Talk:2016 United States presidential election in Massachusetts

Eastern Berkshire county did not swing towards Trump. In fact, every town and city in Berkshire county voted Democrat. This needs to be fixed.

Original research

The statement that Massachusetts was one of only 4 states where Clinton got 60+ % is original research because:

1. the editorial opinion expressed by the word "only". It's not an objective fact that she should have had more than 4. It's an opinion
2. If the number of states is an opinion, then it's editorializing to attach any significance to this number, whether it's 1 or 10
3. the arbitrary choice to use 60% as a cutoff for this analysis is original research
4. the choice to spotlight the above arbitrary collection of "only one of X things to achieve Y% statistic in Z contest" is purely an expression of how a particular pundit happens to view the events.

This is why we need not merely a published source that verifies the underlying data (percent of vote by state) but also attaches the name of a reputable, significant authority. Who thinks 60% is a useful cutoff? The article must name them, and the footnote must verify it.

The same issues apply to any similarly arbitrary factoids about the election data. Analysis is a valuable addition to the article, but not our analysis. It's got to all be there in the sources.

Beyond all that, a Google Doc isn't a reliable source under any circumstances. It is a self-published source. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:47, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

It IS a reliable source because it is published by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, a VERY reliable source: http://cookpolitical.com/story/10174 PalmerTheGolfer (talk) 04:30, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

I never asserted the sources were unreliable. I never said "citation needed". I said the problem was original research and synthesis. That's why I asked you to read WP:SYNTH. Your underlying data is (more or less) correct, but you're picking out pieces of the data, chosen by nobody but you, and making arguments about what those pieces mean. Nobody but you has published these arguments. Nobody but you has picked out these particular pieces of the data set and said they were more important than others.

Why don't you just find a published analysis of this election and cite it? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 05:24, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Than in that context, you are well within your rights to challenge that. No argument here now, synthesis makes to clear PalmerTheGolfer (talk) 14:01, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Boston Globe analysis by Evan Horowitz and James Pindell is one example of the type of published analysis I think we should be citing. I'm going to move all of the analysis out of the lead, and keep only points that can be verified in sources like this Boston Globe article. Much of it is the same as what we already have, but we can directly attribute it by name, rather than only cite the election results data. We need to find a few more sources liek Horowitz and Pindell. Once the analysis section is in decent shape a summary of it can go in the lead. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:24, 15 January 2017 (UTC)