Talk:Republican Party (United States)

Survey

• Option 3. Numerous articles from reliable sources published about the GOP since Trump's first term, and especially since his second term, indicate that the party as a whole is exhibiting significant illiberal, authoritarian, anti-democratic, proto-fascist, fascist, Nazistic, white nationalist, white supermacist, revisionist, racist, and extreme right tendencies at a national level.^[2] It is fair and accurate to say that the designation of the GOP is at least disputed at this point between academics and reliable media outlets describing it as right-wing and far-right. It is not accurate anymore and trivializing their ideology and actions to label the GOP as merely a conservative and right-wing party.
  
  Including the option to describe the GOP as "center-right to right-wing" or even "center-right" must be a joke. That designation is far from the scholarly consensus and has been outdated for a long time, even if you are generous and have a very American-centric view. By global standards, the party left the center-right decades ago.^[3] Maxeto0910 (talk) 18:35, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

  THIS. Right wing to far right is the best descriptor. ~2026-22530-50 (talk) 05:15, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

• RFC creators note:
  I included "center-right" for the sake of completeness. A significant minority of editors have still argued for it to be included somehow. ("Center-right to right-wing") I wanted to ensure that excluding it wouldn't be used as an argument that there were not enough options presented. Jollyrime (talk) 18:51, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
• Comment: What does "personalist" mean in this context? The main article on the topic covers a few different philosophical and theological variants, but several of them seem to be endorsing the importance of the individual and of individual experiences and choices over "excessive collectivism" and (apparently) various forms of determinism. Dimadick (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

  This paper explains what V-DEM means by "personalist political parties". Jollyrime (talk) 18:54, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: This is a very messy RfC and likely should have been workshopped before posting. I'm not sure the opening question is neutral given the puffery associated with the VDem Institute and the significant of it's claim. Also based on the article which really focuses on the authoritarian aspects more than "far-right" it's not clear the proposed changes are logical outputs of the source. It would probably be better to rescope the question to ask how should the material be used vs making an explicit change. Springee (talk) 18:47, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

  V-DEM's head and the organization's V-Party Dataset Varieties of Party Identity and Organization (V-Party) 2026 dataset also lists the party as a far-right organization. Jollyrime (talk) 19:10, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

• Include V-DEM's designation; Option 2: V-DEM, Bright Line Watch, The Economist, and every other major political metric is unanimous in describing the Trump-era GOP as a far-right populist party analogous to the ones that exist in Europe. (Fidesz, Vox, Reform UK, etc.) The modern GOP shares almost nothing with the center-right and its leading figures openly oppose liberal democracy (J.D. Vance) and consistently support far-right movements in Europe. The American political spectrum before Trump has already been shown to be significantly to the right of other nations. There are center-right figures at a local and state level such as Phil Scott, but they hold almost no institutional power in the modern era. That's why I favor a note saying that this, for the moment, is just at a national level. The Democrats (in contrast) would be a broad tent of any ideology in the political center, with center-left (social democrats such as Mamdani, AoC, Sanders); centrist (Biden, Pelosi, Schumer); and center-right factions (Fetterman, Manchin, and many Senators) existing within it. If a consensus can not be reached on option 2 then option 3 should be adopted. It would, however, be radically inconsistent with the language we use with right-populist parts in Europe. I don't think it can be any clearer than the "gold standard" of political science metrics, V-DEM's head Staffan I. Lindberg, saying that Trump and the Republican Party "wants a dictatorship" in the country. The GOP has functioned as a quasi-far right party for at least ten years, so the argument that it was historically center-right and big tent (true) doesn't hold up much water. Jollyrime (talk) 19:07, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
• Status quo i.e. the major conservative and right-wing political party in the United States. I do not see this option in verbatim form among the options submitted in the RfC. In case I'm blind, which I doubt, I will accept the option that retains what's already in the article. The Republican Party in the United States has undoubtedly veered to the right, but how much and whether this slide takes root or not is still very much up for discussion. Caution and patience are of the essence here. Wikipedia is not a political journal. -The Gnome (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

  The Republican Party in the United States has undoubtedly veered to the right, but how much and whether this slide takes root or not is still very much up for discussion.
  I could very much understand this reasoning and would consider it valid if we were in the mid-to-late 2010s. Not in 2026. The academic debate now is less whether there has been a radical shift, but more how permanent it is. Maxeto0910 (talk) 04:49, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  What's a "political journal?" I've never seen that term before and can't find any results for it online. I'm not sure I understand what part of WP:What Wikipedia is not you could be referencing here.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 17:42, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Would The Nation fit your want list? The weekly American news magazines, e.g. Newsweek, or foreign ones, for that matter, e.g. L'Express? That was one unexpected query. -The Gnome (talk) 21:01, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3: as per Maxeto. This will never be an unanymous question even amongst academics, and this way both majority views are included. The Embrace of Trumpism and far-right ideology section substantiates the far-right view quite clearly, with the right-wing view being the traditional stance. Coeusin (talk) 13:21, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  The supermajority view is far-right. Consult the "source review" section of the article. Only Freedom House continues to use the designation "right-wing" and it is in the context of autocratic actions. Jollyrime (talk) 22:10, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 or 3. See also eg. ^{[4][5][6][7][8]} Between the two I'd prefer 2 (the key point is that it shifted to become a far-right party under Trump) but either work. I'll also point out that (contrary to what some people are saying) this isn't really a new thing anymore; coverage that bluntly says the Republican party had become a far-right party dates back to 2019 and before. This is just the latest wave in a flood of coverage that has been building up since Trump gained control of the Republican party; and many of those sources trace its roots back further, making it clear that the Republican party has had a significant far-right faction for a long time, even if it only gained full control of the party relatively recently. EDIT: Since someone raised the specter of Wikipedia's reputation, I'll reiterate my argument from WP:NOTREPUTATION - our responsibility is to accurately summarize the best-available sources of today. Arguing that we cannot say something because people will criticize us for it is effectively saying that we can never say anything that the average person (or even a significant minority of people) might find shocking or surprising. That is not grounded in policy and is not the way to write an encyclopedia; it is inevitable and essential that, sometimes, readers will find things in Wikipedia that don't align to their presuppositions, possibly even in ways that upset them. We cannot respond to the fact that readers might find the conclusions of our sources objectionable by simply throwing up our hands and saying whatever will get the fewest people mad at us. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
• Status quo and a moratorium on future RfCs on this question. There have been so many of these labeling debates, and they are a complete waste of time that mainly serves as fodder for activists. The nuance can be explained in the body of the article rather than being forced into the beginning of the lead. Arguing over issues like this only lends weight to critics who claim that Wikipedia is unreliable for political content. Nemov (talk) 16:07, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  I think a moratorium on discussing a classification that has recently been and continues to be the subject of extensive academic debate and opinion is very unwise. Yes, this obviously ends up being a battleground for activists, but if we want to have a label at all we have to tolerate that. ―Maltazarian ^{(talk${\displaystyle \lor }$investigate)} 18:04, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  Wikipedia does not and should never care about the feelings of readers from certain ideological circles. If it starts doing so, it becomes an unreliable and biased source of information. Wikipedia should always reflect the most recent scholary consensus, and if that is disputed, say exactly that. In addition, the difference between "righ-wing" and "far-right" is not a mere "nuance", as you word it, which can be explained in the body; a party's political position is a key aspect of it. I would also argue that it's more damaging to Wikipedia's reputation when we continue describing the GOP as a mere right-wing and conservative party, which it is not anymore according to numerous reliable sources. Maxeto0910 (talk) 19:18, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  Seems like the kind of argument someone deeply invested in politics would make and that's the argument you're making. I don't really care what it's called. Activists will push for one label today and a different one tomorrow. I find claims of "scholarly consensus" on current political issues fairly unhelpful, given how politicized everything is right now, which is why these discussions come across as rather inane. Anyway, that's enough from me on this topic. Nemov (talk) 19:42, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3 but I'd prefer it without a note or with a changed note.
  V-Dem, run at the University of Gothenburg by, to the best of my knowledge, actual political scientists engaged in academic research, is a highly regarded institution in political science academia. If I recall correctly V-Dem uses a lot of qualitative methodology in their work, performed by actually surveying what the field as a whole thinks about certain things, so many of their studies are actually a decent indicator of academic research as a whole, and they're certainly a great source for anything related to political science. Dismissing their report would just be sticking our heads in the sand, and it would be nuts to not allow their publications to be included in relevant articles. If anything, inclusion should be encouraged.
  That said, it's important to note that the fact V-Dem is geared towards academia also means that presenting data from them in infoboxes with no context or nuance is by no means guaranteed to do a subject justice if presented to the average reader. It's also pretty safe to say there is still a significant minority in academia who would be opposed to the sweeping classification "Far-right" for the entire Republican Party, especially considering that, as a consequence of the American political system being strictly two-party, the party is still relatively big tent compared to, say, European parties operating in multi-party systems. There is still a significant chunk of the Republican Party who aren't as extreme as their leadership (although I think "populist" is a fairly accurate description of the party as a whole). This is not to say they should be called "big tent", as they are still firmly right-wing.
  With all that in mind I think Option 3 is best as it captures the fact that the party, especially it's leadership, have drifted quite far to the right, while still maintaining aspects of the simple "right-wing" type of politics of its' past. As for the note I'm not a fan of saying there is an "emerging consensus". It gives me the vibe of WP:CRYSTALBALL with a side of WP:WEASEL. I prefer some wording that puts it in past-tense such as saying that the description of them as far-right has become increasingly accepted. ―Maltazarian ^{(talk${\displaystyle \lor }$investigate)} 17:59, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  I'd also like to note that Option 2 > Option 4 for me, if that becomes relevant. ―Maltazarian ^{(talk${\displaystyle \lor }$investigate)} 18:06, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 or 3, per nom, Aquillion, and Maltazarian. It's untenable to avoid calling the party far-right any longer, especially after the release of this report; Trumpism, a decidedly far-right, illiberal (neofascist?) political movement has been the dominant force in the GOP for almost a decade at this point. However, I'm still torn between options 2 and 3 — I'm not sure whether including 'right-wing' would downplay the extent of the party's far-right-ness or if excluding it would exaggerate it. Loytra^✨ 22:13, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

