Elections in various countries

[Raphael]

What about the legislature?

Legislative elections will be held on the 12th and 19th of June. We can be pretty much certain that Macron will get a majority.

There will be an electoral alliance of left-wing parties under the umbrella of La France Insoumise. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has begun his campaign between the two presidential round (a very ungraceful thing to do, given the fascism thing, if you ask me) -- he calls for voters to grant him a majority and make him Prime Minister. This won't happen: first, the numbers aren't there. second, the general unpleasant attitude of LFI will lose them some voters. Given the electoral alliance and the left being more or less united now, he may get a large-ish minority.
The RN will attempt the same feat. They're not very good or very motivated at legislative elections, or at legislative work (it's hard work, you have to go vote and get in debate, it's all very tiring; they very much prefer to sit there and grumble about foreigners.) They'll probably get more representatives than usual, though. They did rather well in the elections.

Thank you!

[MacAnDàil]

What Ares Land says about the Antilles is also true here in Réunion. This is the first time ever that the far-right got first in Réunion and not in mainland France, the complete opposite of what was happening when I first arrived ; far-right support in Réunion was almost unheard of back then. Some people voting Le Pen cite :
- « being infested » by people from Mayotte (which are often assumed to come from the independent islands of the Comoros. Racism never facts get in the way of prejudice)
- she’s a woman (which doesn’t work as an argument because Pécresse, Hidalgo and Arthaud, the other women, got poor to terrible scores)
- she’s not Macron (often based on Yellow Vest experience or opposition to the pension reform)

Also, the general population would have been affected in multiple ways, including that Le Pen is not just poor but regressive on climate action.
« the lawyer Pierre Gentillet, close to Thierry Mariani and Jean-Paul Garraud (promised to become Minister of Justice by Marine Le Pen), said on the 8th of April that « the rule of law is a fairy tale » and that « as long as we make the Constitutional Council toe the line, we can do anything ».
("sur le média d’extrême droite TV Libertés, l’avocat Pierre Gentillet, un proche de Thierry Mariani et de Jean-Paul Garraud (promis au poste de garde des Sceaux par Marine Le Pen), estimait le 8 avril que « l’État de droit est une fable » et qu’ « à la condition de mettre au pas le Conseil constitutionnel, nous pourrons tout faire ».") https://www.humanite.fr/politique/extre ... re-747376

[Ares Land]

What about the legislature?

Maybe I should report on an interesting development. All of the left is actually trying to come to an agreement these days.
Though the agreement is still not complete, from a media and PR perspective it's a pretty big success. It's pretty much all you read about in the news.

The strategy is to force a cohabitation on Macron. In essence if the National Assembly has a left-wing majority, Macron will have to name a left-wing government and prime minister (most likely, Mélenchon) and will be strictly restricted to certain prerogatives (roughly, defense and foreign policy.)
It's actually a pretty good response to the far-right making a mess of the presidential elections, and I personally think that strategy should've been tried way earlier.

Will it work? Most likely it won't. I'm still pretty sure Macron will get a majority. But I saw a projection suggesting the left could get a majority today, so who knows? Plus Macron supporters are getting hysterical over this.

(Personally I have lots of mixed feelings. I can't say I trust Mélenchon much, and other higher-ups in La France Insoumise are worse. OTOH Macron is in complete denial about important issues, such as the national debt, rising inequalities, the environment,...)

[Raphael]

Thank you, interesting to know.

[Moose-tache]

Wait, so their strategy is to win the election? What were they trying to do before?

[Raphael]

Wait, so their strategy is to win the election? What were they trying to do before?

Show everyone how great they are?

[Ares Land]

Wait, so their strategy is to win the election? What were they trying to do before?

Traditionally, the main objective of a left-wing French politician is to make the other left-wing politicians lose the election. When they do win elections (an entirely accidental side-effect of the whole process) they're generally so confused by that unexpected outcome that they make a complete mess of things.

[Ares Land]

A more serious answer.

(Warning: this takes time to explain properly, and I don't know if you guys are really that into French politics.)


The legislative elections are held a few weeks after the presidential elections.
The legislative election uses a two-round system, with the winner determined by a FPTP second round. This gives a huge advantage to the party whose candidate won the presidential elections; plus there's so little time between both elections that the losing parties are often too busy trying to figure out what went wrong to run a proper campaign.
And on top of all that, it's harder to campaign when your side just lost: having a president without a majority in the legislature feels kind of pointless and voters do take that into account.

So, all in all, it's unusual to see such a determined campaign for the legislatives elections; usually the aim is more to salvage what can be salvaged.

