Talk:2009 Norwegian parliamentary election

Suggest moving or removing "individual polls"

The "individual polls" section is taking up enormous amounts of space, and without very much importance. The average of polls gives some information about actual trends, but any individual poll in itself is pretty worthless. Also, it seems entirely random which polls get included on this page (there are 9 or 10 every month). I suggest establishing a page opinion polling for the norwegian parliamentary election, 2009 or something of the sort and moving all the individual polls there, keeping only the average of polls on this page. Alternately, delete them altoghether.--Barend (talk) 07:54, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I have now removed the section you mentioned. If required for any reason the deleted info can be retrieved from this archive page: [1] -GabaG (talk) 23:30, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I just created Opinion polling for the Norwegian parliamentary election, 2009 were I put all the individual poll results. I put up a link to it on this article as well. -GabaG (talk) 21:57, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Extremely disappointing that we have not published the results yet!

I have never known Wikipedia to be so tardy. --Mais oui! (talk) 06:26, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

• I have posted the results shown in Aftenposten for the time being, but the official vote count is not entirely complete just yet. I think the seat allocation is quite clear however. Also, all the figures I have found so far lump all the non-parliamentary parties except Red as "Other parties". I expect more detailed results to become available over the next days. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:38, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Bit grumpy this am!  ;) --Mais oui! (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Rigged electoral system

Even more blatantly than last time, the left has won the election only because the electoral system is rigged in favour of the northern districts. Norway really doesn't deserve to be called a democracy after this result. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 12:15, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I completly agree with your point. I also strongly suggest it should be stated in the article that the Red-Greens won this election with c. 50.000 (about 1.8% of total votes) less votes than the opposition, an increase from 2005 when they won with 20.000 less votes. As one newspaper reported, they "did a Bush". -GabaG (talk) 14:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

It should be noted that the "opposition" (H, Frp, Krf, V) got 1,329,820 votes versus the current Red-Green (Ap, Sv, Sp) that got 1,280,591. Or 49,229 more. But that is only if you count the major factions, and don't take into account the "opposition" weren't willing to work together. If you start adding the smaller parties, like f.ex. the party "Rødt" said they would support the current Red-Green government and they got 36,210 votes. But then, if you start adding one of these "smaller" parties you should start adding them all, and then who do you add to each side without them stating a clear preference like "Rødt" did?

So to sum it up. In my opinion stating a fixed number the opposition got of more votes, as compared to simply saying they got more, isn't a very reliable. Laniala (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Laniala's point is sound, it depends entirely how you define "the opposition" in this election. It would be unfair to classify Rødt as "opposition"; and who knows for the other minor parties, which coalition pacts they would have been prepared to agree to were they elected? The number of votes for the minor parties is actually substantial compared to the gap in votes between the governing coalition and the other parties winning parliamentary representation (which are not a "bloc" themselves). However, there has been discussion in Norway about Mr Toad's point - and indeed in places it's been worded in exactly Mr Toad's way. I want to reword the article text ("Note that the Red Green Coalition actually won the election with less votes than the opposition parties") to the fact that "the Red Green Coalition actually won the election with a minority (47.9%) of votes" which maintains the crux of the point, and repeats a key figure from that article,without getting into the ambiguities that Laniala identified. I'd also prefer to remove the "Note that" and the "see proportional representation" - it seems unduly like point-scoring. A better wording would indicate that Norwegian commentators have covered this fact, that Peter N. Myhre has called for a reform of the rules, and that Hanne Marthe Narud (has a no: article but not an en: one yet, perhaps she ought to) has suggested historical causes for the disproportionate representation of rural areas. TheGrappler (talk) 16:25, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I've expanded this section a little. My Norsk is a little rusty (been a couple of years since I've done any translations from no: to en: wiki) so if somebody can check I've not misrepresented anything/anyone I'd appreciate it. "Distriktene" I've described as "rural areas" rather than literally as "the districts", that's probably the part I'm least confident. TheGrappler (talk) 19:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, there is only two sides which would be correct, either count only the ones which are represented in parliament, or also add all other parties, you can't just take out the party Red, that's at least wrong. So, if you count the parliamentary parties, the opposition got c. 50.000 more votes. And since practically all the minor parties are on the right, if you count all the votes, if I'm correct I read somewhere that the opposition anyways got like 35.000 more votes.

