The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Minor party. As necessary. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 15:34, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Third party (politics)

Third party (politics) (  | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – ( View log)

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Although it opens with In electoral politics, a third party is any party contending for votes that failed to outpoll either of its two strongest rivals (emphasis in original), this is untrue; this is an exclusively American definition of "third party" that is not used elsewhere, for the simple reason that other countries (even those with two-party-dominant systems) tend to have a range of parties that command varying levels of support and have varying levels of relevance. You can find some instances of "third parties" being used in this sense internationally, but it's very uncommon (likely picked up due to American influence); "smaller parties", "minor parties" or similar are overwhelmingly preferred.

Third party (Canada) was already deleted a few months back for the same reasons ( see its AFD here), but this escaped my notice until now. — Kawnhr ( talk) 15:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. — Kawnhr ( talk) 15:38, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply

• Delete, for the reason given. The page does make mention of some democratic systems away from the USA, it's very USA-centric. Athel cb ( talk) 15:51, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply
  • … which is ironic, really. What is now third party (United States) was the original page (originally at third party), and then this page (replacing it at third party as an umbrella, then moved to third political party, to be replaced by a disambiguation at third party, then to here) and third party (Canada) were split off it. Uncle G ( talk) 16:28, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply
    • The history isn't really relevant. What needs to be considered is the page as it is now, giving the appearance of being set up by someone only barely aware that there is a whole world beyond the borders of the USA. Athel cb ( talk) 17:57, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply
      • The history is very relevant, especially when one is opining to get rid of it. ☺ It shows that what happened here is that the one subject that does exist got split into three (by SimonP no less, whom that charge cannot legitimately be levelled at) out of a sense that there should be an umbrella topic over the top of the United States and Canada. The fact that the U.S. one is the only actual topic is why this umbrella and the other article never really worked, and why this umbrella ended up so lop-sided. Uncle G ( talk) 18:20, 17 April 2021 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to Third party (United States), as in its current state this article is nothing but an unneeded Content Fork. Changing my vote to Merge to Minor party per the below discussion. Devonian Wombat ( talk) 00:53, 19 April 2021 (UTC) reply
• Keep this needs cleanup, and AFD is not cleanup. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 02:32, 24 April 2021 (UTC) reply
• The argument is that this needs cleanup. "Third party" means something different in the US than it does in the UK. Once we have targets for both those concepts, this needs to be disambiguation page. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 20:08, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply

• Keep: This page is fairly relevant to international politics, though it has an obvious American bent. As an example of its relevance, the Lib Dems are (were) often called the UK's third party, while the New Democratic Party are often called Canada's third party. The page does need a rewrite to internationalize the subject, but a deletion is way too overboard. Curbon7 ( talk) 08:50, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply
  • How do you square that with the argument put forward in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Third party (Canada) that that often and not always is simply because that party came third at that particular time? Where's the documented definition of this outside of the United States? Where is it for Canada, for starters? Where is the evidence that this can be internationalized? SimonP made a good faith effort in 2004, but that was mainly shifting around other people's Wikipedia writing. Indeed, I can find an OUP book ( ISBN  9780198834205 chapter 4) telling me that Canada has a three-party, not two-party, system, and that in the U.K. the two-party systems of the 1860s and 1950s are actually, historically, an aberration. So there, at least according to one politicial scholar, is not the two-parties-and-everyone-else-"third" as there is in the U.S.. Indeed, the book states unequivocally on page 78 that the U.S. is an outlier in this respect.

    So, I have Ross McKibbin. Where's your expert?