Before 2002, the president was elected for seven years; the national assembly always was elected for five years. So we got a mid-term of sorts, that was seriously fought for, and that the president could lose. This happened three times, in 1986, 1992 and 1997.

The French system is sort of a mix between an American-like presidential system and a parliamentary system. In practical terms this means the government is responsible before the Assembly.
Basically, if the president gets a majority: his party controls both the executive and legislative branches (all proper checks and balances considered, of course.)
If he doesn't get a majority: the opposition controls the legislative branch, and most of the executive branch (except for foreign affairs and defense.)

If matters are kind of in-between, and the president doesn't have a strong majority, his party is still mostly in control of the executive and legislative; there are several constitution provisions to keep things running with an unstable majority.

Ever since 2002, both the president and the national assembly are elected for five years. The president automatically gets a majority.
This is a bit of a problem:
1° it's not terribly democratic, is it? What's the point of even having a legislature then?
Keep in mind that unlike a parliamentary regime, the French president usually doesn't really have to bother much with coalitions or anything. Also, the parliament cannot seriously challenge the president, because the president can call for new legislative elections, whereas parliament can only dismiss the government, not the president.
This was a problem around 2016: president Hollande had lost the trust of his socialist majority -- but there was nothing the legislature could do about it. In fact, due to the constitutional provisions I mentioned above, Hollande was able to push reforms that his own majority objected to through the parliament.
2° the success of the far-right in presidential elections raises a question of legitimacy. Chirac (2002), Macron (2017) and Macron again (2022) were elected, not only by their own side, but by opposition voters. Essentially they were elected because it was either them or the fascist.
In particular, Macron has serious legitimacy issues. Essentially three-quarters of the voters would rather have someone else in charge. 42% (fourty-two percent) were willing to have a fascist regime instead.
3° with all that considered, it's worth keeping in mind that the French president (when he has a majority) has way, way more power than the American president. Or the British prime minister. Or the German chancellor.

So the left's answer, this year, seems to be to seriously try and win the legislatives to correct a presidential election that wasn't terribly satisfying, in terms of democracy.

It'll be very interesting to see if the voters follow suit.

[Raphael]

A more serious answer.

(Warning: this takes time to explain properly, and I don't know if you guys are really that into French politics.)

Hey, that's the kind of thing this thread is for, right? Thank you for your work!

[MacAnDàil]

The agreements are advancing: LFI, Générations, Europe Ecologie les Verts, the Communist Party and likely now even the Socialist Party whil the New Anticapitalist Party is still in negociations. The only major French left-wing party not in negociations is Lutte Ouvrière (Worker's Struggle) who seem to think anything short of communist revolution is too right-wing, so they were unlikely to join any major agreement and are one of the smallest major parties. This New Ecological and Socialist Popular Union could easily get more than a third of the vote in the first round, well ahead of Macron's alliance which is projected to get about 24%.

[Ares Land]

I'm less optimistic than you are. These guys have been at each other throat's for years. The agreement with the Socialists hasn't been formally ratified, and I expect new twists.
I'd be surprised to see the new union actually winning. It'd be a happy surprised if they did.

---

On another note: the union is currently under pretty vicious attacks from LREM (Macron's party) and sympathizers. They're doing an excellent jobs of making otherwise skeptical left-wing voters, such as myself, feel sympathy for LFI (Mélenchon's party) and the left-wing union in general.
Their arguments are as follows:

[*]The socialists are betraying their ideals! (I have zero idea what the socialists actually stand for these days. Plus, of course, we tried the usual approach of having lots of left-wing party each strictly adhering to their line. It's very grand and noble, but it doesn't win any elections.)
[*]LFI has a completely nonsensical line on foreign policy and is entirely unclear about the European Union. That is true. Mélenchon was a Putin appeaser. Also true.
[*]LFI supports Putin. Plain wrong. LFI is in favor of leaving and/or destroying the European Union. Also wrong.
[*]They're far-left radical. (They're not. They're a lot more centrist than the PS in 1981, and about equivalent to what they stood for in 1997. The country survived back then.)
[*]They knowingly or unknowingly support islamism. (Completely wrong.)
[*]They're antisemites. (WTH? Also completely wrong.)

To this I should add that some people that were entirely nonplussed by the goddamn fascist are currently losing their shit over the distant possibility of the left winning elections.

---

TL;DR I really don't like Mélenchon but frankly seeing centrists terrified of the Evil Woke Muslim Communists makes me so happy I might end up voting for him anyway.

[Moose-tache]

OK, so... It's first past the post, but also includes a runoff, so how exactly is "joining forces" going to help?

