, which includes CNN. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 19:05, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

More allegations of vote tampering

Propose adding the following paragraph:

Allegations of voting irregularities

On September 7, 2017, New Hampshire state House speaker Shawn Jasper announced that data showed that 6,540 people voted using out-of-state licenses. Of those, only 15% had received state licenses by August 2017. Of the remaining 5,526, only 3.3% had registered a motor vehicle in New Hampshire. In addition to the close vote for president, Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan defeated incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by 1,017 votes. In Feburary 2017, President Trump had told a gathering of senators at the White House that fraudulent out-of-state voting had cost him and Ayotte the election in New Hampshire.