Wikipedia:Notability (electoral candidates)

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Candidates for election are an interesting test for Wikipedia's notability guidelines. Many political candidates receive coverage that could be interpreted to meet the general notability guidelines for people, including profiles from reputable news sources and other coverage that emerges from a typical campaign cycle. However, candidates are frequently deleted in deletion discussions. This essay explains common discussion points around notability for these subjects.

Editor consensus generally frowns on separate (standalone) pages for political candidates for election. A political candidate is included in the corresponding election page unless the candidate has exceptional media coverage.

Challenges with political candidate coverage and discussing notability

  1. Independence: Candidate coverage often lacks independence, being heavily based on primary sources such as interviews and subject-published media. Coverage of politicians and elections can be prone to churnalism, and close attention should be paid to whether information has been vetted. In many cases, information about candidates in news articles comes straight from the candidates with minimal vetting. Care should be taken to ensure that a source has performed some fact-checking or analysis.
  2. Depth: Candidate coverage often lacks depth or significance. Good coverage should have some level of fact-checking or analysis. Simple recaps of campaign events are not notable for coverage. Good coverage of a candidate will at a minimum explain why the candidate's existence in the race is important.
  3. Promotion: There are strong incentives for political candidates and their supporters to abuse Wikipedia for advertising and promotion in order to benefit their candidate. Editors should carefully examine sources and ensure they are reliable.
  4. Neutral point of view: There is a high incentive for supporters and opponents to mis-represent the content and notability of subjects, violating Wikipedia's policies for neutral point of view. Typically supporters predominate in arguing for keeping an article.
  5. Canvassing from partisans is common in discussions surrounding the subject, including on talk pages and deletion discussions, which can distort editor consensus.

Common arguments

Notability

Editors at AFD commonly make several arguments for or against the notability of political candidates. These arguments link back to WP:PAGEDECIDE, the guidance for whether a topic is sufficiently notable to deserve its own page.

Arguments for notability

  1. Elections are major events of lasting significance by their nature. Candidates with significant coverage are notable participants in a notable event, likely to have WP:ENDURING interest. We damage the encyclopedia by excluding notable candidates of interest to present and future readers.
  2. Candidate notability is particularly true for high-profile candidates in competitive elections, where the candidate's background, campaign, and positions may be essential to understanding the election outcome. These are typically not covered by list-style election articles, which overwhelmingly just report endorsements, polling, and election results.
  3. Incumbents tend to have pages while their challengers do not. If the challenger is notable, this violates the neutral point of view policy.
  4. People come to Wikipedia looking for information when they vote. (Counterpoint: Usefulness is not the standard for keeping articles.)

Arguments against notability

  1. Notability is not temporary. Most failed candidates from elections 10 years ago would not be considered notable today. While they seem important now, unsuccessful candidates are largely forgotten after the campaign cycle ends. Editors using this argument may cite the essay Recentism/WP:10YT, and the policy Wikipedia is not a newspaper/WP:NOTNEWS,
  2. Election coverage is largely routine, and candidates should not be the subject of standalone articles unless they win office. Editors may cite the essay Run of the mill (WP:ROTM). Some editors point to Christine O'Donnell as the level of substantial coverage they think necessary for a standalone article on a candidate.
  3. Candidate articles that lack WP:SIGCOV and fail to demonstrate a pass of WP:GNG and/or WP:BASIC fail criteria 8 of WP:DEL-REASON.

Other deletion arguments

Editors at AFD commonly make several additional, non-notability arguments for deleting political candidate articles.

BLP policy and living political candidates

  1. Political campaigns and the election they are related to are collectively viewed as a single event. Living people known only for a single campaign may fail WP:BLP1E policy. A common outcome at WP:AFD is to delete political candidate articles for living subjects without significant coverage clearly independent from a political campaign. Note that BLP policy is not a notability guideline, and cannot be ignored. However, some campaigns make candidates high profile individuals (such as a candidate with significant coverage in national or international media sources), and for that reason they may not qualify for deletion under BLP1E.
  2. Pages that fail any of WP:BLP compliance rules, such as BLP1E, are deleted under criteria 9 of WP:DEL-REASON. Articles that pass WP:GNG (criteria 8) but fail WP:BLP compliance (criterion 9) are usually deleted.