I mean, in a traditional fptp system, you can get a plurality by pooling your votes, often accomplished by dropping out and endorsing each other. But if there's a runoff, then whoever among the top two is the closest to the center is going to win. So you have to make sure the Fascists get second place, because if your socialist Chosen One runs against whatever the French equivalent of Nick Clegg is in the second round, they're fucked. This two-round system seems pretty reasonable for a nation-wide vote, where you can have 500 candidates and the nation needs to reach a concensus. But for legislative seats? Why not just use proportional representation if they're so concerned about spoilers? It seems like unpopular centrists are a huge blind spot in this system.

Or, as a meme:

[Ares Land]

OK, so... It's first past the post, but also includes a runoff, so how exactly is "joining forces" going to help?

I mean, in a traditional fptp system, you can get a plurality by pooling your votes, often accomplished by dropping out and endorsing each other. But if there's a runoff, then whoever among the top two is the closest to the center is going to win. So you have to make sure the Fascists get second place, because if your socialist Chosen One runs against whatever the French equivalent of Nick Clegg is in the second round, they're fucked. This two-round system seems pretty reasonable for a nation-wide vote, where you can have 500 candidates and the nation needs to reach a concensus. But for legislative seats? Why not just use proportional representation if they're so concerned about spoilers? It seems like unpopular centrists are a huge blind spot in this system.

The idea is that there will be only one left-wing candidate, as early as the first round. Then the socialist faces a Macronist and, hopefully, Macron is so unpopular by then that the Macronist loses.

BTW, the second round is decided on the basis of a voter threshold; so you can have three candidates in the second round (or even four, but that's a very uncommon occurence) and whichever gets more votes wins. So youcan have the left-wing candidate facing Nick Clegg and Mussolini.

Joining forces helps because if you have a lot of left-wing candidates, as happened last times, the votes is spread among these, and there's a greater chance none of them makes it past the threshold. Or, if a left-wing candidate makes to the second round, a number of the other left-wing voters decides not to vote for him, and he loses. Or you get two left-wing candidates in the second round and neither wins.

Why don't we have proportional representation?
1) We tried it back in the 80s and we got a bunch of fascists in Parliament.
2) The real reason: as you correctly deduced, the system benefits centrists. Until 2017 politics in France was dominated by a center-left party, and one or two right-of-center parties, and they got to make the electoral rules. For instance, the socialists talked a lot about a proportional system, but they weren't very interested in losing seats to, say, the Greens.

[MacAnDàil]

To give a few examples of second rounds being unfavourable to the left-wing recently:
1° In 2010, in Réunion, the second round was between the right-wing Didier Robert, the Communist Paul Vergès (now dead) and the Socialist Michel Vergoz. (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lec ... C3%A9union) Vergès and Vergoz did not ally for the second round so Didier Robert won and got to put in place his NRL (New Coastal Road) plan. It's a very expensive plan to create a over-water road to replace an on-land road. This project has meant the the Region is now indebted and the project is still not finished. Thankfully, the ex-communist Huguette Bello managed to unite the left last year and defeat Didier Robert, who has been condemned for corruption.

2° The most recent legislative byelection in France (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premi%C3% ... e_l%27Oise) had a second round between the right and the far right. Had all those who had voted for the dissident green candidate voted for the common left candidate, they would have been in the second round.

Also, the attacks on the NUPES on the basis of untruths is all the more the worrying in that it is explicitly mentioned in the common agreements things like:
staying in the EU
supporting laïcité
supporting the Ukraine

And if politicians can't be expected to read the programmes of their opponents, how are ordinary citizens expected to? It is highly probable that a significant proportion of the opulation did not read the programmes in thepresidential election. For example, Marine Le Pen got as much as 59% of the vote in the second round in Mayotte, a Muslim-majority island, despite Le Pen's policies being against Muslim dress among other things.

EDIT: It was actually impossible for the left to win a majority in 2017 with the first round results (with only 167 out of 572 duels involving left wing candidates) but, in several areas, they could have gone on the second round and thus still have a chance at winning if they had allied from the first round.

[Raphael]

So now things get interesting in Northern Ireland.

(Nationalist camp: Sinn Féin 27 seats with 29.0 percent of first preference votes, Social Democratic and Labour Party 8 seats with 9.1 percent of first preference votes.

Unionist camp: Democratic Unionist Party 25 seats with 21.3 percent of first preference votes, Ulster Unionist Party 9 seats with 11.2 percent of first preference votes, independent candidates 2 seats (both of them Unionists) with 2.9 percent of first preference votes, Traditional Unionist Voice 1 seat with 7.6 percent of first preference votes.