  For what it's worth I agree with you that 2 feels like overselling it and 3 feels like underselling it. It's the unfortunate but inevitable consequence of labels; they sacrifice accuracy for simplicity. You have something end up between two labels, you pick the one that is the least inaccurate and then people get mad because they view the inaccuracy as being unfavourable to them. ―Maltazarian ^{(talk${\displaystyle \lor }$investigate)} 23:38, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2, second preference 3, sourcing has clearly changed in the last 10 years and there's an abundance of evidence that shows that it's completely WP:UNDUE to exclude "far-right" in the United States' current political environment, and it's irresponsible for the article to claim otherwise. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 03:00, 26 March 2026 (UTC)
• Option 2 or Option 3: Both seem equally adequate. The status quo has to change, the current academic consensus is clearly not for simply calling the party right-wing. — EarthDude (Talk) 08:33, 26 March 2026 (UTC)
• Status quo with potential inclusion of far right populism as a faction in the infobox. As others have pointed out, the party has shifted to the right, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus among academics by how much. I'm also not convinced the shift has been as dramatic in recent years as some seem to think; for example, the Christian right has been influential in the party for almost 50 years. If we wanted to be more specific, I think the label "hard right" would be more accurate, but this doesn't seem to be used as often. But I don't think there's a consensus to conflate the party with fascists or Nazis yet; sure, there's a small faction of Republicans who hold these views, but they are nowhere close to the majority. There seems to also be a loose agreement among some that the party is further right at the national scale, but this article isn't just about the national party. There are also a lot of Republicans who are very critical of Trump, yet they tend to be less vocal than his base. Considering that there is a significant faction of the party that is further to the right, I think it would be more in the spirit of compromise to include "Far right populism" as a faction of the party in the infobox instead of broadly labeling the party as far right. There does seem to be a consensus among academics based on the sources in the article that the far right wing of the party is overwhelmingly populist, and associated with the Trumpist wing (although explicit Trumpism is definitely not the entirety of this wing). There is a major difference between full-on Trumpists and more moderate Republicans who hold populist views, but don't go along with the whole Trump bandwagon. I think this may also be a situation where the extremes are getting disproportionate and undue attention. I also agree with Springee that this discussion would be better scoped as a discussion about how the new material should be used vs. an explicit change. I am also opposed to a moratorium on the discussion of this topic. Bneu2013 (talk) 11:33, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

  [...] the party has shifted to the right, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus among academics by how much Yes, but that doesn't mean that it's accurate or fair to continue calling the GOP a mere right-wing and conservative party. Considering the fact that the party's political position is disputed between academics calling it right-wing and far-right, it only makes sense to reflect that by writing that the GOP is classified as right-wing to far-right, and present a number of reliable sources for each claim (which we have).
  
  [...] for example, the Christian right has been influential in the party for almost 50 years. That's clearly not the type of extremism the party is dealing with now.
  
  I'm also not convinced the shift has been as dramatic in recent years as some seem to think Reliable sources and studies suggest otherwise.
  
  But I don't think there's a consensus to conflate the party with fascists or Nazis yet That's not up for discussion here; we merely argue if it's accurate to classify the GOP as far-right. If readers confuse far-right politics with Nazism and fascism, that's not our fault and not our problem. Maxeto0910 (talk) 11:59, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

  First of all, the GOP is still a conservative party on social issues. Calling the GOP a "right wing" party does not imply center-right. I don't have time to comb through all sources, but I'd like to see a better demonstration of what share of academics consider the GOP to be far right. I also respectfully disagree with the assertion that the party has seen a massive shift to the right in recent years; I think it's exaggerated. The GOP has not been a center-right party for a long time. The most prominent example of this is probably the Christian right, which is definitely hard to the right, but not far-right (although there are certainly some factions within this movement that are far-right). There certainly used to be more centrists in the party, but the harder right wing has definitely dominated since at least the Reagan era. I think most political scientists would agree with this. Maybe the GOP is far-right by a worldwide metric; if so, I think we should make note of this. But the majority of Republicans are not to the extreme right like fascists, but still further than right-of-center. Examples include people like Charlie Kirk or Ben Shapiro, who are more often described as right-wing more often than far-right. Donald Trump and his base are not the entire GOP. Bneu2013 (talk) 12:41, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

  I'd like to add this study, which discusses the diversity of views within the parties and demonstrates how people tend to underestimate this diversity. While the far-right/Trumpism/MAGA wing of the party may be getting the most attention, they aren't necessarily the majority of the party. Even if the party members closer to the center are complicit in the far-right wing of the GOP coming to power, they don't necessarily hold views that far to the right. While it has been demonstrated that there is a far-right wing of the party in power, I don't think it's been demonstrated that many in the party's leadership (i.e. John Thune, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc.) have shifted that far right. This is also an example of the vocal minority getting the most attention, but that doesn't mean the whole party is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Bneu2013 (talk) 19:59, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  We don't need to go that far to see that the Republicans gone into a very different way. You wouldn't see Bush defending white supremacist rallies. You wouldn't see Bush administration reversing 30+ years of transgender rights in less than one year. You wouldn't see Bush concentrating more and more power to himself.

  Republicans and true conservatism was never about taking off granted rights. At most they would politely disagree but still uphold a general freedom. ~2026-25203-90 (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2'. The party has moved to the far right with Trumpism and constant rightward pressure from the Heritage Foundation. Binksternet (talk) 15:14, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

  Trumpism and the Heritage Foundation aren't the entire party. Furthermore, Trumpism and right-wing populism aren't the same thing; there are plenty of Republicans who are right-wing populists who aren't Trumpists or entirely on board with the MAGA movement. Bneu2013 (talk) 17:42, 26 March 2026 (UTC)

That doesn't change the fact that the only effective bloc of the Republican party is the far-right majority associated with Trumpism and the Heritage Foundation. It doesn't matter whether Trumpism and the Heritage Foundation are not the entire party; they are the only effective part. Binksternet (talk) 06:39, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3, no note. Hands up who here would call themselves right-wing? No one? Perhaps we should consider our biases before labelling our ideological opponents. (This also applies to VDEM!).--Eldomtom2 (talk) 18:29, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

  Do you mean Option 4? Option 3 is right-wing to far-right. I agree with the biases comment concern. Springee (talk) 18:47, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

  No, I mean 3. I think you can fairly call parts of the Republican party far-right.

  I can see that. However, you can also fairly call parts of the party moderate/centrist right. They don't get the press these days but they are certainly part of the party. Springee (talk)

• Status Quo On several grounds (not in any specific order).

1. Right-wing was the consensus from the last RfC in part because it's an umbrella term that covers both the moderates in the party as well as those who are far-right.

2. This is a broad topic overview article in both time and levels of the political party. For this reason we should be careful about using groupings that apply only to a smaller, even if vocal part of the party. We should also be careful about putting too much weight on current politics, especially given the high level of partisan politics in recent times. The concern that such a change will make Wikipedia look biased/partisan isn't by itself sufficient reason to avoid this change but it is a valid concern. At the same time, we should always err on the side of caution when trying to apply contentious LABELs.

3. UNDUE weight: Wikipedia should apply weight based on summary sources [WP:SOURCEUSE]. This change is putting significantly more weight on one aspect of reporting on the party. Wikipedia should follow other summary sources when deciding how to handle claims like this. The use of summary sources is very important when dealing with topics that have an overwhelming number of potential RSs. If we have 20 sources on a topic it's reasonable to have editors establish weight within the article based on relative coverage in those articles. However, when dealing with a topic with literally tens of thousands (if not far more) RSs we can't reasonably decide when we are applying appropriate weight to various aspects of a topic. This is why we should use primary sources to broadly establish weight. Consider the GOP article at Encyclopedia Britannica . It mentions "far-right" only once when discussing his 2016 election victory, "Trump’s far-right social positions and outspoken hostility toward immigrants made a number of mainstream Republicans concerned that he was setting the party up for a Goldwater-esque landslide electoral defeat." The opening paragraph mentions conservativisms but nothing about "far-right" nor does the article suggest the party as a whole is far-right. Following SUMMARY sources

4. This change and a lot of the recent edits to the article are based on the claim that V-Dem is a gold standard source for such information. Where is the evidence that the opinions of this report and it's authors should be given this much weight in the article? Do we have summary sources that show this much weight being given? While the V-Dem report certainly supports the authoritarian shift parts of the article, why should it be treated as a "gold standard" source? The methods of the source have been criticized by and even academic sources have said such methods . It is noted that V-Dem and Freedom House are both heavily based on subjective measures . The source also seems to focus on Trump specifically rather than the GOP which would mean this is more appropriately in the Trump section rather than applied to the party as a whole. Basically, it's something to watch and something to include in the Trump section but not something to base a wholesale change in the overall position of the party.

