Elections in various countries

[Ares Land]

Anyway, the RN did very well (33.5%), followed by the Front Populaire at 28.1%, and Macron's list at 20.7%.

Participation was very high, and due to the intricacies of the electoral system, there will be a lot of three way races in the second round. A big unknown is whether the candidate that comes last in each consituencies will step down. Front Populaire candidate will, when the case arises. Whether Ensemble (Macron's alliance) candidate will do so is not always clear.

Three way races will give some advantage to the RN; but Macron and allies are being, hmm, weaselly about stepping down. Especially so when they have to step down in favor of a LFI candidate. (There's a single Front Populaire candidate in each constituency, can be Green, Communist, PS or LFI)

The electoral systems got pretty arcane here; I tried to sum things up as best I can. Hope this makes sense somehow.

It's very probable the RN gets a majority. Needless to say, I'm not happy about it.

[xxx]

you become insulting and you veil your face...

it's not a mistake, France hasn't become fascist...
it's just parties stuck on obsolete ideologies
that refuse to listen to their voters' demands
and respond to the problems they face...

there's no need for false shame or hypocritical morality,
it's a question of proposing measures
adapted to the real problems of voters...

we're not going again to end up electing Hitler
just because the parties can't open their eyes above their blinkers
and carry on with their little political tricks to gain little power......

[Ares Land]

You deserve to be insulted.

[xxx]

you're insane, wake up...

[zompist]

OK, that's enough. xxx, you can take a day off. Then stop trolling about Muslims in France; racism is against the house rules.

(Since we haven't had one of these for awhile, a procedural note: xxx has been warned before, so this is a 1-day ban. The idea is bans of increasing length, but people who double down on their antisocial tendencies can accelerate the process.)

[Ares Land]

More on this now that we have the full election results.

No chance of the Front Populaire getting anywhere close to a majority -- they would have to win in every single consistuency where they remain in the second round. Most if not all follow the simple logic of stepping down when in third position.
The traditional right and Macron's center-right are being difficult about it. This is not surprising but still infuriating. As a reminder, Macron and his coalition are in power due to left-wing voters doing the right thing. Unsuprisingly centrists and right-wingers are a lot less bothered with the prospect of seeing the fascists win.

My own consistuency is likely to have a three way contest, with the RN winning.

The one hope remaining is that the RN doesn't get a clear majority. A technocratic government, similar to the Draghi government in Italy would be a possibility then.

Macron and PM Attal are evidently hoping for some sort of wide coalition with the bits of the left they like. Macron is a very clever politician and he could've pulled it off... But the centrists have been so insulting with the left it looks impossible now. Also there is the presidential election in 2027 to think of, and if anyone wants a chance against the RN candidate then, the one thing to do is to avoid Macron like the plague.

In my view, there is a very real possibility that the RN gets a majority and Bardella becomes PM; either through the vote or by building a coalition. A lot of people, ordinary voters and people in higher circles are working under the impression that the RN won't be so bad. As the coming months or years will make clear, they are wrong.

[WeepingElf]

The one hope remaining is that the RN doesn't get a clear majority. A technocratic government, similar to the Draghi government in Italy would be a possibility then.

Yes. A nonpartisan technocratic government is certainly preferable over a government which includes fascists!

[Ares Land]

The next round of the election is on Sunday. The best comparison is to the event horizon: we know that either the RN gets a majority or they don't -- after that all conventional laws breaks down, and nobody can predict what happens.

It seems there's a grand coalition being prepared behind the scenes in case the RN doesn't get a majority. It would include almost everyone except for the RN and LFI. I don't know how I feel about that. I would prefer a left-wing government, but that's not happening; and getting everyone around the table is the next best thing. There is a lot I like about LFI, but them being excluded would be excluded. This country would need some peace and quiet, and they're not good at providing that -- and the parts of LFI that still support Mélenchon are terrible coalition partners.
On the other hand, that sort of cross-partisan alliance is pretty much what Macron was supposed to do, and it failed. First, nobody was happy. Second, it ended up slavishly following corporate interest. That said, if the RN doesn't win, there will have to be a government of some sorts.
For some reason, the national secretary of EELV (The Greens), Marine Tondelier has been in the spotlight a lot. I'm happy about it, first because I like the Greens, second because she seems a genuinely good and competent person.