Not encyclopedic

Some articles on electoral candidates may fail WP:NOT guidelines:

  1. WP:PROMO: When political candidate articles are created by editors with a WP:COI, who use Wikipedia to raise the visibility of a candidate, the article abuses Wikipedia as a platform and fails WP:NOTPROMO.
  2. Political candidate articles for subjects who have never held an elected office or have not received WP:SIGCOV outside of a political campaign are often seen as inherently failing WP:NOTPROMO.

Coverage examples

This section details how typical forms of coverage are considered for notability.

Examples of coverage insufficient for notability

Examples of trivial coverage that do not count toward meeting the significant coverage requirement:

  1. Self-published materials, such as:
    1. Press releases, press kits, or similar public relations materials
    2. Campaign websites and social media
    3. Announcements of campaign launch, endorsement, events
    4. Political platforms
  2. Election updates without additional analysis, such as:
    1. Brief reports on polling, fundraising, or prediction markets
    2. Lists of election candidates, including voter guides
  3. Interview content or debate coverage that repeats what politicians say without analysis (such as fact-checking or critical questions)
  4. Government documents such as legislation, executive directives, election filings, compliance reports, or election results

Examples of coverage sufficient for notability

Examples of substantial coverage that would generally be sufficient to meet the significant coverage requirement:

  1. Types of media:
    1. Long-form media that addresses a candidate directly and in detail, such as a long-form journalism article, book chapter, or documentary section
    2. A scholarly article that has significant coverage of a candidate or their campaign event(s)
    3. A news article from another country's media that has significant coverage of a candidate
  2. Coverage outside campaign:
    1. Significant coverage of a candidate's campaign after the fact
    2. Significant coverage of a person outside of their candidacy, where their candidacy is not the focus
  3. Analysis of candidate importance:
    1. Analysis that contrasts in detail the political positions held by multiple candidates in the same election
    2. Analysis that identifies a candidate as a significant part of a broader political shift or movement

Examples of coverage with contentious notability

  1. Medium-sized or longer news articles describing one or more candidates or election-related event

Typical outcomes

Most candidate articles considered at WP:Articles for deletion are not considered notable. The most common result is to redirect to a corresponding election article, such as 2026 United States House of Representatives elections in New York. An election article should cover all candidates in due proportion (WP:DUE) of significant coverage.

See below for a sample history of deletion discussions concerning political candidates. (A complete overview from February 2020 can be found at WikiProject Deletion sorting/Politicians.)

