Officeholder term dates

This document provides guidance to data partners on how to determine start and end dates for officeholder terms.

General guidance

Officeholder term dates should be derived from a government-backed source, in most circumstances the official website or government-backed news agency of the jurisdiction in question. Otherwise, it will be confusing for users to see different dates on Google than those published on government websites.

While alternative sources may be available, the goal is to reduce user confusion by aligning on sources that our users are more likely to consult and are more likely to show up organically in search results when possible. For example, we assume users are more likely to read dates on official departmental websites than open up a copy of the constitution.

Sources to use for term dates

Google is largely comfortable with officeholder term dates being represented as accurately as governments are able to publish them themselves. In the first instance, use term dates from a government-published website or government-backed publications, for example:

In cases where a data provider is also a recognised publishing authority for archival officeholder term information in their own right, the provider's website can be used as the source.

If different term dates are found in one or more government published sources, pick the one that is most appropriate. In practice, we expect this will be the longer of the terms.

If official website sources are not available, we should make use of the best available alternative sources. This may entail consulting a jurisdiction's constitution or using other market knowledge.

Official website sources can be considered not available if they:

  • Simply don't exist for a given datapoint
  • Provide incomplete or partial data
    • For example, following Lok Sabha elections, sansad.in tends only to provide partial dates, for example, 'June 2024' for officeholder terms
    • Other sources (for example, researching how term dates tend to work in Lok Sabha) should be employed to calculate the complete date

If dates are not immediately available after an election but only made available later after the office term has begun, try to follow the term date methodology that government published sources have used for previous terms. In practice, this means that if the previous term's start date was decided by election date, oath date or certification date, the same logic should be used for the subsequent term.

Later, if the official website publishes revised dates that differ from those already supplied, the supplied dates should be updated to match.

Continuous officeholder terms

It is important to avoid gaps between officeholder terms in order to prevent erroneous representations of these terms in Search results and other contexts. This is unchanged from previous guidance but we want to provide clarifying examples on how to handle certain edge cases that have emerged in the past.

Because of this requirement, it may sometimes be necessary to override term dates provided by official government sources in these edge cases. These overrides may be temporary while we wait for official sources to catch up with live events and close any gaps in term dates between officeholders.

Term start dates are defined as the start date of the first term of an officeholder for their continuous tenure in office. If an officeholder stays in the same office, representing the same district, for multiple continuous terms, the start date of the first term in that continuous tenure should be used.

If an officeholder loses the election or is removed from office, this breaks the continuity of the term. If they are reelected in a subsequent, non-consecutive term, their start dates should reflect the start date of the new term. If they take a temporary leave of absence or vacation, this does not break their tenure and their start date wouldn't change.

Example scenarios

These scenarios illustrate how best to approach officeholder terms in certain edge-cases.

Scenario 1: Officeholder is re-elected to the same office and district

If an officeholder's first term was from Jan 1st, 2001 to Dec 1st 2002 and then were re-elected during a regular election cycle into the same office and district from Jan 1st, 2003 to Dec 1st, 2004, their term's start date would remain Jan 1st, 2001 and their term end date would be Dec 1st, 2004.

If this same officeholder wasn't elected into office for the following term and returned for another, non-consecutive term on Jan 1st, 2006, their new term start date would be 2006 due to the lapse in them holding the office.

Scenario 2: Officeholder is re-elected but to a different office or district

If an officeholder was first elected from Jan 1st, 2001 to Dec 1st 2002 for district A and they were then elected into office from Jan 1st, 2003 to Dec 1st, 2004 for district B, then this would result in two separate terms with two different start dates as the officeholder is not representing the same district.

This scenario also applies in cases where district A is dissolved or otherwise ceases to exist. The officeholder's tenure ends with the dissolution of the office and a corresponding end-date should be applied.

Scenario 3: Officeholder's term is cut short due to early election or resignation

This scenario addresses situations where an officeholder's term ends prematurely, such as when parliament is dissolved leading to an early election, or when an officeholder's resignation is formally accepted.

  • If an interim officeholder is appointed or the duties of the office are formally delegated to another office, it breaks the continuity of the term
  • Else if there is a formal vacancy period (for example, a specific date of resignation acceptance and a separate, later date for the new appointment), it breaks the continuity of the term
  • Else, a continuous term is expected

Scenario 4: A person holding the office takes a leave of absence but is not replaced in the office

Provided nobody is officially appointed to the office in the interim, the officeholder retains the office during their leave of absence and their term is unbroken. Their SeatStatus should be updated to on-leave.

Sometimes, a deputy or similar ad hoc appointee takes up the functions of the officeholder while they are on leave. Provided this appointment remains 'unofficial', the original officeholder and their term dates are retained throughout the period of their leave. Unofficial backfills shouldn't be included in the feed.