As one newspaper said, there was much uprising and controversy in Norway when Bush won one election with fewer votes than Al Gore, but apparently it only counts as unfair when it favors the political right. Because now that the Norwegian left has won 2 elections in a row with less votes, it is of course fair because you have to let the rural areas have more to say. That is as the rural population is social democrats in Norway, if they were Republicans as in Texas/Midwest/South USA I'm sure the system would have been revoked very quickly. -GabaG (talk) 19:50, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Either you didn't read what I wrote, or you ignored it. I never claimed the ruling parties got the majority, and I did mentioned both of what you said:

1. If you count only those parties that got a seat in the parliament, then the ruling ones (Ap, Sv, Sp) got 49,229 fewer votes than the 4 remaining parties (H, Frp, Krf, V). But considering those 4 other parties never agreed to work together as one what is it that automatically makes them all in unison count as opposition? I can't remember seeing that explained in the article. You also have to think on that Venstre didn't get above the election threshold of 4% so they lost a lot of parliament seats that way, instead given to the other parties. And either way that is still not counting 72,385 (2.7%) votes given to other parties not represented at the parliament. So in my opinion blatantly stating the "opposition" won by 50,000 votes (why round 49,229 up?) as a fixed number but still got the minority of the parliament seats is either 1) formulating the sentence wrong and not clearly enough or 2) presenting the numbers wrong.
2. If you count votes for all the parties then the number will not be 49,229, and you get the headache to categorize each and every smaller party into different blocks. And really, there is no reason to pull numbers out of the air when they are all listed in the article, taken directly from the government web page.

As for the Norwegian election laws itself I don't think this article has any reason to dig that deep into that matter. Anyway, I suppose people should look at the results at [2] and see that a lot of the seats given to H, Frp and Krf just happens to come from the rural areas. The same rural areas that are given more seats in the parliament than the population alone would give them. The same 3 parties also got the majority of the 19 leveling seats intended to equalize the party-seat distribution according to votes. Another thing, those parts of the election laws are stated in the constitution §57 -- §59 ([3]) so it will require a 2/3 majority in the parliament to change, and a constitution change can't be agreed upon until there has been at least one parliament election after the law was proposed changed (§112 [4]). The current election laws were last changed in 2003, which means they were proposed changed before that. So again, plain out stating the Red-Green governing parties (Ap, Sv, Sp) changed the laws to rig themselves to get the majority of the parliament seats are plain out false and should not be written on Wikipedia. I would not be surprised if they probably agreed to the constitution change in the hopes it might turn out the best for them, but blatantly stating it was them alone is false since they have not had a 2/3 majority for ages, if ever.

This is not to say the election laws can't be improved though, but I for one wouldn't know how to improve it, and again, I don't really think this is within the scope of this article just because someone might disagree with how the election result turned out. And I will admit that in my opinion the best description I have seen so far of Frp is "Danskebåt på land" (very loosely translated as "partying boat on land"), but the plain dull numbers in the article page should not be presented in an opinionated way or in a way that leaves a lot of room for ambiguity regardless of who won or lost. --Laniala (talk) 01:42, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

• Mr Toad, statements like "Norway really doesn't deserve to be called a democracy after this result" constitute soapboxing, and you should avoid using the talkpage for that kind of thing. I say this having voted for the "losing side" of the election (KrF). Regarding the mechanisms favoring the large parties (For example, a first divisor of 1.4 instead of 1.0, and the electoral threshold of 4.0%) and rural parties (the area factor), those things are discussed in the "Proportional representation system" section, although it would certainly do with an update to reflect the actual consequences rather than the potential consequences. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:50, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm uncomfortable with the idea of describing the opposition as a "losing side" at all, because unlike the government, the other parties couldn't be said to be competing as a bloc. A change of government wouldn't have necessarily constituted an "opposition victory" since, depending on how the balance in parliament fell, it would have been possible for some previously opposition parties to remain in opposition (which hardly seems to make them "winners"). That's not a complaint about the wording in Sjakkalle's comment, but rather sections in the article like "...even if the opposition gets a 50% share of the total vote, effectively losing with c. 100,000 more votes". I quite agree that the "Proportional representation system" needs updating to reflect what actually happened. I also think that Mr Toad overstepped the soapboxing mark, and that the "Bush vs Gore" comparison is poor (multiparty parliamentary elections are clearly very different to what is essentially a two person race; for comparison the UK 2005 and Canada 2000 elections each gave one party a substantial parliamentary majority with only 35% and 41% of the vote respectively - Norway is comparatively well balanced!). Nevertheless, there has been some controversy about the result and the Bush comparison has been made by some commentators. So I think that reports of the resulting criticism of the electoral system should be incorporated into the article, not just what happened and how the system resulted in it. At the moment, the criticism is mostly reported in the "Results" section - which makes sense in that it's the result that led to the criticism, but separates it from the description of the system that's actually being criticized. Should it really be moved to the bottom of the "PR system" section? TheGrappler (talk) 17:30, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Simpler map

