Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Soft support

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

The result was delete‎. The only argument against deletion was one for redirecting, which was later concluded to be inappropriate. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 09:21, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Soft support

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The sources on the page do not give significant coverage to the concept of soft support, mentioning it in passing as part of another topic. The article as it stands is completely WP:OR, and searching online sources has also only revealed mentions of the topic in academic articles on other situations rather then significant coverage of the concept itself. Per WP:NOTADICTIONARY, deletion is due. Boynamedsue (talk) 12:32, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. Spiderone^{(Talk to Spider)} 12:46, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Merge with Swing vote: This is a common concept in polling, but it doesn't need a standalone article. Reywas92^Talk 14:30, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- No problem with that outcome, but I would say merge without transferring anything over. The article as it stands is an OR essay.Boynamedsue (talk) 15:47, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I agree that there is no content in the current article worth merging. Considering whether a redirect is appropriate, but not convinced Swing vote is the right target either. It doesn't always equate to swing voters. It can just be an indication of degree of support, and is also sometimes used to mean "apathy". Cielquiparle (talk) 19:10, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Star Mississippi 15:00, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is a load of newspaper clippings that say that some politician's support is "soft" in some way, from which is being induced a consistent meaning for this. If there were a consistent meaning, it should be discoverable in things like political science textbooks, or works on polling statistics. But I have found nothing in that regard, except for something that turned out to be nonce terminology used in one computer model, and a lot more clippings of the same kind from political biographies and histories. For the same reason, I cannot really support a redirect. Absent a verifiable definition of some kind, it's not really possible to definitely state what topic this is synonymous with. It's telling that a lot of the things that I found used quotation marks around "soft". If it's not possible to nail down even a definition, I don't see how we can have anything. Uncle G (talk) 02:07, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I find your reasoning convincing, I now agree the best choice is delete with no redirect.Boynamedsue (talk) 19:53, 29 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Delete I am not sure that a merge or redirect makes any sense as the two concepts are not related, and "soft support" is not mentioned at Swing Vote. The mentions are about specific situations and I could not find coverage of the concept itself. --Enos733 (talk) 02:56, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: Agree with others that this concept is too vague to justify its own article. Helpful Raccoon (talk) 05:02, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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