5. This is the sort of thing that should be done as "wait and see". A big issue with much of the sourcing, even sources like V-Dem is often the views are subjective and partisan. For this reason waiting for a true historical perspective (was this a Trump blip or a true shift?) is better.

Final comment, this is a poorly structured RfC as it provides several leading answers and ties the info box to specific supporting sources. Additionally, any answer which is "Far-right" without at least including the large part of the party that is left of "far-right" should be discounted out of hand. Even if one believes that the current Trump leadership team is far-right (what ever definition is being used), implying that the whole party, which consists of many people who were members when the party was defined as right or even center-right right-wing, is clearly inaccurate. Editors have repeatedly, correctly, rejected labeling the Democrat parting as "... to far-left" because the far-left members aren't the majority of the party. Poling and other evidence is clear that the vast majority of GOP members are not part of the Trump faction. It would also imply that ~1/2 the voters in the US are "far-right". Both fail the smell test. Springee (talk) 23:38, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

I would like to say that while yes, V-Dem does use "subjective" measures (a qualitative rather than quantitative method) I think it's important to note that this does not mean that the measures are just vibes-based or mere opinions. They are subjective as in they aren't measuring an objective quality of something but rather gathering data about experts views on something as a "stand-in" for quantitative data. The reason for this is simple; it's really hard for political scientists to design quantitative studies for a lot of things due to the simple fact that political parties, states etc. are not exactly willing test subjects. Does this mean every experts opinion is unfounded nonsense? No, obviously not. Also there is obviously going to be some subjectivity involved in even defining what, for example, "democracy" is.

Anyways, the fact that V-Dem is using this methodology is actually a benefit in this situation as it essentially acts as somewhat of a summary of the entire field of political science. That being said I do agree with you that the entire party shouldn't be portrayed as far-right (which is why I went for option 3) but the situation is clearly different from the more leftist factions of the Democratic Party as those factions are quite marginalized while the far-right faction of the Republican Party is actually leading not only the party but the whole country. If the party ends up swinging back after Trump is gone we will change the designation to reflect that, and that's alright. We can't expect stability in every party's political agenda and have to be ready to update articles to reflect changes in the ways political parties operate. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparlay${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 00:56, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Please take a look at the sources provided here. Neither is the V-Dem Institute the only reliable source supporting the GOP's classification as far-right nor is the idea that the party is far-right merely supported by the deduction that its currently largest and dominant faction is considered by some as far-right. Also, I disagree that calling the party only "right-wing" accurately reflects its many obvious and significant far-right tendencies. Maxeto0910 (talk) 08:37, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

option 5, too much weight is given to the opinion of this organization, we still have multiple academic sources that continue to describe the GOP as right-wing. And I agree with Springee's points ~2026-19283-31 (talk) 15:34, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

Academic sources overwhelmingly describe the party as far-right. Jollyrime (talk) 16:15, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

• Status quo and a moratorium of similar such questions for whatever reasonable amount of time consensus can be found for. This sort of issue has come up enough, without new evidence, and so a moratorium would be helpful now. I am not generally in favor of moratoriums just like I'm not much in favor of salting articles on AfDs, but there are always exceptions. As for the labels, it does not appear to be WP:DUE, and WP:ECREE applies here. Iljhgtn (they/them · talk) 12:16, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  The above input by an account blocked for sockpuppetry is struck off.

  Without new evidence? There are probably more articles published since the 2020s describing the party as explicitly far-right or exhibiting far-right tendencies than there are explicitly describing it as merely right-wing. Please take a look at the sources presented on this talk page. Maxeto0910 (talk) 13:09, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: This is an instance in which a source review would be greatly helpful. I created a subsection for it that can be viewed. Jollyrime (talk) 17:17, 28 March 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 Second choice would be option 3. It's remarkable that Wikipedia still hesitates to describe a party that has reshaped the US government to:

1. Throw innocent people into concentration camps
2. Maintain extra-territorial prisons
3. Strip trans people of their rights to exist in public
4. Ban abortion
5. Prosecute wars of aggression

as being far-right. The citations have supported this move for years and it's only been a stubborn insistence in using low-quality sources that likewise hedge to avoid alienating the Republican party that has allowed this state of affairs to continue. Simonm223 (talk) 12:20, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm not saying your conclusion is wrong but let's be honest the Democratic Party is fully complicit to number 2, and the U.S. government has been doing number 5 since it was created. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 17:31, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

Yeah well the Democrats are a right-wing party too so.... Simonm223 (talk) 18:41, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

At most centre to centre-right. But still not really left-wing by international standards. CG7000 (talk) 19:29, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

actually, they are left-wing to international standarts, it's just that leftist parties are radicalizating as much as rightists ones. ~2026-26782-50 (talk) 19:30, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes; what I was trying to say was that no reshaping of the U.S. government was required for those two. They are part of standard operations.
⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 08:43, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

They are center left technically. PackMecEng (talk) 21:21, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

The Democrats are also complicit in number 1. But I don't think that really has much substance here. Bneu2013 (talk) 20:01, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

Considering the very strong language used for that point I decided to not say anything about it as I felt that could risk sparking an argument over something that, as you said, lacks any substance to this discussion. I guess we could say you're bolder than me.
⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 20:40, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 or 3 - It's obvious that the status quo has become untenable, as to describe the party as simply "right-wing" no longer accurately reflects how they're referred to by reliable sources. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:36, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  Do you have a preference for one over the other? Jollyrime (talk) 18:51, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

  Probably Option 2, but I don't have that strong of a preference between them as they both have their respective ups & downs. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 00:38, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Option 2. Trumpism has been essentially the leading faction of the GOP for nearly a decade now, it’s surprising we haven’t made the change sooner. And especially with how Trump and the party is governing America, especially with this current administration, it only makes sense to describe the party how it is, as Far-right. CG7000 (talk) 19:28, 1 April 2026 (UTC)

• Status quo and a moratorium This conversation is rather ridiculous and the fact that it is being had shows how disconnected many editors are from the general population. To base my rationale more on WP policy, first, it is not enough to designate something as being far-right just because one political journal deems it to be so since Wikipedia is not a political journal. Additionally, this is obviously WP:UNDUE, the overwhelming majority of sources do not designate the GOP as a far-right political party and for good reason. Many might disagree with the GOP but the party does not rise to the level of political extremism as the Nazis which is what giving this designation would (not so) subtly signal Gjb0zWxOb (talk) 16:10, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  [...] just because one political journal deems it [...]

  Fine, remove V-Dem Institute, then there are still dozens of reliable sources left supporting the GOP's designation as a far-right party.

  [...] the overwhelming majority of sources do not designate the GOP as a far-right political party [...]

  That statement is very debatable. Have you taken a look at the sources presented on this talk page?

  [...] the party does not rise to the level of political extremism as the Nazis which is what giving this designation would (not so) subtly signal

  If readers confuse far-right politics with Nazism because they're uneducated, that's not our fault and not our problem, and definitely not a valid reason to avoid such a designation. Maxeto0910 (talk) 17:43, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  @Gjb0zWxOb @Maxeto0910, it's essentially all major political science metrics that tackle the issue of comparative politics. (Freedom House doesn't.)

  V-DEM, Polity data series, Pippa Norris, Cas Muddle, and Bright Line Watch have all directly or indirectly designed the party as radical right/far-right.

  Check out "source review". Jollyrime (talk) 18:02, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm confused about your invocation of WP:NOTJOURNAL/WP:NOTHOWTO:7. That policy has to do with how Wikipedia articles should read and what context should be provided to readers so that they may understand a topic being discussed. It does not mean that Wikipedia shouldn't follow the information presented in scientific journals. The exact opposite is true. In addition to this V-Dem is not just any other journal but the details of that has already been covered in other comments. Also I hope realize that simply asserting that sources say something without actually providing those sources isn't particularly constructive, especially when the sources others have presented appear to refute said assertion.

  As for "this designation" signalling the GOP are Nazis I'm not sure what you refer to as the RfC gives eight alternatives to the status quo. One of the two most popular options out of those is "Right-wing to far-right" I don't think there is a single political scholar worth their salt who would call the NSDAP a "Right-wing to far-right" party. Even just using "far-right" cannot reasonably be said to mean they are Nazis. Nazism is at the extreme end of not only the political spectrum as a whole but also the far-right spectrum, and this is reflected by our article on it, which "far-right" would wikilink to so that any reader unfamiliar with or unsure about the term's meaning can easily learn about it.
  ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 18:08, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  Although looking at our article on far-right politics I have to seriously question having a Nazi flag showing when you hover over it. That image is just the main image used for our Alt-right article which is a subset of the far-right, so we should probably look into getting an image that represents the modern far-right as a whole, which is largely dominated by far-right populism, instead of something representing more extreme and much less common factions of it. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 18:17, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  I would be amenable to Option 2 in order that the infobox reflect both the party's historical classification as right-wing as well as more recent scholarship describing it as far-right, without overemphasizing either. What duration the infobox should represent: current ideology or the party’s broader history? Let us balance the two answers by noting change over time. V-Dem is reliable in this context, but, given the controversy, attribution to multiple sources would be welcome.