Anyway, all of this rests on an awfully big 'if'. I suspect a RN victory is by far the likeliest outcome.

[WeepingElf]

I hope the "business-as-usual" parties (in France, LREM and LR) have enough common sense to ally with the progressives (NFP) rather than the far right (RN). This is an issue in other European countries as well; here in Germany, the "business-as-usual" parties (CDU/CSU, FDP) do indeed exclude a coalition with the far right (AfD) and would rather ally with the progressives (SPD and Greens, at least), but in some other countries, it unfortunately looks different. At least, LR recently sacked their chairman for proposing a coaltion with RN, which is a moment of hope, as are the withdrawals of many candidates to make RN victories in three-part run-offs less likely.

[Ares Land]

LREM (or Ensemble as they call themselves now) will definitely not ally with RN. Neither side is interested, to put it mildly. No chance of LR allying with RN either, but it's possible a number of LR members would end up doing so.
In any case, RN won't build a coalition. Their one chance is to get a majority.

One difference from other countries is that the electoral system is designed to provide clear majorities. So unlike in Italy or the Netherlands, the RN could get a majority of their own.
Many politicians did or are doing the right thing; not enough for my tastes, but enough of them for the elections' outcome to rest on the voters alone.

Assuming the RN doesn't get a majority, one interesting result would be that membership in the French parliament would look a lot like the European parliament.

[Ares Land]

(Assuming you put the end-quote tag in the wrong place.)

Yes, I recall; I’d just misunderstood its significance.

It's pretty amusing, though, that the platform is of absolutely no importance now. Wrapping the next day's fish indeed!

Wait, it isn’t? Why? I thought there was still a chance for NFP to form part of government.

Moving this over here.

Assuming the RN doesn't win, I don't see NFP surviving as such. LFI is a difficult partner; because the center and right don't want to work with them, because Mélenchon scares people; and more generally because while there are good people there they're mostly a pain in the ass. They won't be kept in the sidelines -- no matter how much people would like that, they'll have to be kept happy somehow -- but I suspect their input will be minimal. They probably won't want to be associated much anyway -- though some LFI dissidents might!
Also, whatever government emerges will have to figure measures that are acceptable from LFI to LR so they'll have to figure out a completely different agenda.
All in all, in that configuration, there'll be some token mentions of the NFP platform and then it'll be quickly forgotten.

If the RN wins then who knows what happens? NFP might survive, but coalition platforms typically don't survive an electoral defeat and that's in the typical case.

[bradrn]

Assuming the RN doesn't win, I don't see NFP surviving as such. LFI is a difficult partner; because the center and right don't want to work with them, because Mélenchon scares people; and more generally because while there are good people there they're mostly a pain in the ass. They won't be kept in the sidelines -- no matter how much people would like that, they'll have to be kept happy somehow -- but I suspect their input will be minimal. They probably won't want to be associated much anyway -- though some LFI dissidents might!
Also, whatever government emerges will have to figure measures that are acceptable from LFI to LR so they'll have to figure out a completely different agenda.
All in all, in that configuration, there'll be some token mentions of the NFP platform and then it'll be quickly forgotten.

Hmm, interesting. So what are the implications of this? Could we end up with some kind of coalition of Renaissance + the remainder of the NFP? Or will we end up with a coalition where LFI is disproportionately powerful?

(All assuming that RN loses, of course. If they win, only God knows what will happen to this country. And He’s probably not looking forward to it…)

[Ares Land]

It's really hard to predict this side of the event horizon!

A few things:

There are hints that a coalition involving everybody except LFI and of course the RN is being planned. Whether it'll work is another matter.
Everybody wants to get rid of Mélenchon, especially his friends. He may yet end up like Jeremy Corbyn. Or maybe not. If he chose early retirement, LFI might be easier to work with.
Everybody assuming Macron is dead politically, but I'm not so sure he is.

