Coverage of American politics in Wikipedia is a subject that has received substantial attention from the media. Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia has provided coverage of five United States presidential elections, and six mid-term elections at the federal level, as well as numerous "off-year" state elections and special elections.
Wikipedia has received both praise and criticism for elements of its political coverage, with some sources asserting that Wikipedia exhibits political neutrality and others asserting the presence of ideological bias on Wikipedia. A nonideological criticism leveled at Wikipedia is that the project's internal standards for notability tend to favor incumbents of either party over challengers, and tend to favor people in male-dominated professions over women. This results in incumbent candidates in prominent elections receiving large amounts of traffic, while challengers who are not already notable through some other achievement, such as being a professional athlete, have no article or are redirected to a generic article on the election. Substantial debates have occurred within the project over the appropriate point at which to create an article for a challenger, particularly where a challenger is the nominee of one of the two major parties that dominate American politics, where the office contested is particularly visible, and where sources consider the challenger to have a chance to win the election.
The capacity for Wikipedia to be edited by anyone has, conversely, led to circumstances where political figures, or those who work for them, have directly tried to change the content of their own articles, as well as of articles on their opponents. This has resulted in scrutiny of United States congressional staff edits to Wikipedia.
Editorial activity
2016 United States presidential election
In the early stages of the 2016 United States presidential election, The New York Observer reported that Wikipedia's article on Donald Trump was the busiest of the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. The New York Times noted that the article usually attracted more views than his Republican rivals. In September 2016, Business Insider reported that the article subject was one of the 29 most controversial people on Wikipedia, and the following month The New York Observer reported that the article entry was bulkier than either the articles on George W. Bush and Barack Obama, while The Washington Post reported that the article had more than three times the number of edits than Hillary Clinton since January 2015. The article was the second most edited English Wikipedia article of 2016. It was reported by Billboard, PCMag, The Verge, and others.
Following Trump's election, his article was the second most viewed English Wikipedia article of 2017, at 29.6 million views, and was covered in reporting by Mashable, Newshub, VentureBeat, and others. In 2018, the article was covered for image vandalism.
Editing by political operatives
Some Wikipedia edits by staff of the United States Congress have created controversy, notably in early to mid-2006. Several such instances, such as those involving Marty Meehan, Norm Coleman, Conrad Burns, Joe Biden, Tom Harkin, and Tom Coburn received significant media attention. Others, such as those involving Gil Gutknecht, David Davis, and Mike Pence, were reported but received less widespread coverage.
Biographical information on various politicians was edited by their own staff to remove undesirable information (including pejorative statements quoted, or broken campaign promises), add favorable information or "glowing" tributes, add negative information to opponents' biographies, or replace the article in part or whole by staff-authored biographies.
On January 27, 2006, The Sun, published an article entitled "Rewriting history under the dome", which revealed the editing by Congressional staff members of Representative Marty Meehan's Wikipedia entry. Further investigation by Wikipedia editors discovered over a thousand edits by IP addresses allocated to either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Wikipedia editors found that most of the edits were considered to be in good faith, but a minority of edits were considered improper. At least one of the addresses involved was prohibited from further editing.
In 2011, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin commented on the history of Paul Revere. This led to Palin supporters attempting to change the Wikipedia article about him to match Palin's comments.