  Re: This conversation is rather ridiculous and the fact that it is being had shows how disconnected many editors are from the general population. — Wikipedia should reflect scholarly consensus, not the whims of public opinion. Even the Britannica uses the keyword "far-right" when mentioning Donald Trump, the party's leader de facto et de jure. And, I would like to note that, just because the Nazis were far right doesn't mean that we can't call someone far right unless they're a Nazi. The category far-right can contain more than just Nazis. 1101 (talk) 06:51, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 4 or status quo There are several sources that deem the Republican Party to be far-right, but there is not a strong consensus of neutral and reliable sources that it is, so I believe it is most appropriate to say right wing in the infobox possibly with a note. Cyrobyte (talk) 19:54, 3 April 2026 (UTC)
• Status Quo - Not seeing enough to change the direction of the party as a whole. Certain factions going off the rails is not the whole party. PackMecEng (talk) 21:15, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  At what point would you start considering labelling the party far-right? Like, what threshold do you consider sensible? "The whole party" is never going to be far-right. Likewise, not every member or voter of the Nazi Party was antisemitic and fascist, yet the party is virtually unanimously considered antisemitic and fascist. And no, I am not comparing the GOP's ideology to the Nazi Party's ideology here, I am merely using an analogy to clarify the motivation behind my question. Maxeto0910 (talk) 22:34, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

  @PackMecEng @Cyrobyte @Gjb0zWxOb I just updated "source review"'s section. I do not believe your answers represent the academic literature. Jollyrime (talk) 02:24, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I saw and it looks like just recentism. It's been around a long time and their positions have changed over time. Let's see how pervasive and long lived this minority of the party is. PackMecEng (talk) 02:28, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  A dozen sources over the last 7 years is hardly "recentism". – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 02:48, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Honestly it kind of is for a topic as discussed as this one. There are hundreds of articles a week on the topic. I could probably find a dozen sources that say anything I want on this topic, that does not necessarily represent the current or history of an organization. PackMecEng (talk) 11:14, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Honestly it kind of is for a topic as discussed as this one. No, it isn't. We are discussing the party's current position, and when a party has shifted its position in a certain direction for several years straight, it is at some point justified–no, necessary–to update it accordingly. (Heck, the earliest sources describing the GOP as a far-right or extreme party are from the early to mid-2010s.)

  I could probably find a dozen sources that say anything I want on this topic [...] Like I already said in this thread: There are very few (if any) reliable sources from the 2020s explicitly denying that the GOP is a far-right party, but dozens supporting it. Maxeto0910 (talk) 05:07, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  [...] this minority of the party [...]

  I wouldn't be so sure about that. I provided a number of sources describing the party as far-right (see first comment of the survey), many of which state that the GOP has been captured or infiltrated by the far-right. And even if it is just a minority, how large does a minority have to be in order to be considered significant enough to alter a party's platform? A comparatively small number of extremist outliers can absolutely wield more influence than the establishment. Maxeto0910 (talk) 03:25, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I wouldn't be so sure about that. I gathered that from your slew of comments. And even if it is just a minority, how large does a minority have to be in order to be considered significant enough to alter a party's platform? When they are no longer the minority, you do not characterize anything by what the minority is. A comparatively small number of extremist outliers can absolutely wield more influence than the establishment. and some birds can fly upside down, that doesn't mean its relevant in this discussion. PackMecEng (talk) 11:17, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  [...] you do not characterize anything by what the minority is.

  Parties are usually characterized by their policies, actions, agenda, and rhetoric. If a minority wields enough influence in the party to significantly affect these aspects, it can absolutely be justified to redesignate a party's political position based on that. Output matters, not how that output came about.

  and some birds can fly upside down [...]

  Don't understand how that statement relates to any of your points, my statement that a minority can wield more influence than a majority did. Maxeto0910 (talk) 13:10, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I'm assuming what was meant by bird thing was essentially that just because X is a bird and some birds fly upside down that doesn't mean X is a bird, and in the same way just because the Republican Party is a party and it's possible for a small number of extremist outliers to wield more influence than the establishment of parties doesn't mean that this is true for the Republican Party.

  Otherwise I've got no idea what it meant. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 14:38, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Yeah that, basically sure it could be true but it has not been shown to be true. PackMecEng (talk) 15:23, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Yeah you can't really be like look at this nazi example and then be like but I'm not comparing them to nazis. PackMecEng (talk) 02:30, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  You know what an analogy is, right? If you don't like the word "Nazi Party", replace it with "Popcorn Party". It doesn't matter, and you know that too (if you know what an analogy is). Maxeto0910 (talk) 03:11, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  You could of chosen any analogy but you chose nazis because it evokes a reaction. You know that deep down, don't play dumb. PackMecEng (talk) 11:12, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  WP:AGF – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 11:18, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  What is the good faith interpretation that I should get from a comment that starts by questioning if I know what an analogy is and then ends with questioning it yet again? No, I don't think I will AGF lol PackMecEng (talk) 12:17, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Your reaction to my analogy implied that you did not know what an analogy is and instead confused it with a comparison, so I asked. I was not comparing the GOP to the Nazi Party, but used the latter as an example to support my argument that just because not the whole party is x doesn't mean that the party shouldn't be labelled x. Maxeto0910 (talk) 13:00, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I think it's best to accept that PME doesn't agree with your thinking and move on. We have several poling/analysis groups that have classified the various bases within the party. I don't think any use the term "far-right". However, even if we presume that the MAGA/hard-right part(s) of the party are "far-right" we still have a lot of the party that would be simple right-wing or even moderate. This is why the fixation on pushing only that label is getting pushback. Here are a few sources to support this view.

  Echelon Insights , they classify 8 political factions in 2024 ranging from Hard Right to Hard Left. For those who voted for Trump, 17% Hard Right, 11% Moderate Right, 8% New Republican Populist, 14% Middle American Optimist. So per this source centrist right is still a significant part of the party.

  Pew has 5 groups 23% Faith and Flag Conservatives, 15% Committed Conservatives, 23% Populist Right, 18% Ambivalent Right, 15% Stressed Sideliners.

  Politico doesn't offer percentages but gives five groups within the politicians (not voters) ; Threatening Firebrands, Critical Conservatives, Tired Centrists, McCarthy Allies, Rules Committee Rebels. So that would be a source that supports the claim that the GOP spans from moderates to hard right.

  FiveThrityEight also supports the claim that the GOP has a wide range of groups in the party. Their scale is based on Trump support; The Trumpists, The Pro-Trumpers, Trump-Skeptical Conservatives, Trump-Skeptical Moderates, Anti-Trumpers. This source again shows that the GOP has groups that range all the way to centrist. Sources like these are why it's reasonable to say stick with the umbrella status quo. Springee (talk) 13:28, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Those sources could potentially be useful to add to the source review. Either way, sourcing clearly shows that excluding "far-right" is WP:UNDUE and it should be included in some form. – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 13:34, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  But if we add "far-right" then we should also include moderate/centrist since the sources describing the factions include those as well. An alterative would be keep the current "right-wing" then point to the appropriate section in the article body where the range of views etc can be discussed. Springee (talk) 13:44, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Including that would be very undue. The far-right factions wield significant influence over many aspects of the party's policies, actions, agenda and rhetoric as a whole according to numerous reliable sources, while the moderate and centrist factions do not. Maxeto0910 (talk) 13:48, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  I've looked at the sources and here's my opinion on them:

  Echelon Insights and Pew are good sources, but they're focusing on the voter base rather than the political parties here, and those are separate things. We can't say that the fact a significant chunk of the "Electability Democrats" voted for Trump somehow means that "Electability Democrat" politics has to in some way be found in the party. Voter bases do not necessarily have to be good representations of their parties, so I think we might run into WP:OR issues if we try to use these sources to analyse what the parties themselves are.

  The Politico classification is something more in line with what we want, but it's a thing made up for an article to discuss a limited selection of Republicans (most obvious in the case of the Rules Committee Rebels, which isn't an attempt at ideological classification so much as it is a tool used to discuss a couple individual politicians). The fact it uses novel terminology applied to very specific and prominent politicians makes it hard to use this as a tool to analyse the ideological makeup of the Republican Party as a whole, especially if the terminology hasn't been used elsewhere by this article's author or other reliable authors.

  The FiveThirtyEight analysis is outdated (2019) by now, and says that the use of "Moderates" in "Trump-Skeptical Moderates" is in relation to the other Republicans, and that quite conservative figures are part of that group, so that's not centrists, and as for the Anti-Trumpers it says it's a small faction of the party with few elected officials. I don't think it's a source that can be used to argue for the status quo.

