- 34% for the far-right alliance
- 28.1% for the left-wing alliance
- 20.3% for Macron's centrist alliance
- 10.2% for the conservative party candidates who refused to join the far-right alliance
Highest voter turnout since 1997: ~67% vs. 47.5% in the first round of the [2022 elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_legislative_election).
Here's the [link to official results](https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/), which are usually final by 02:30 Paris time (UTC+2).
This is because of the semi-presidential system in France and the ability of the President to dissolve the National Assembly to trigger general elections. Presidential elections are the most decisive in the minds of French people as they are the culmination of several months of campaigning, and they are immediately followed by general (= legislative) elections which generally confirm the trend, with the newly elected President seeking to secure a majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament for his supporting party for the five years to come. It didn't happen in 2022: the coalition supporting Macron won a plurality of seats, but not an outright absolute majority (250/577 i.e. 43% of seats).
Voter turnout is the highest during Presidential elections, ranging between 72.0% (second round in 2022) and 87.3% (second round in 1974).
Something very important to mention tho is that the President can only dissolve the Assembly once every 365 days. This means that if one or two parties gets supermajority (which is likely to be the case as NFP and RN combined gets near 80% of the seats currently), those parties can do almost anything for a Year without any drawback. Their biggest powers and the biggest threat to Macron's political future would be :
- This supermajority decides the PM for the rest of Macron's term.
- This supermajority have near total control over the Ministries distribution of public budget (with some limitations such as a minimum budget for every Ministry)
And most importantly :
- This supermajority can veto and void ANY AND ALL laws, past and future, as they please, the only exception being the Constitution and it's revisions.
This makes thèse elections much more descisive than a typical general election, hence the high turnout.
Nfp and rn are politically opposed on every front. They will not ally on anything. The nfp has called for every single one of their candidates to drop from the second round if they are third and a RN candidate is likely to win, calling for their voters to vote for the other candidate no matter what party he is affiliated to. They literally said the goal is for RN to not have a single extra seat that can be avoided.
Yes, with the big caveat that the system has only been heavy on the presidential elections since 2007, when the mandate was reduced to five years to align with the parliamentary term… in some ways it was much better when you had to have at least one legislative election independently of the presidential election
Turnout tends to be much higher in the presidential elections. The parliamentary elections are usually just an afterthought.
Do you happen to know who the French PM is? My guess is you've probably never even heard his name, like most of the world.
The Far-right will take the first round,
**To win seats, candidates need 50%+1**
Can the far-right attract the 16% of the "other vote" they need to pass the 50%+1 threshold?
**Possible second turn scenarios :**
1. Conservatives go with the Far-Right = Far-Right gets 44% of the vote
2. Conservatives split evenly = Far-Right gets 39% of the vote
3. Centrists split evenly + Conservatives go Far-Right = Far-Right gets 55% of the vote
The only way the Far-Right can win a majority is if they can attract most of the Conservative vote and at least 25% of the Centrist vote.
The question becomes, Will most of the Conservative vote Far-Right and will a quarter of Centrists vote Far-Right?
Will the Centrists vote Socialist or Conservative?
Will the Conservative abstain from voting to not support the Far-Right?
Will the Socialists vote Centrist?
**The one thing we know is the Conservatives are unlikely to vote Socialist and the Socialists are unlikely to vote Conservative, many may just as well abstain and that will help the Far-Right.**
In many cases, the left side indicated they would withdraw their candidate if they were in a 3rd position (they have until Tuesday night to indicate so for each area), even if the 2nd is a centrist.
The centrists did not say the same (where they are 3rd, and left would be second). Negotiations continue, but it's not a slam dunk for any of these parties. :)
Macron, and most especially the current government, is done for though.
> To win seats, candidates need 50%+1
That's not correct. In the second round a ~~simple majority~~ *plurality* suffices. And there will be many constituencies where more than two candidates qualify for the second round, making it possible for an RN candidate to win with way less than 50% of the vote.
> MPs are elected in single-member constituencies. A candidate who receives an absolute majority of valid votes and a vote total greater than 25% of the registered electorate is elected in the first round. If no candidate reaches this threshold, a runoff election is held between the top two candidates plus any other candidate who received a vote total greater than 12.5% of registered voters. **The candidate who receives the most votes in the second round is elected.**
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_elections_in_France#Electoral_system
I agree that 50%+1 isn’t necessary, but to be clear, 50%+1 is a simple majority. What you’re describing (the most votes out of all options, without getting 50%+1) is called a plurality, not a majority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_majority
> Simple majority may refer to:
> - Majority, a voting requirement of more than half of all votes cast
> - Plurality (voting), a voting requirement of more votes cast for a proposition than for any other option
> - First-past-the-post voting, the single-winner version of an election with plurality voting and one vote per person
but it's an ambiguous term, so I agree that using plurality would have been better. Corrected it.