    Uncle G ( talk) 11:07, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply

  • Nobody disputes that countries have a "third party". However, this page specifically says that a third party is any party contending for votes that failed to outpoll either of its two strongest rivals, which is to say it's a collective term for parties below the top two, and— at the risk of repeating myself here— this is a definition only used in American politics. US political discourse can talk about the Greens, Libertarians, et all collectively as "third parties" because they have approximately equal strength, relevance, impact and a similar 'outsider appeal'. But other countries have their own political dynamics where it doesn't make sense to lump together every party below the top two. So in Canada, yes, people will call the New Democratic Party "Canada's third party"; but nobody would collectively refer to the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party, and any party not represented in parliament, as "Canada's third parties", because the parties have varying levels of strength and relevance (and because Canada's politics can be somewhat volatile, and the top two are not always a given— witness the NDP overtaking the Liberal Party in 2011, only for the Liberals to jump from third to first in the next election). I am not deeply knowledgeable about British political discourse but I have to imagine it's a similar situation there. You can't internationalize the subject because the subject isn't international to begin with. — Kawnhr ( talk) 19:34, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply
• Redirect to third party (United States). Most countries do not have two-party dominance the way the US does. In proportional representation, used by a large number of Western democracies, this concept is totally irrelevant. Even in first past the post jurisdictions there may be dozens of parties - in the UK, for example, there are multiple mainstream parties (Lib-Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc) contending many elections, and several single issue / fringe parties that also stand in multiple seats, including the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, Brexit Party, UKIP and more. There may be scope for an article on spoiler candidates in two-party systems (e.g. Ross Perot), but this is not that article. Guy ( help! - typo?) 11:46, 25 April 2021 (UTC) reply
• Keep the article needs cleaning; the Ross Perot thing fits in perfectly, for example, but AFD is not cleanup. Also, this is not suitable to become a US article only. For example, I have added well-sourced material about the third party win in Korea (2016) that broke traditional two-party politics there. XavierItzm ( talk) 03:01, 29 April 2021 (UTC) reply

• Keep The concept is an important one in the field of political science and there are more countries than the US who do not use a proportional representation system. -- Enos733 ( talk) 17:33, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply
• Redirect/Draftify Idk, the three sources here are all about Korea, and they don't really establish this as a parallel concept there. The rest of the article is unsourced and reads as original research conflating the US meaning with elsewhere. Just because there are other places that aren't proportional doesn't mean they use this term similarly. Reywas92 ^Talk 17:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

There are a bunch of academic work on the role third parties play in electoral politics across the world (in Ghana, Canada, multiple countries, the UK, Australia, South Africa, the European Union, Israel, and Spain. Now some of this may not exactly fit, but the concept of third parties is well recognized. -- Enos733 ( talk) 18:16, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Changed my vote. Partial Merge to Minor party. Assessing these sources, I fail to see why we should have two mediocre articles on essentially the same topic rather than one article that may be better able to integrate or summarize aspects of diverse political systems. Reywas92 ^Talk 19:04, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

Since no one has mentioned that article I hope it's okay to ping prior voters @ Athel cb@ Curbon7@ Devonian Wombat@ JzG@ Kawnhr@ Uncle G@ XavierItzm:@ 力:. Redirect to Third party (United States) is probably not the best idea, but for a general topic meant to give international examples there's not enough of a clear enough definition of or distinction between "third" and "minor" parties to warrant separate articles. Reywas92 ^Talk 19:18, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

• Reywas92, that works for me - I think this is a merge job, I am happy to let others decide the very best target. Guy ( help! - typo?) 19:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply
• Makes sense to me, Reywas92. My objection was always that the phrase "third parties" is not internationally widespread, not that no other countries have smaller parties in an effective duopoly. Minor party does indeed seem like a good place to cover that. — Kawnhr ( talk) 19:44, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

I agree with Rewas92's view. Athel cb ( talk) 08:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC) reply

• I'd prefer a redirect to a merge, but it does seem there is lots of overlap between the two topics (and until there is work done to distinguish the topics, having it all exist in one place makes sense). -- Enos733 ( talk) 20:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC) reply

• Comment This is really more of a content issue than a notability issue. I think it's functionally the same as "minor party" but used in a different context. The term itself is probably notable, but the article needs clean-up and I agree represents an American view of the subject, as most places they're just "minor parties." I think we can have a page "third party (politics)", but whether that's a reverse merge from the US page, a redirect to the US page, a disambiguation page, I'm not sure - I don't really think it's this page as written, with its clearly incorrect definition - for instance, a quick search of mine shows the Lib Dems have even been called the "fourth party," which goes against the lede as written. I haven't bolded a vote, but essentially: notable topic, page needs clean-up, deletion of this specific page is probably warranted. SportingFlyer T· C 21:10, 8 May 2021 (UTC) reply
• Merge into Minor party, since this is just a subset when there is only one other significant party aside from the "big two". None of the sources support that "third party" (as distinct from minor party, fourth party, etc) is a notable concept. MrsSnoozyTurtle ( talk) 23:04, 14 May 2021 (UTC) reply
• Merge with Minor party: As others have suggested there is a lot of duplicate, overlapping content here. It doesn't make sense to have these as separate pages and thus merging seems like the best course. DocFreeman24 ( talk) 05:50, 17 May 2021 (UTC) reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.