  All in all these sources to me don't demonstrate that it's reasonable to not include "far-right" (as in going with option 2 or option 3) in the GOP's political position. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 15:17, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Option 3 is both right-wing and far-right. Going with only fer-right (option 2) is an issue given the large part of both party members and party voters who clearly aren't far-right. Also, many sources don't say the party as a whole is far-right, rather that many Trump era policies are far-right. That is a different claim and one which is a more conservative claim (something we should strive for as an encyclopedia vs source of persuasion). Springee (talk) 16:13, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

  Maltazarian is right. @Springee.

  Also, many sources don't say the party as a whole is far-right Which? The references cited are either outdated, have been explicitly retracted in light of recent events, or are misrepresented.

  Trump supporters are a minority

  What? Over 3/4th of Republicans voted for the authoritarian populist in the 2024 Republican Party presidential primary. This was after the self-coup of the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Thus, to say that it is a "small portion" of the party (when they were given the option to chose Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and others) makes absolutely no sense. Multiple political scientists in source review also explicitly addressed this point. Trump, from the top-down, dominates the party. Using references from the very early beginning of his 1st term (Nearly 10 years ago!) is clearly misuse.

  FiveThirtyEight

  It's funny you mention that, because the reference is clear that it is NOT comparative politics.

  It says

  The parties don’t have the same kinds of differences. Democrats have deep divides over policy. In contrast, Republicans, at both the state and federal levels, are largely unified around an agenda of cutting spending for programs such as Medicaid that are targeted at low-income people, defending Americans’ ability to ownand purchase guns, limiting abortion, and reducing regulations and taxes on businesses... Virtually all Republicans in elected office are generally aligned with the president and will support him in seeking a second term.

  and

  You might object to the term “moderate” here — Romney for example, is quite conservative on most policy issues.

  Romney was also purged.

  and

  This is the smallest bloc and it includes very few elected officials — illustrating how Trump has largely won over a Republican Party that was resistant to him basically up until the day he was elected president.

  FiveThirtyEight - by 2021 - said that much of it was no longer accurate. Did you read what Lee Drutman of 538 wrote?

  First, we need to understand the urgency of the problem. By international standards, the current Republican Party is an illiberal anti-democratic nativist global outlier, with positions more extreme than France’s National Rally, and in line with the Germany’s AfD, Hungary’s Fidesz, Turkey’s AKP and Poland’s PiS, according to the widely respected V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute... But the obvious difference is that in Germany, the popular center-right CDU Party, headed by Angela Merkel, was able to form of a governing coalition with the center-left, keeping the AfD far away from power. In the U.S., where governing power can fall to a mere plurality of a plurality, the center-right has been overwhelmed by the far-right in the Republican Party. And because the U.S. has a two-party system, the center-right is largely homeless.

  The other two are outdated, clearly referring to "moderates" in the Republican sense (similar to Alice Weidel in Germany's AfD), and are looking at who votes for the GOP, not the party's actions or political positions. Springee, this isn't the first time that the references you cite say nothing

  that you say it does. Jollyrime (talk) 12:30, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  That is not 538 retracting their survey. It is the opinion of someone from a liberal think tank. Just because Drutman has written for 538 does not mean his statements represent the views of 538 unless 538 says he is speaking on their behalf. Springee (talk) 13:36, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

  FiveThirtyEight never said that the Republican Party was centrist or had a sizeable centrist faction of any power. (In a comparative politics sense.) I'm struggling how you managed to get that from this.

  The parties don’t have the same kinds of differences. Democrats have deep divides over policy. In contrast, Republicans, at both the state and federal levels, are largely unified around an agenda... You might object to the term “moderate” here — Romney for example, is quite conservative on most policy issues... This is the smallest bloc and it includes very few elected officials — illustrating how Trump has largely won over a Republican Party that was resistant to him basically up until the day he was elected president...

  The only reference to centrism is in the context of intraparty disputes. Even then, it says that this is shifted significantly to the right compared to historical American norms. International comparative politics is not mentioned at all. Not once.

  It's also from 2019 when Trump was still not in full control of the party. Even then, it wouldn't matter from a comparative politics perspective, as that is what infoboxes are designed to measure. The writer himself, in the article you linked, said that centrist factions have barrly any power in the party at all.

  This was written in the voice of FiveThirtyEight's analysis. Is that official? Well, with 538, it's the closest it gets. Saying that Drutman (a lead contributor on the website!) is just a random person that passed by is a dramatic misreading.

  Without getting into the weeds:

  • It's explicitly stated to not be comparative politics. By 2019, according to FiveThirtyEight, even the most leftwards members of the party (they cited Romney) were shifted significantly to the right.
  • FiveThirtyEight says the GOP, unlike the Democrats, is strongly unified around policy. (Another argument *against*!)
  • The people referenced have been further pushed out of the party. Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, and others, who would be on the rightwards flank of the CDU/CSU, have been purged, labeled traitors for upholding liberal democracy, and faced often violent threats against them. (Example: Pence and Jan 6th)

  The other two references aren't comparative politics studies either. At most, they show that a minority of American "centrists" (which WP: RS show are shifted significantly to the right of other developed Western cojntries) vote for the party.

  That's why I excluded them in the source review. There is one arguably, Freedom House, that just uses "right-wing" in its 2026 report. I included that. The other three references aren't comparative politics at all. Jollyrime (talk) 14:31, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

do 3 and 8. i believe there is enough evidence to show that far right politics is becoming prevalent in the Republican Party. it appears that mild philosophies such as moderates and libertarians are still in the Party but—imo—are RINO. conservatives are a major component

there’s also this i did too. maybe it’ll help that part of this RFC. — Tonkarooson • (📭|edits) 22:18, 4 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2 with 3 behind it Status quo does not truly represent the current republican party and more than enough sources to support 2. More than enough has been said to support Option 2. ContentEditman (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2026 (UTC)
• Option 3*, both right wing and far right is far more represenatative of the party. Of note for the review closer, above the previous consensus was (I presume unintentionally, it's been a long time) misrepresented as Right-wing was the consensus from the last RfC in part because it's an umbrella term that covers both the moderates in the party as well as those who are far-right. The conclision of the previous RfC, in march last year says absolutely nothing of the sort, but rather

  As it is, however, based on the maxims laid-out at the start, there is no consensus to include "far-right" and no consensus to exclude "far-right" in the infobox. Our standard practice in these cases is to enforce the stable version of the article prior to the RfC until such time as a consensus emerges in the future.

Option 2, with second preference being the option 3, the V-dem is reliable, the modern GOP is indeed a majoritarian far-right anti-democratic party, and it's beyond negligence. I think far-right with a note is the best way to describe the GOP's dominant but big tent position. Ahammed Saad (talk) 15:46, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

Option 3. I was going to make an RFC for this. I never got around to it so it’s nice to see someone did.

Anyways we need to balance the direction the modern GOP has gone with the fact it still is the de-facto party of the American right. Option 3 does a good job with this. I take issue with labeling the entire party as far-right as there are too many people in the GOP who are not far-right (just right wing with some notable center-right conservatives). That being said said, it’s pretty commonly agreed upon that the party at large has moved right of center-right by virtue of Trump radicalizing the party. We also can’t deny that groups such as the Freedom Caucus (far-right) dominate a major portion of the GOP and play a much more active role in its modern policy than the center-right. Even if we don’t agree on the exact amount of influence they have in the party, it’s enough to be a major component of the party which should make them included in the party’s ideology.

Furthermore, comparing to Italy FdI and Hungary’s Fidesz, the GOP’s policies are in line with both (and they’re often allied with both parties).

V-DEM is a reliable academic source and should be treated as such. Only reason it’s controversial is because people don’t want their policies to be labeled fat-right or are out of touch with the reality of the modern GOP.

Also, @Springee is right. This RfC is way messier than it needed to be. Not much we can do now, but worth noting I’m the future if you create another RfC (especially with something with as charged of a topic as this) Retr0r0cket (talk) 17:59, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

This sounds a lot like what I alluded to in my argument above, when I discussed how many powerful figures in the party are a good distance right of the center, but not as far right as, say, the Freedom Caucus or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Just because the more moderate members of the party are complicit in allowing the far-right wings to come to power doesn't mean they share views that far from the center. See also the study I linked about the diversity of views within the party. Bneu2013 (talk) 08:33, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

I’d argue that the GOP’s program and actions should dictate their ideology classifications more than the beliefs of their members. If the Nazi party had a support base that was somehow entirely left wing Jews, the Nazi party would still have been far right. This is a less severe example of that Retr0r0cket (talk) 18:17, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

+1. Maxeto0910 (talk) 20:10, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Another thing I forgot: check the infobox for Trumpism and you see it's "right-wing to far-right." It's the dominant wing of the party, so it should probably have its ideology range reflected more in the infobox Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:34, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Option 3 I was heavily involved in prior conversations on this page and was the one that added almost all the scholarly sources describing the party as "right-wing" to this page. At the time, it was agreed that the party was no longer center right but calling it far-right was not representative of the party as a whole. Based on the direction of the party's shift, adding "far right" was only going to be a matter of time, and I think the sources now provided are adequate to substantiate that the party is both right wing and far right in 2026. BootsED (talk) 11:35, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

Strong concurrence with this rationale. Replying to this as I don’t want to make an entirely new comment when my reasoning is essentially the same. WWWHHHHYYYYYY (talk) 03:00, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 5 This should not be hard, but it's not surprising that it has been so much litigated. The perfectly obvious facts are that both parties are, due to the nature of the American system, necessarily extremely big-tent parties. Indicating that any faction predominates is just factually wrong. The phrase "far right" is a smear, associating modern Republicanism with German Nazism and Italian fascism. That would certainly invite the "far left" smear for Democratic Party (United States) in retaliation. Frankly, the fact that there is both an "Ideology" section and a "Political position" section is silly. Are these not overlapping? If we acknowledge a variety of ideologies, are we not therefore putting the lie to any more sweeping single characterization in the "Political position" section? But if there must be a "Political position" section, let it be "Right-wing" (or "Conservative") as something suitably vague. As to the misquotation issue, well, look, isn't it kind of ridiculous that we must debate sources for the claim that the Republican Party is right-wing? Do we have to debate sources for the claims that water is wet and that the sky is blue? The Republican Party is self-evidently the right-wing party in America's two-party system. That this requires citations is a strange artifact of Wikipedia's sourcing policy; the fact that those citations then got miscited, and that people somehow think the question turns on what these particular sources say just compounds the confusion.