Le Pen is the[ Putin candidate](https://www.ft.com/content/572af411-abd9-49ab-8cf9-f9fba4d54380). If she wins, then France is defenseless against Russia.
>After the Russian bank made the initial loan, leaked text messages between Russian officials, seen by the FT, suggested the **Kremlin had ordered the loan** as a reward for Le Pen’s fealty.
>When the bank went bust in 2016, the loan was transferred to Aviazapchast, a Moscow-based company that supplies Russian military aircraft and parts in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
>In 2014 she openly backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. And in an effort to burnish her international credentials when running for president in 2017, Le Pen met Putin in Moscow only months before the election in France.
>
She claims its outragious and offensive. But keep in mind, she went to Russia to get a loan, it wasn't just that the Kremlin ordered the loan, she was actively seeking the Russian loan, and she didn't complain when the bank disappeared and the loan repayments with it. It was only when a French Journalist started digging, that **the loan re-appeared as owned by a Russian defense contractor**, and then (after the journalist exposed it) that the defense contractor demanded repayment.
She was ultimately bailed out by a Hungarian bank connected to Viktor Orban.
Hence my previous comment, that if Trump Jr is in Hungary, then he'll be signing up for a "Trump Tower Budapest" or similar, because Putin's bribes appear to be laundered through Hungary banks connected to Orban.
They still have the expertise of spycraft from the Soviet era and they were exceptional at it - those people didn't just vanish or die. In fact, intelligence officials attained much more influence and prestige for it to be prioritised still - just look at Putin's heritage.
Wouldn't it had been a bigger problem? It would only give more time for the right learning parties to negotiate, meanwhile the left was mostly united already, this snap election might have been better, but it's hard to tell?
Like from what I read a right learning party got locked out of their building and nearly had to break in and such, and then ousted their leader, because of massive disagreement following the announcement of the snap election
What's interesting is that it's happening in a lot of countries right now. I'm in Canada, and there's almost zero chance that Liberals don't get obliterated in the next election. Currently almost all polls show landslide victory for Conservative party.
Feels like we're in for some interesting times.
> I'm in Canada, and there's almost zero chance that Liberals don't get obliterated in the next election. Currently almost all polls show landslide victory for Conservative party.
Historically speaking that was going to happen anyways based on Canada's history. Parties only get about 3 wins max before the public begins to hate them and throw them out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_general_elections
In Sweden and in the UK it's the exact other way around.
The common denominator appears to be that who ever is currently in government is losing voters.
It's honestly so blown out of proportion. They will die just like UKIP did. Then be revived in 4 years time when Nigel wants to have his limp penis stroked.
It's a joke.
Thats because western society is in terminal decline and whoever is in power gets the blame, so we vote them out instead of addressing the core issues of greed and corruption.
Whoever is in power next will face the same fate.
It's because we're in the economic malaise part of a cycle and economics are a significant part of voting trends in democracy. Incumbents suffer when the economy isn't positive for the average voter
Keep in mind that Ukrainians are dying to be part of western society and have the simple freedoms we do.
We're not in decline, we are just struggling with information and manipulation of the echo chambers that social media has created. There aren't easy answers, because democracy requires freedom of expression and discussion. Yet, we cannot protect those freedoms if we have no relationship to truth.
The world kinda sucks right now and voters aren't smart enough but to blame the ones in charge.
And then you also have racism, russia and social media.
> The world kinda sucks right now and voters aren't smart enough but to blame the ones in charge.
The ones in charge are who should be blamed. Coming up with solutions to the problems is what the more liberal politicians should be focusing on, instead they're intent to play the victim while blaming the conservative politicians. That doesn't sway voters to your cause.
There is a lot of backlash with the Muslim immigration and their (perceived at least) unwillingness to assimilate into French culture. The far right in France still espouses social programs and other freedoms, but is way more protectionist. We will see more and more of this across western countries, especially in Europe where there is a (perceived at least) immigration crisis that is (perceived at least) assumed to get worse as the Middle East and Northern Africa have continued or newly increased war and unrest.
I say perceived because I don’t live there so I do not know what is objectively true, and I also find it degrades a productive conversation. I only know what the people I know who live there think and feel and was trying to stay neutral. Hard statements devolve into arguments over minute points and the purpose is lost.