There are lots of fascinating and detailed maps now in the article, but would it be possible to have a simple "at a glance" summary like File:Norwegianelection2005.png that is used in Norwegian parliamentary election, 2005? TheGrappler (talk) 17:30, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

The infobox doesn't make any sense. I'd fix it, but I don't know what it's trying to say. Wikipeterproject (talk) 17:49, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Media bias

• 
  Distribution of mandates after the actual 2009 Norwegian parliamentary election:

    Socialist Left Party (11)

    Labour Party (64)

    Centre Party (11)

    Liberal Party (2)

    Christian Democratic Party (10)

    Conservative Party (30)

    Progress Party (41)
• 
  Distribution of mandates by Norwegian journalists sympaties before the 2009 Norwegian parliamentary election:

    Red (9)

    Socialist Left Party (33)

    Labour Party (78)

    Liberal Party (25)

    Conservative Party (24)

I created a chart for the Media of Norway-article, showing the complete differences between the Norwegian public and Norwegian journalists political sympaties. I don't know if it can be implemented here, but it might be interesting and relevant. -GabaG (talk) 12:27, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Infobox

I recently updated the infobox to this[5], similarly to electoral infoboxes in all other countries. However my edit was quickly reverted[6], apparently because "Changes to the infobox clutter the page. the added information can easily be found in". So, I wonder why Norway is not allowed to have an equal infobox to all other countries when it comes to elections, and if the stupid reason given to the revert I wonder why the infobox exist at all. The infobox now just consit of some meaningless stuff, saying only standar-template stuff like "Incumbent Prime Minister" and "Prime Minister-designate". -GabaG (talk) 17:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

My apologies. Should have checked this better. Wikipeterproject (talk) 20:26, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok no problem, nice to come to an agreement once in a while. :) -GabaG (talk) 23:42, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Recent big edit

Ok, with the big edit recently I firstly have to say nice job. However, I found some big issues:

• Only 3 candidates (Jensen, Stoltenberg, Solberg) were PM candidates for this election. Is it appropriate to then have all mere parties in the infobox?
• Why was the previous pollings which were based on the average of all ten national polls replaced by one showing only the polls by the state-owned NRK?
• Should the party Red have its own section in the article? It would be hard to find requirements to rule out the eligibility for such an section for other minor parties.
• Counties are called municipalities for some reason. -GabaG (talk) 23:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Reply

• That may be to true. But the infobox is supposed include the biggest parties after the election.
• I couldn't find sourcing for the previous pollings. So i removed them. I used the state-owned NRK ones because that was the only one i was completely able to reference.
• Red nearly came into parliament, and is more notable then other minor parties here in Norway. It was also the only non-parliament party who gathered over 1% of the vote. May not be a parliamentary party, but is far more notable then the other minor parties.
• My fault.

--TIAYN (talk) 07:00, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Ok fair enough, but I'll remove the picture of Folkvord anyways, that's pushing it much too far. But, with the polls, there were sources for them, and I had updated it regularly from about half on. They were found both on political scientist Bernt Aardal's page (though they seemed to simply get replaced every month) and on TV2 webpages. These sources were clearly shown. -GabaG (talk) 15:54, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Thoughts on the article

• The Polls During the Campaign should have it's own section with a description, so people can interpret the information.

• The photos are too large to have them on either side of the page as some peoples screen size is only 1080px wide. Rule of thumb, 250px max and only on one side. If they are important to the section then I would suggest using a gallery layout for the photos. This would seem the best solution for your case. (Ice Explorer (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2009 (UTC))

GOCE copyedit

I'll raise questions here as I encounter them, Please would you let each bullet start its own thread – it keeps discussions easier to follow.

• Near the end of Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2009#Labour: "In an opinion poll in November, two months after the election, all parties continued to decrease ...". Is that all coalition parties, or really all parties? --Stfg (talk) 21:42, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• Near the start of [[Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2009#Progress: "The debate on our 100-day program laid out disappointingly fast. We can only lash ourselves to the all-time run" appears to be a machine translation. The original text is: "Debatten om vårt 100-dagers program la seg skuffende raskt. Vi får bare piske oss selv til tidenes innspurt". Could someone provide a meaningful translation, please? --Stfg (talk) 21:42, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

• There was inconsistent spelling of centre/center in the article, with "centre" the more frequent. Since the Centre Party (Norway) article uses the "centre" version, I have followed that. However, Norwegian_parliamentary_election,_2009#Election_results invokes Template:Norwegian parliamentary election, 2009, which is inconsistent about this, linking to "Centre Party" but "Center Alliance". The Center Alliance article itself uses the "Center" spelling. I haven't altered that article, nor the template. --Stfg (talk) 13:43, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

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