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 articles about them or their opponents. This has resulted in scrutiny of United States congressional staff edits to Wikipedia.