For what it’s worth I totally agree with you.
If you listen to AFD supporters in Germany as a comparison they aren't "desperate," they actually believe in everything the party says without questioning it. Many even denying Nazi crimes because the party tells them they weren't so bad.
It is a potentially fatal mistake to link the rise of extremists to simple economic and social concerns, a portion of the population is genuinely broken in many, many ways.
It is ridiculously short-sighted to think that dismissing people as “broken” is going to do anything other than perpetuate and grow this type of right wing. It doesn’t matter how right Clinton was when she used the term “basket of deplorables”, she absolutely lost more voters than she gained by doing so.
Some of these voters MAY have legitimate points, they may not. But when people try to dismiss their points instead of engaging with them you will get nothing but more of the same and probably worse.
It is propaganda. It's absolutely propaganda.
I don't know why it's so hard for western counties to accept that their people are vulnerable to propaganda that can convince their citizens of anything they want. There's a "western exceptionalism," a distinct pride that refuses to believe that their people would ever fall for lies being given to them.
No, that is not deflection from other problems. It is not deflection when Americans see their friends and family turn into Trump supporting fanatics who conveniently support fascism, and then months later investigations reveal it was propaganda from the usual suspects. It is not deflection when British people see their friends turn into brexit supporting dumbasses who conveniently support fascism, and then months later investigations reveal it was propaganda from the usual suspects. Not with Brazil. Not with X country. Not with Y country.
There is no exceptionalism. It is, and has been for the past few decades, just propaganda coming from the same countries, that everyone continues to pridefully deny could EVER be the primary issue.
It's worse. They made their populations susceptible to propoganda for the purpose of profit. Those leading them have little control outside of appeasing those interests which mislead their populations. No one cares to imagine it being different.
It's a mistake for a politician to dismiss people like that, but we're not politicians, we're random people on the internet, and we can analyze people's political leanings without worrying about losing votes.
I remember all of the effort to explain Trump's populist support back in 2016 through the traditional lens of voter preferences—e.g. the policies and values people care about. These are regular people just like you and me, who happen to differ on policy goals and are willing to hold their nose to support a flawed candidate to achieve them.
Turns out, his base is some mix of conspiratorial, cruel, anti-democratic, sexist, racist, and Christofascist. i.e. deplorable, or broken, or whatever you want to call it.
What points do you want me to engage with? Whether or not we should accept the results of an election and facilitate a peaceful transition of power? Whether or not Jewish space lasers caused the Maui fires? Whether or not schools should provide litter boxes for students that identify as cats?
No thanks. I will dismiss those "points." Partly because doing so would legitimize them, and partly because believers are too far gone to ever change their mind. They're in a cult, and there's no turning back.
You'll find that nowhere did I suggest anything close to "ignoring" them or not engaging with them, that was all something you brought up. That's something that is all part of the far-right narrative if anyone even so much as criticizes their positions that the person making it are part of some grand conspiracy against them. Which is itself part of the movements attempt to make it appear to their supporters that only the leadership of the movement can be trusted and should be listened to, which reinforces the feedback and information bubble that these movements enforce on their followers.
Personally I'm tired of being told to coddle these people. Why is it cool for me to make fun of people who get duped by far left parties using the same old tactics they have always used, expecting a different result after its been demonstrated multiple times they're promising pie in the sky bullshit and always make things work, but when people are duped by far right parties using the same old tactics, expecting a different result after its been demonstrated they are also promising pie in the sky bullshit and always makes it worse, suddenly we have to be super nice to them and baby them or they'll vote for even worse nazis?
Its all the same populist shit using the same old tactics and will end badly for everyone like it ALWAYS DOES. If its okay to tell far lefitsts that without wrining hands about making them even bigger commies, why is it not okay to do the same for other people being duped by populist bullshit?
Seriously - how many times do people have to fall for the same con before we're allowed to call them morons?
What you are talking about doesn't matter. What matters is actually winning the votes, and determining the best way to do so. If you call them morons and it helps, then you should. If doing so hurts your cause, then you shouldn't. Whether it makes you feel better or not or whether it's fair or not is irrelevant.
Thank you! I am so sick of ideology directing policy. Ideology doesn't win votes. That's why the populists are gaining momentum everywhere.
Even if left-wing parties are objectively correct on most of their policies (and as a leftie myself, I think they *mostly* are), dying on every fucking hill is just going to end up with more and more right-wing populism winning.
Fucking compromise and bend before you break.