US political candidates

Article Contest Year Decision When nominated Consensus
Sam Forstag US House 2026 No consensus E−1 month Nominated 1 month before general. Candidates had won primary. Keep editors pointed to wide national coverage beyond "typical" routine coverage for a candidate. Delete editors pointed to BIO1E and lack of lasting notability.
Zach Lahn Governor of Iowa 2026 Redirect
Hallie Shoffner US Senate 2026 Keep
Angela Gonzales-Torres US House 2026 Redirect
Cait Conley US House 2026 No consensus
Randy Villegas US House 2026 Redirect E+1 week
E−3 months		 Nominated 2 weeks after primary in 1st AFD, 3 months before general in 2nd AFD. In 2nd AFD, keep editors pointed to wide national coverage beyond "typical" routine coverage for a candidate. Delete editors pointed to BIO1E and lack of lasting notability.
Darializa Avila Chevalier US House 2026 Redirect E−1 week Nominated 1 week before primary. (Earlier AFD 4 months prior). Keep editors pointed to wide national coverage beyond "typical" routine coverage for a candidate. Delete editors pointed to BIO1E and lack of lasting notability. Candidate defeated an incumbent in the primary, yielding Darializa Avila Chevalier.
Melat Kiros US House 2026 Delete E−5 months Keep editors pointed to wide national coverage beyond "typical" routine coverage for a candidate. Delete editors pointed to routine nature of coverage and lack of lasting notability. Page was restored after the primary Melat Kiros.
Amy McGrath US Senate 2025 Keep E+4 years Earlier AFD in 2017. Keep editors pointed to wide national coverage of her multiple campaigns for office and post-election career beyond "typical" routine coverage. Candidate had lost election to US Senate.
Graham Platner US Senate 2025 No consensus E−1 year Keep editors pointed to wide national coverage. Delete editors said the coverage focused on a campaign launch announcement and did not show lasting notability.
Curtis Bashaw US Senate 2025 Redirect E+1 year Delete editors said sourcing of life before candidacy was insufficient and campaign coverage was routine.
Will Boyd US Senate 2025 Keep E+3 years
E−1 year		 Keep editors argued that ten years of campaign coverage was notable.
Tony Campbell US Senate 2025 Delete E+7 years Earlier AFD in 2018. Delete editors said sources cited were routine coverage and there were few sources outside of the campaign.
Kelly Tshibaka US Senate 2024 Redirect E+1 year While having some significant profiles as a candidate, consensus discounted that coverage for a failed candidate and held that Tsibaka did not have enough coverage outside of her candidacy.
Tim Sheehy US Senate 2024 No consensus E−1 month Nominated 1 month before primary. (Earlier AFD 3 months prior, ending in "Redirect", where delete editors argued article failed WP:GNG, not just WP:NPOL.) More keep votes, but Delete & Redirect had more Policy and Guideline weight.
Bernie Moreno US Senate 2024 Keep E−1 week Nominated 1 week before primary. Most editors argued for keep as the candidate in a competitive US Senate election. (Though long-time participants tended to lean Redirect/Delete.)
Dan Osborn US Senate 2024 Keep E−3 weeks Nominated 3 weeks before general. No consensus to delete would be reached before the election.
Jon Kiper New Hampshire Governor 2024 Redirect E−4 months Earlier AFD in December 2023. Delete editors pointed to routine election coverage.
India Walton Mayor of Buffalo, New York 2021 Keep E+1 week Earlier AFD in June 2021, second AFD in November after the election. Keep editors argued that candidate did not win, but coverage was much wider and deeper than for a typical mayoral candidate, including national coverage after the Democratic and Republican parties collaborated to prevent Walton from winning. (In earlier AFD 4 months prior, it was argued that Democratic primary winner was tantamount to being elected in the general, which turned out to be false).
Marquita Bradshaw US Senate 2020 Keep E−2 months Keep editors argued that being a "first" (in this case, Black woman in Tennessee to win statewide nomination) was a milestone.
Theresa Greenfield US Senate 2020 Redirect E−5 months Delete editors argued coverage of Greenfield's candidacy was not exceptional. Note: This AfD case gained infamy for getting the attention of Jimmy Wales, national media, the Signpost, three deletion reviews [1] [2] [3], and a lengthy ANI thread.
Ammar Campa-Najjar US House 2020 Keep E−7 months 1st AFD and 2nd AFD in 2018. High amount of significant coverage, more than routine.
Shahid Buttar US House 2020 Redirect E+1 month 1st AFD and 2nd AFD in 2018. 3rd AFD in June 2020. 4th AFD in November after election. After Greenfield (above), an editor nominated this article to determine if consensus had changed. Consensus deemed Buttar not notable for a standalone article.
Mick Rich US Senate 2018 Redirect E−4 months Delete editors argued coverage was solely about the election.
Chele Farley US Senate 2018 Redirect E−5 months Delete editors argued coverage was solely about the election.

Political candidates outside the US

Article Contest Year Decision When nominated Consensus
Kajal Sinha West Bengal Legislative 2025 Keep E+4 year The winning candidate died before taking office. The nominator declared withdrawal four days before the AfD discussion was closed.
Ryan Harrison (politician) South Australian Assembly 2025 Delete E+3 years The candidate did not have enough sources to meet GNG.
Emma Comer Australian House 2025 Keep E+1 day Presumed notable, citing WP:NPOL, due to winning an election
Niko Omilana (2nd nomination) Greater London Authority 2023 Delete E+1.75 years The article was re-created in the following year.
Brian Rose (podcaster) (2nd nomination) Greater London Authority 2021 Snow keep E+2 weeks Not much different from the previous AfD discussion.
Jan Jananayagam (2nd nomination) European Parliament 2009 Withdrawn E+3.4 years (as resulted)
Alan Craig (2nd nomination) Newham Council 2007 Keep E+1.33 years The article expanded when the AfD discussion ended.
Oscar Van Nooijen (second nomination) Oxford City Council 2006 Delete E+2 years Coverage was about election(s) that he lost.

Footnotes

  1. ↑ WP:DEPENDENTCOVERAGE includes both press releases and content sourced mainly from PR materials without vetting or secondary analysis. Some indicators for primary sources in newspapers include the absence of a byline, or seeing the identical text in multiple sources without attribution.

See also