• V-DEM: As to the use of V-DEM, I think it is silly to declare them to be either "reliable" or "unreliable." I think the very question whether they are a "reliable source" ultimately shows the extreme vulnerability of the current WP:RS policies (and their common interpretations). V-DEM must be understood for what they are: an academic group. Does that mean that Wikipedia should simply repeat whatever they say? Of course not. That is not how either WP:RS or WP:NPOV should work. Why should one narrow academic group be called upon to make a definitive declaration? The whole point of the neutrality policy is to characterize multiple, competing points of view fairly. Doubtless, V-DEM ably and reliably represents a group that is reliably left-wing: academic political scientists. When information must be presented in summary form, either say that the issue is contested or default to a suitably vague description and add a footnote or two. That is the correct approach. Larry Sanger (talk) 20:41, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

  Are you saying the party doesn't currently put Trumpism first? It's pretty uncontroversial to say the party has been remade in Trump's image which included empowering Trump supporters and Trumpism generally Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:33, 7 April 2026 (UTC)

  No, that's not what I'm saying. A lot of Republicans don't like Trump, obviously. Larry Sanger (talk) 19:12, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  Right but no matter if they like Trump or not, the party is pushing Trumpism which is right-wing to far-right, if not far-right.

  If a bunch of left wing Jews voted for hitler or supported the Nazis but then didn’t like him post-election, the Nazis would still be far-right. Same concept applies here. We judge parties mostly based on their platform and actions, not if everyone in the party is in love with leadership or not Retr0r0cket (talk) 19:16, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  I agree with Larry Sanger, and this kind of relates to what I discussed above. The party is still composed of significant factions that vary across the right side of the political spectrum, even if they don't run the whole party. I don't dispute that Trumpism is the prevailing wing of the party today. There are lots of Republicans who are strong supporters of Trump, but not as far to the right as the Freedom Caucus, MTG, Boebert, etc. There are also plenty of Republicans who are strong supporters or Trump, but differ with him and his base on several issues (i.e. Elon Musk). We can debate how significant a wing of a party has to be in order to be considered the dominant faction, but my point is, the sources, while demonstrative that Trumpism may be the pluralistic faction in the party so far, don't necessarily demonstrate that it dominates the rest of the party to the extent that the entire party can effectively be characterized as Trumpist/far-right populist. There have also been significant right-wing (but not entirely far-right) populist factions in the GOP since at least the Ross Perot years; they just didn't have power or influence until Trump showed up. The GOP is not an overwhelmingly far-right Trumpist party in the same manner the Nazis were overwhelmingly anti-semitic fascists; the GOP is a predominantly right-wing and socially conservative party, with a significant (but not necessarily majoritarian) far-right wing. Bneu2013 (talk) 20:02, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  Hey sorry for falling off the face of the Earth for a few days. You're right that the Republican Party is the party of the American right due to the US being a two party system, but saying Trumpism (an ideology that is at least borderline far-right according to wikipedia. This is pretty uncontroversial to say here anyways) is the prevailing wing of the party AND claiming that the freedom caucus is influential basically solidifies right-wing to far-right/explicitly far-right ideology as the primary ideology for the party and that it just happens to have everyone else on the American right. The entire party doesn't need to be Trumpist/far-right populist for either the majority of the party to be or for it to dictate the modern party's direction. Retr0r0cket (talk) 06:01, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

  Also in regards to @Larry Sanger, I'm generally unimpressed by his argument (sidenote: it feels awkward and funny at the same time to be pinging you as a relative nobody who is putting off studying for an exam tomorrow morning). Just because a source is academic doesn't mean it's biased towards the left. If you distrust academia I can't stop you, but saying V-DEM indices (essentially the polls-of-polls on how democratic countries are) are unreliable at all is absurd when you have hundreds of professionals who are well-trained and well-informed (academic does tend to produce really competent specialists in fields on average at least). Admitedly some sources are better than others that are tracked in V-DEM, but that's why macro-indices like V-DEM are great because on average it will balance due to just having more sampling data.

  Sure V-DEM is far from perfect and academic sources can have their issues (especially in the social sciences), but it's not like it's the only source we're relying upon either. We're just saying it's a pretty good indicator of where things are and are more reliable than pretty much any other source one could cite in regards to how democratic a country is. Retr0r0cket (talk) 06:33, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

  As to V-DEM and other sources: Again, these all represent one perspective on the question, that of left-wing academics. Others differ, and the views of left-wing academics should not be held as determinative. Larry Sanger (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  I can't find anything that describes V-DEM as left-wing & am unsure what you're basing that off of, so may I ask where you've read them described as such? Also if possible, I'd appreciate any reliable documentation that supports referring to any of the other sources in question as left-wing.

  Otherwise, I think grouping all sources that describe the party as far-right into a single "perspective" of "left-wing academics" is rather reductive. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:28, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  Agreed. V-DEM indices are the polls-of-polls for democracy experts. If anything they would be less biased versus your average source due to how many data points they have Retr0r0cket (talk) 19:03, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

  Lack of bias is not determined by number of data points. Larry Sanger (talk) 01:12, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

  You’re missing the point of “you can’t call a source biased without evidence of said bias.” Retr0r0cket (talk) 02:03, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

  V-Dem is one of, if not the leading research authority on political and democratic datasets within the academic community. I don't know why so much emphasis was put on V-Dem by the proposer, but this finding is mirrored in multiple other contemporary research studies and papers. I think the intent was to illustrate that if V-Dem is now saying so along with all the other sources, this is a pretty clear signal this position has entered the academic mainstream. Obviously we should not base a position on a single source, and I don't think this was the intent of the proposer. Likewise, saying that V-Dem is "left wing" because "academic political scientists" are is an overgeneralization and personal opinion. BootsED (talk) 00:16, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

• None of them, deprecate the position parameter at {{Infobox political party}}, the sheer amount of disputes that this parameter causes and editor time it wastes makes it a clear net negative (see WP:INDICSCRIPT for precedent on 'prohibiting' something for causing too many disputes). Anything we put in it is also going to be grossly reductive, and determining a party's position on the political spectrum is arbitrary and the opposite of an exact science, such that we usually end up relying on media sources because scholarship tends to eschew it. Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 08:18, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  This is probably the wisest comment of all on this entire thread. Iljhgtn (they/them · talk) 14:28, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  The above input by an account blocked for sockpuppetry is struck off.

  We could also change the parameter(s) to enable attribution to individual political science metrics.

  Take a generic social liberal party, then output:

  Center (V-DEM)

  Center-left (Polity)

  Center-left (Manifesto Database)

  Center (Party Survey Database)

  Everything would be verifiable, objective, and ***not*** place it in the voice of Wikipedia. Would everyone here support this? @Larry Sanger, @Kowal2701, @Iljhgtn? Either this idea, no parameter, or exclusively citing V-DEM (it's the most respected summarization of party ideologies) makes the most sense to me. Under current Wikipedia policy? Option #2 clearly wins (source review), but the whole system probably needs to be overhauled. Is the idea workable? Jollyrime (talk) 16:11, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  I think that'd just add clutter, the infobox is already ridiculously long. Per WP:IBP The less information that an infobox contains, the more effectively it serves its purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 16:42, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  We could list V-DEM only. Jollyrime (talk) 16:47, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  While it's a very good source, I'm not sure that'd be WP:NPOV. We can add an attributed sentence to the lead summarising the report though (provided it's added to the body, MOS:LEAD) Kowal2701 (talk, contribs) 17:25, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  I have to agree with @Kowal2701. Less is more when it comes to infoboxes. Iljhgtn (they/them · talk) 22:04, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

  The above input by an account blocked for sockpuppetry is struck off.