Effectively Nationalist but self-identifies as "socialist" and is therefore not counted as part of the Nationalist camp: People Before Profit 1 seat with 1.1 percent of first preference votes.

Officially unaffiliated: Alliance Party 17 seats with 13.5 percent of first preference votes.)

The DUP is, for now, sulking and refusing to take part in any power sharing under Sinn Féin leadership, which would make forming an Executive impossible.

On a linguistic note, I find it interesting that Alliance Party leader Naomi Long, commenting on her party's good result, said “I think it’s fair to say we knocked it out of the park”, apparently using a metaphor from a sport that doesn't seem to be that popular or even well-known in Northern Ireland.

Edit: I edited this post to make the community affiliations of parties clear.

[Raphael]

Meanwhile, things are looking very bad for Germany's governing SPD and very good for the opposition CDU, at least in one part of the country. In the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, there was a state legislative election today, and the first exit-poll based prognosis is:

CDU 43.0 percent (up 11.0 percent compared to the previous election in the same state),
SPD 15.5 percent (down 11.8 compared to the previous election in the same state),
Greens 17.0 percent (up 4.1 percent compared to the previous election in the same state),
FDP 7.0 percent (down 4.5 percent compared to the previous election in the same state),
AfD 4.9 percent (down 1.0 percent compared to the previous election in the same state, may or may not eventually hit 5 percent and get into the state legislature),
The Left 1.7 percent (down 2.1 percent compared to the previous election in the same state),
and SSW (South Schleswigian Voters' Association, generally seen as representing the ethnically Danish minority that lives near the Danish border) 6.0 percent (up 2.7 percent compared to the previous election in the same state; they're traditionally exempt from the 5 percent threshold because of their status as (supposedly) representing an ethnic minority group).

The, historically speaking, very good result for the SSW is probably the result of people wanting to cast a protest vote without voting for the far right or far left.

[Ares Land]

The left-wing union was ratified. For people like myself that enjoy watching how the sausage gets made, it was a fascinating political tour de force. Most if not all involved hate each other; a left-wing unitary front had not been seen in 25 years, and besides this time arrangements were made before the first round (which is unprecedented historically.) Besides, it feels like the left actually won the election. I heard an interview of Mélenchon: to borrow a metaphor from American politics, he flawlessly executed the pivot, managing to come across as a reasonable moderate while still defending radical politics.

Like all feats of acrobatics, part of the fascinations lies of course in holding you breath and wondering how the thing will last.

Macron is just as apt a political animal, and the counter-attack will be equally interesting to watch.

Meanwhile, things are looking very bad for Germany's governing SPD and very good for the opposition CDU, at least in one part of the country. In the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein, there was a state legislative election today, and the first exit-poll based prognosis is:

That's really surprising, at least as seen from abroad. It feels like Olaf Scholz just barely got there!
Is this due to local political issues, or is there dissatisfaction about the SPD at the national level?

[Raphael]

That's really surprising, at least as seen from abroad. It feels like Olaf Scholz just barely got there!
Is this due to local political issues, or is there dissatisfaction about the SPD at the national level?

Partly it's local - the incumbent CDU State PM of Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther, is very popular - but it reflects developments at the national level, too. A lot of people, including large parts of the media, have decided that Scholz completely mishandled the response to the war in Ukraine. I don't really understand why, but it's pretty much the established narrative now, and fighting back against an established narrative can be difficult.

[Ares Land]

A lot of people, including large parts of the media, have decided that Scholz completely mishandled the response to the war in Ukraine. I don't really understand why, but it's pretty much the established narrative now, and fighting back against an established narrative can be difficult.

It's something we're beginning to hear over here in France. It seems to be some combination of the diplomatic mishaps with the German president plus the thing about not cutting off Russian gas plus Gerard Schröder. (I don't fully understand the narrative either.)

[hwhatting]

It's a combination of several things - the published opinion in Germany is gung-ho about supporting Ukraine, while Scholz is by his nature a cautious man who prefers analysing his options and approaching issues slowly and methodically. Worse for him, he is an abysmal communicator - quite often talking while trying to avoid saying anything concrete at all, plus coming over as wooden and without empathy (his nickname is "Scholzomat"). While that "no-nonsense pair of safe hands" image was part of his appeal at the election, it now makes him look as if he's always late to the game. Ukraine, German allies, his coalition partners, the opposition, the media demand "let's do X for Ukraine" (e.g. delivering tanks, boycotting Russian oil, etc.); Scholz is silent or urges caution, then after a period he comes around and does it. So it always looks as if he was pressured into doing what was expected from him, instead of him either coming around earlier and taking credit for a bold initiative or standing his ground and arguing convincingly for his position why XYZ shouldn't be done.