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Writing:Overview articles about state legislative elections
| How to write overview articles about state legislative elections |
|---|
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| Starting the article |
| Introduction • What's at stake? |
| Campaign finance |
| Qualifications |
| List of candidates |
| Party colors |
| Election results |
| Impact of term limits |
| "See also" • External links |
| Library of tutorials |
| How to write candidate profiles |
| Writing about legislatures |
| State legislative project |
Contents |
An overview article about state legislative elections tells the reader about a set of legislative elections in a particular state in a particular year. For example, the article might be an overview of all the elections in California in 2010 for the position of California State Senator.
Note: Of the country's 99 state legislative chambers, 88 are holding elections in November 2010, so there should eventually be 88 articles about 2010's state legislative elections, one for each state/chamber where batches of elections are taking place.
Components
(Note: When the symbol 
appears in front of items in the lists below, it means that a particular set of guidelines is developed to the extent that you can generally rely on it for your work, although there are always anomalies that will require you to be a resourceful problem-solver...or to ask someone who can answer any questions you may have, if you get stuck.)
After you've started the article, by creating an appropriate stub, the article as it is expanded and improved should include these components, in this order:
An introductory section.
A section about what's at stake.
A section about campaign finance.
A section about qualifications.
A list of the candidates.
A "see also" section.
External links.
Note that although your article will ultimately include these components, in this order, you might add the section about candidates before you add (if you ever do add) a section about campaign donors, or what's at stake. In other words, the list above is a list of the order the components should appear in, not a list of the order in which you should work on adding various sections.
Also note that in the template to your right, you'll find specific instructions on how to write each of these sections.