Grand coalitions are relatively common in Germany for instance, but there hasn't been one in France for decades
Nobody really knows how to handle this... On the other hand maybe they do -- 'no clear majority' is exactly how the European Parliament operates.

It's still very likely the RN will win -- nevermind the opinion polls. At this point the first order of business will be to figure out how to get rid of them.

[Raphael]

Everybody wants to get rid of Mélenchon, especially his friends.

Interesting. In Germany, the progression "enemy" -> "mortal enemy" -> "fellow party member" was traditionally seen as a thing among conservatives!

[Ares Land]

Everybody wants to get rid of Mélenchon, especially his friends.

Interesting. In Germany, the progression "enemy" -> "mortal enemy" -> "fellow party member" was traditionally seen as a thing among conservatives!

I think it's universal in politics!

[WeepingElf]

How likely is it that in case of the RN winning a majority in the runoffs, the unions will call for a general strike, and Macron appoints a nonpartisan technocratic government instead of an RN one?

[Ares Land]

How likely is it that in case of the RN winning a majority in the runoffs, the unions will call for a general strike, and Macron appoints a nonpartisan technocratic government instead of an RN one?

If the RN wins a majority, Macron can only appoint a RN government. Any other government would get a vote of no confidence.

One thing he can do is use his emergency powers, but he'll do that if and when RN policy leads to some sort of serious crisis.
The unions have been relatively silent on the election. Apparently, they worry that they may have RN voters among their members. A general strike isn't out of the question though.
Another possibility is riots, as we had last years.

Hard to say really. I'd expect things to remain calm and seemingly normal for a while if the RN wins though.

[MacAnDàil]

The poll projections after the first round all have RN and their Ciotti allies having a slim relative majority. NFP would have second place. So the RN couldn't have the prime ministership in the current most likely scenario because they would have no confidence. So, under that likely scenario, the prime minister should be someone centre-left (probably outside the parties) acceptable to both Ensemble and NFP.

The unions have been relatively silent on the election.

No, quite the contrary. CGT, FSU and some parts of SUD have actively called for NFP. The student unions UNEF and Union Etudiante have also done so. Calling actively for a political coalition is a first in French politics for a century. That was the charte d'Amiens. Others, like CFDT, have called against RN.

And that's without mentioning more than 3000 scholars, many charities, hundreds of health workers, religious people, sportspeople, musicians, and so on that have called against RN or sometimes even for NFP.

RN, on the other hand, has explicit support from Putin and Vincent Bolloré, the far right billionaire who makes children work miserably in Africa.

All of this is sourced on the relevant French Wikipedia pages: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_Front_populaire https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lec ... es_de_2024

[Ares Land]

No, quite the contrary. CGT, FSU and some parts of SUD have actively called for NFP. The student unions UNEF and Union Etudiante have also done so. Calling actively for a political coalition is a first in French politics for a century. That was the charte d'Amiens. Others, like CFDT, have called against RN.

My bad. I must have read some overly pessimistic article somewhere!

---

On the opinion polls, though, I'll admit to a lot of caution and pessimism. This wouldn't be the first time they're excessively optimistic.

[WeepingElf]

How likely is it that in case of the RN winning a majority in the runoffs, the unions will call for a general strike, and Macron appoints a nonpartisan technocratic government instead of an RN one?

If the RN wins a majority, Macron can only appoint a RN government. Any other government would get a vote of no confidence.

One thing he can do is use his emergency powers, but he'll do that if and when RN policy leads to some sort of serious crisis.
The unions have been relatively silent on the election. Apparently, they worry that they may have RN voters among their members. A general strike isn't out of the question though.
Another possibility is riots, as we had last years.

Hard to say really. I'd expect things to remain calm and seemingly normal for a while if the RN wins though.

I don't know much about the French constitution, but does the President have the power to veto acts of the National Assembly? If yes, Macron may be able to stop the worst abuses, and thereby force the RN into compromises. Perhaps it won't result in anything worse than the Meloni government in Italy (which is pretty bad but not as bad as some people feared beforehand). You have to know that I am always hopeful, though I don't expect miracles.