  +1. Throwing more words at the screen doesn’t solve the problem when you could just say for the same party “center to center-left” and cite said sources Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:50, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

• comment/new proposal: the infobox should be as follows from what other have been saying:
  

Majority:
Right-wing to far-right
Big tent

this is how i think it should be, but i seldom where big tent should exactly be. — Tonkarooson • (📭|edits) 21:47, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Big tent and right-wing to far-right are oxymorons in this context. We could somehow annotate that the party is generally right-wing to far-right AND is also the party of the American right at large, but I’m not sure how useful that second part would be for the info box (it would just make things unclear) Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

(pinging because I totally missed this, and to maintain the discussion/debate) @Retr0r0cket -

that’s a good point for big tent. but I’m keeping “right-wing to far-right” — right-wing populism is said to be strongly associated with authoritarianism and extremist policies, and Trumpism is home to many white nationalists and other extremely radical ideologies. — Aurora :3 • (📭|edits) 16:33, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

That’s actually my stance summed up pretty well. It’s always going to be complicated by the fact that America has a two party system and the Republicans are just the party of the American right, but the part of the party setting its direction is right-wing to far-right regardless of any less radical members that also are present. Retr0r0cket (talk) 17:05, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3 (and include V-DEM's designation), per Maxeto0910 Wiki O'Ryan (talk) 03:45, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 5 : I support keeping the current “right-wing” description and not including the V-Dem “far-right” classification in either the infobox or body at this time. As noted above, the previous RfC found no consensus to add “far-right,” so the stable version should remain unless there’s clear new agreement. Even if V-Dem is considered reliable, adding this label would give disproportionate weight to a limited set of sources in a broad overview article. Until there’s clear, widespread agreement across high-quality secondary sources, it’s more appropriate to stick with the current wording and not include “far-right.” Tioaeu8943 (talk) 18:49, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
  
  

Status quo/Option 5: I may be mistaken, support/oppose aside, but I want to raise a concern about how this source is being applied. V‑Dem is a Europe‑based comparative democracy project whose indicators are calibrated to liberal‑democratic norms common in EU, UN, and World Bank adjacent governance frameworks. In the report, “far‑right” is used as an analytical descriptor within a democratic erosion framework, not as a formal ideological categorization study.

If you read the Far-right politics page it defines a distinct ideological family (e.g., fascism‑related traditions, ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, radical anti-communism, ethnonationalism, nativism, and Nazism, ideologies) as a requirement to be considered Far‑right. Treating V‑Dem’s metric‑based placement, what they call back sliding, as equivalent to these ideological classifications risks collapsing distinctly different uses of the term Far‑right and muddling its clarity. Back sliding does not mean has happened but refers to concerning indicators.

The existing V-Dem Democracy Indices page already covers this study and includes documented criticisms V-Dem Democracy Indices#Criticisms of its methodology for balance. It makes more sense to link evaluated subjects such as their evaluation of the Republican Party (United States) directly from It's page and keeps it a centralized reference. Given the study’s scope and repeated use across global concerns, this approach would improve attribution, consistency, and reduce confusion across Wikipedia. Dd3r1n0 (talk) 22:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2, followed by 3, followed by 4 as a compromise. There's more than enough scholarly analysis from political scientists and reputable sources that it is at the very least worth mentioning somewhere. The sources table shows that the Republican Party is seen as analagous to other parties around the world that Wikipedia has no trouble describing as far right. And at least according to this analysis published in the NYT by a polisci PhD, the Republican Party is further right than many of the far right parties in other liberal democracies that we describe as such. They've been compared to and/or described as being further right than Fidesz, National Rally, Alternative for Germany, and UKIP, all of which are described as simply "Far right" by Wikipedia. They've been compared to and/or described as further right than the Brothers of Italy, Law and Justice, Finns Party, and the Bharatiya Janata Party, all of which are described by Wikipedia as "Right wing to far right." They've been described as analagous on economic policy to the Swiss People's Party, which Wikipedia describes as right wing with a note that states it has also been described as far right. Both the quality and quantity of sources in the table demonstrates that there is WP:DUE weight. Whether we should accept the sources provided as a majority viewpoint among relevant experts (which would justify option 2) or treat them as a significant minority (which would justify option 3 or 4) is fair to debate, though I have seen no contrary sources provided to suggest that this even is a minority viewpoint. I have not seen any convincing arguments that we should not give this a mention anywhere in the infobox or body.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 14:17, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
• Option 5 (preference), or Option 3 with no note. These more accurately summarize the wider body of sources rather than engaging in WP:RECENTISM. Incidentally I find the proposed note for option 3 to be highly problematic as "emerging consensus" heavily smacks of WP:OR. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:20, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
• New idea I dont trust liberal nor conservative media but from my point of view, there should be an "Under trump" thing for the political ideologies and the position so that we can divide the main republican party and MAGA itself. The Republican Party does not inherently equal MAGA ~2026-24464-63 (talk) 13:52, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

  You can’t just say you don’t trust conservative or liberal media that doesn’t change the quality of any sources listed Retr0r0cket (talk) 15:53, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 5 followed by Option 6After reading the VDEM Democracy Report 2026 in its entirety I am concerned that this RfC does not reflect several important internal qualifications contained later in the document. In particular, pages 42–43 raise substantive methodological criticisms of the "recent global decline in democracy" findings, yet these caveats do not appear to be acknowledged or incorporated into the argumentation presented here. The RfC cherrypicks pages 33–39, omitting 42–43 entirely. As a result, the report is being treated as offering a level of support that may exceed what it actually provides when read in full. This raises questions about whether the source is being summarised with appropriate balance and context. ~2026-24970-38 (talk) 18:49, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

You mean the part where they say Hence, very large countries such as India or the US may be driving much of the reported trend.? Because pages 42-43 do not suggest that the US-specific findings are problematic. Rather they suggest that the sizes of India and the US are skewing global results. Simonm223 (talk) 18:54, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Here's another good quote from page 43: The big story is that the United States fell from .84 to .74 on the Electoral democracy index (EDI), and from 0.75 to 0.57 on the Liberal Democracy index (LDI)—the largest annual decline in US history. This is mostly due to a decline in media freedom as well as Congress’s failure to hold the executive accountable, combined with some loss of independence of the judiciary as well as weakened rule of law and protection of civil liberty. Simonm223 (talk) 18:57, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose inclusion. This is a bad RfC, since the question is not whether the source is reliable, it's whether the source meets WP:DUE. It does not. It's a niche source with little coverage by other reliable sources, very few of which claim that the Republican party is far-right. Bill Williams 00:02, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  I’m sorry how is the preeminent academic source on how democratic a country is “niche” or unreliable? That’s a wild statement Retr0r0cket (talk) 02:36, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  Why do so many users who oppose labelling the GOP far-right act like V-Dem is the only source describing the party like that when there's dozens and dozens of others? That phenomenon should certainly be considered when reviewing this RFC. Maxeto0910 (talk) 08:25, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  +1 Retr0r0cket (talk) 15:15, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  There is definitely a double-standard at play. There has been a rush to call the Communist Party of China right-authoritatian on the basis of like three sources, two of which were published by the same advocacy group, and calling a communist party right wing is quite a bit more extraordinary a claim than describing a party of religious fundamentalists and anti-immigration extremists who are widely described as far-right in academia as far-right. Most of the oppose !votes here boil down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Simonm223 (talk) 17:45, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  Agreed. I mean, referring to other RFCs in this context is kind of a whataboutism as we shouldn't care about them, but I agree that most of the oppose votes in this RFC set rather inappropriate or vague standards. Most of the time, it is not even remotely clear where their threshold lies for changing their opinion. Maxeto0910 (talk) 08:46, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

  niche source with little coverage by other reliable sources I'm just going to refer to the many words already said about what V-Dem is for why this statement is misleading, to say the least. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 06:00, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 3 Pretty clearly the current academic consensus. The US should not have a different standard than every other country (including other two-party and even one-party systems) ~2026-25236-16 (talk) 21:26, 25 April 2026 (UTC)
• Option 6 "V-DEM is not a reliable source; inclusion should be restricted or prohibited." This is the most accurate. ~2026-25303-29 (talk) 21:33, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  Why? Retr0r0cket (talk) 21:58, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

  1) On the grounds of what?

  2) What about the other dozens and dozens of sources supporting the far-right classification? Maxeto0910 (talk) 18:26, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Dozens of non-peer-reviewed sources that present the matter differently than the peer-reviewed source I found after looking for about one minute: . Shinealittlelight (talk) 02:35, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  That's still a WP:WEIGHT issue. A single source doesn't override all others simply because it's been peer-reviewed. However, I have found some peer reviewed sources supporting the descriptor:

  Pini, Frizzera - 2024 "The coordinated efforts of these three actors were responsible for incorporating nativist, xenophobic, and authoritarian agendas into the Republican Party, ultimately contributing to its alignment with the far-right."

  Arhin, Stockemeyer, Normandin - 2023 "With its emphasis on anti-immigration rhetoric and actions, protectionism, as well as populism, Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party into a party that closely resembles populist radical right-wing parties in Europe. In this article, we first illustrate how the Republican Party has transformed into a radical right-wing party." – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 02:52, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  Sounds like different peer reviewed sources characterize the matter differently. Seems like a good thing to summarize in the article, not the info box. Shinealittlelight (talk) 03:19, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 5 As per PackMecEng.Rja13ww33 (talk) 03:03, 27 April 2026 (UTC)
• Option 5 I'm for keeping the status quo. This one source is cherry picked, and does not represent the consensus in the scholarly literature. See for example , which argues that there has been a drift to "right-wing populism" (no mention of "far-right" in the paper) and that the trend in this direction pre-dates Trump significantly. These matters are complex, and one position should not be elevated to the infobox on the basis of a single cherry-picked source. Shinealittlelight (talk) 16:53, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  See for example [12], which argues that there has been a drift to "right-wing populism" (no mention of "far-right" in the paper) Far-right populism is a subset of right-wing (broadly defined) populism. I found nothing in the paper that rejects that the GOP is far-right, considering the abstract:

  A change in coalition forces that control the Republican Parrt has encouraged the emergence of a Republican Party that holds, among other things, that some radical poliitcal actions (such as the 6 January insurrection) are legitimate...

  Although the article is paywalled, and I don't have to full access to what it says, it certainly doesn't appear to dispute the "far-right populist" classification at all.

  It reaffirms it... if anything.

  does not represent the consensus in the scholarly literature. Refer to the source review table, and the citations of V-DEM, Global Party Survey, Bright Line Watch, Manifesto Project Database, Project Democracy, and Polity Data Series, all of which are the major indices on political science on party's comparative positions. They unanimously describe the party as far-right, authoritarian, and to the right of parties (such as National Rally) which are classified as "far-right" on Wikipedia. The Roger Griffin, Cas Mudde, Staffan I. Lindberg, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Steven Levitsky, John Carey, Pippa Norris, Lee Drutman, Brian Klaas, Ishaan Tharoor, etc. All of them give incredible insight on how political scientists broadly the describe the GOP. Where are you getting the implication that it is on the basis of a single cherry-picked source? V-DEM was just the final straw in a viewpoint that is now the overwhelming majority in political science. Not a weird minority.

  The median GOP representative is referred as more right wing than National Rally — a French far-right party — by V-Party, the leading comparative analysis of political parties that exists; Manifesto Project Database, the leading comparative analysis of political party's manifestos; Roger Griffin, perhaps the most respected historian on far-right politics alive; the widely respected Pippa Norris, Lee Drutman, Brian Klaas, and countless others. The only one that even gives a hint of perhaps holding back is Freedom House. It appears to not reject the far-right classification, just places the party on a general "right-wing" position, and also implicitly argued that there has been significantly democratic backsliding and increasingly radicalism from Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Jollyrime (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  And again this interesting phenomenon where someone votes against including the far-right label based on the claim that V-Dem would be the """single source"". I mean, yes ... V-Dem is the only source if you ignore the dozens and dozens and dozens of others.

  Also, I fail to see how the right-wing populist nature of the party precludes it from being far-right. Maxeto0910 (talk) 18:21, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  You'll probably need to actually read the paper if you want to know what is in it. It does not contain the term "far-right" and so never calls the Republican party "far-right". Shinealittlelight (talk) 19:48, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Sure, the source may not support labelling the GOP far-right, but it does not deny it either. There are very few (if any) reliable sources from the 2020s explicitly denying that the GOP is a far-right party, but dozens supporting it. Maxeto0910 (talk) 21:15, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Also, none of your citations are peer-reviewed, it seems. I think we should prioritize the peer-reviewed literature. Shinealittlelight (talk) 20:58, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  "Prioritize" would imply giving peer-reviewed sources more weight than non-peer reviewed, which would be fine by me. But that doesn't mean we should ignore all the other articles from reliable sources just because they are not peer-reviewed. Maxeto0910 (talk) 21:23, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

  Nobody is saying to ignore any sources, please AGF and don't put words in my mouth. When I provide a peer reviewed article--which I found by looking for about one minute, by the way--that presents the matter differently than what you want to put into the infobox, that should give us serious pause. As I see it, the infobox is for esetablished facts that reflect a clear consensus. And let me again stress that this article I found really does present the matter differently than you say. It does not say "far right" once, and it sees Trump and Trumpism as a late development in a long-term populist drift in the GOP. If I have time, I'll look at more literature, but even this one source suggests that we should stick with the status quo on this issue. Shinealittlelight (talk) 02:31, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  I don't put words in your mouth; if you give one peer-reviewed source more weight than 30+ others (perhaps 50+ others if we include sources provided by other users and those already in the article), then you don't "prioritize" the peer-reviewed one, but virtually only let it count. When would you reconsider your vote for status quo? If the ratio was like 100:1? And again, your source doesn't present the matter differently than what I advocate for. I voted for option 3, which is right-wing to far-right, because I acknowledge that academic classifications of the GOP are disputed between right-wing and far-right. Maxeto0910 (talk) 03:25, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  I apologize, I misunderstood your position. I do not think, however, that we should try to summarize controversies in the info box. “Right wing to far right” is a very poor summary of the disagreement. Better to leave that to the article. Shinealittlelight (talk) 03:45, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  I fail to see what is "controversial" about this. There are more sources describing the party as far-right than solely right-wing by an order of magnitude. It's common practice on Wikipedia to include all relevant reliably-sourced political position descriptors in the infobox based on due weight. I think it's been made abundantly clear that it's undue to exclude "far-right" based on the myriad of WP:RS that explicitly support the label for the party. In my view, the more relevant discussion is about whether "right-wing" has been superseded in reliable sourcing by "far-right". – GlowstoneUnknown (Talk) 03:55, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

  Why do you think it would be a "poor summary"? I think even if it isn't a perfect solution, it's probably the best option that most closely reflects what experts say. Leaving out "far-right" would be extremely undue IMHO and even less accurate in 2026 than just stating that the party is far-right. Maxeto0910 (talk) 03:57, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option #3: The rfc has made national news. LARRY sanger is sayinf it shows problems with the so-called neutrality policy and is calling for option 5 due to public opinion. I see option 3 as a compromise between public and academic opinion. Sanger says that it shows a gap between how the public (which sees it as a centre-right) and academic (which sees it as far-right) see many topics and says that we need to change WP: NPOV policies due left wing bias in academia. I believe that Wikipedia should recognsze that many people in colleges have Trump Derangement Syndrome and are biased. Look at the success of the Abraham Accords and UAE withdrawing from NATO. Hope that this article gets balanced. R0bertc3enter (talk) 18:30, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

• Option 2, or in a pinch, any of options 1, 3, or 4. Ample evidence has been put forward here that "far-right" represents the current scholarly consensus, and also that it would not have been the consensus designation for most of the party's history. The only question is whether and how to present that combination of facts in the infobox. As MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE reminds us, the purpose of an infobox is to allow[] readers to identify key facts at a glance, and thus [a]n infobox is unsuitable for nuance or detail and should generally avoid prose or prose-like statements. In this case, the hasty reader seeking to "identify key facts" is more likely to be someone looking for information on the Republican Party of current time, and not the party of 1866, 1966 or 2006. However, given that incoming links span the whole period of the party's existence, it is preferable that we provide something to assist that smaller portion of historically-interested readers, and I think the footnote proposed in option 2 is a sensible way of addressing those readers' needs without detracting from the infobox's usefulness to others. -- Visviva (talk) 02:11, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Need closer(s)

Thread is about to be archived. We need closer(s). Jollyrime (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Huh? ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 20:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

We need a closer now. Not that a decision has been made.Jollyrime (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

@Chaotic Enby can you push this back for a bit until the RfC is closed perhaps? Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:56, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Or @ScottishFinnishRadish? Sorry for leaving you out on the first comment. I’m at the gym right now. Retr0r0cket (talk) 23:01, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The thread won't be archived while there is active discussion. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:04, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Well then my apologies for wasting your and Chaotic Enby’s time. Retr0r0cket (talk) 23:37, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if the discussion gets archived if it has been added to WP:CR. The closer will just unarchive it and close. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 23:01, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

That’s true, but it’s easier if we just push it back a few days now. Either way it doesn’t really matter too much. Retr0r0cket (talk) 23:04, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I suppose. I think we should all have some consideration for it taking a while for this to be closed. The person who takes it upon themselves to deal with it is going to have to spend a significant chunk of their day in order to be able to properly close this RfC. ⹃Maltazarian ^{ᚾparley${\displaystyle \lor }$investigateᛅ} 23:09, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, that addresses my worry. My fear was that everything would have to be redone again. Could redo Main argument summaries for closers? Jollyrime (talk) 23:12, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

The auto archive system doesn't trigger on a specific date, rather it waits until the section has been inactive for a given period of time (30 days is typical and the setting on this page). Any post in the section resets the timer. So absent the do not archive tag this would need to be untouched for 30 days before the threat would auto archive. Even then, it's generally not a big deal to revert an auto archive. Springee (talk) 23:25, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Pinned the section, just to be really really sure. Shouldn't be archived until 2036 (or until somebody closes and unpins it, whichever comes first). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:14, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

It has not yet been formally closed. My closure request is still up and I’m going to keep it up. Retr0r0cket (talk) 22:46, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Closed for new comments. Not by a closer. Jollyrime (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

"3th"? GoodDay (talk) 22:50, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Mistype. :) Jollyrime (talk) 22:53, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

Non-survey review discussion