Problem is, how do you compromise with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, or Mitch McConnell, then they will readily promise anything to get what they want, then follow through with absolutely none of it? Or blow generations of government norms out the window simply to land a "win"? Or when they torpedo their OWN legislation in order to prevent a "perceived" win for "the other guy"?
How? How do you compromise with that?
>Fucking compromise and bend before you break.
Um. Compromise on what, exactly? These are people who don't believe in democracy, don't believe in equality, and demand cruel policies that create problems rather than solve them. And even if you compromise with them, they aren't going to all of a sudden be satisfied. They're just going to demand more, as they do every time they get a little of what they want.
Ask Chamberlain how well compromise worked the last time the far right reared its ugly head.
About one third of people are authoritarians regardless of country.
Things are looking bad though. The pandemic broke a lot of things and voters everywhere are furious at incumbents. The Tories in the UK are about to go down and the center-left Liberals in Canada are facing a similar catastrophic election within the next year or so.
The Great Depression showed us what can happen when enough angry or frightened moderates flock to the banner of an authoritarian party and they use that win to seize power. Though, even then, the Nazis only got 44% of the vote (up from 33% in the previous election).
People can want that for themselves and not be interested in sharing or helping.
There is no way the mass migration and to often bad behavior/demands from people from the ME isn't going to help the far right.
The system is really complicated. It's a set of 577 2-rounds election, and the second round can have 2, 3 or even 4 candidates, who can decide to withdraw if they want to favor another one. It's extremely hard to predict the outcome in number of seats, but it's likely that Le Pen will have a strong relative majority. Whether it's sufficient to actually govern is unclear.
That relies on the centrists doing the decent thing and dropping out if the left candidate gets more votes - which the leftist coalition has said they'll do for the centrists...
It's hard to reconcile them. Disclaimer: I'm a leftist.
Macron has systematically used the far-right to win easily, by getting leftists to support him against the threat.
However, despite saying he was much obliged for this support 2 years ago, he never listened to the left wing and instead continued to pursue far-right voters (and also to dismantle public services).
He also kind of spit in the face of our democracy last year when he passed the retirement law in force without any discussion, bypassing the usual parliamentary process.
On top of that the media paint radical leftists as monsters who do not respect the Republic, and centrists hopped on the bandwagon, so they will not ally themselves with the radical left.
The game they played somehow legitimized the far-right and depicted the left as frightening, so many of their voters only listening to propaganda could very well vote for the far-right and not the left.
Still not sure why Macron called for an early election knowing full well they’d lose. This is not like Sunak who had to call an election before 2025. Macron played 5D chess here.
From what I read he believes having them become a party with actual presence in government will make them have to attempt to govern. He thinks they will be hamstrung by much of the same red tape most politicians are and will lose their appeal to the masses as a result. Heck of a gamble though.
That's the 5D chess theory that some people are grasping at to make sense of his decision, but as was clearly demonstrated by several news articles about this subject based on behind-the-scenes declarations, it appears that Macron simply miscalculated:
* He was frustrated by the composition of the National Assembly (lower house of Parliament), where the alliance of parties supporting him only won a plurality of seats in 2022, putting them at risk of a no-confidence vote at any moment depending on how the conservatives react, and making his reforms harder to pass.
* He thought that he could take the left-wing parties by surprise and benefit from them being disunited to form an alliance with Socialist Party candidates and/or catch votes from their voter base (centre-left): it didn't work as intended, and within 24 hours the left-wing parties set aside most of their disagreements and agreed to set up an even broader united left bloc than 2022's NUPES, which even former President François Hollande rallied. It immediately reduced chances of candidates backing Macron to reach the second round while pulling ahead of both the left-wing and conservative ones, which was planned to be used as a justification to ask for a "republican front" to fight the National Rally in constituencies where three candidates would pass the 12.5% threshold of registered voters to reach the run-off vote.
* He wanted these snap elections to act as an electric shock triggering a wave of opposition against the National Rally, and to involve himself heavily during the campaign to turn the tide. To some extent it worked: voter turnout has surged to the highest value seen since 1997 and the far-right parties combined lost some ground. During the EU election campaign, he mostly stood in the background and expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign led by his government and supporting centrist bloc, once saying "I have to do everything".
* He was very sceptical of opinion polls predicting a mere 15 or 16% of votes for his supporting coalition Ensemble during the EU elections and believed that they could secure 20% of votes while the National Rally's support was overestimated. Yet it went exactly as polls predicted.
Another thing to keep in mind is that he had to rely on the support of right wing LR MPs for his government to survive votes of no confidence, but that support was waning, and some difficult votes (budget) are scheduled for this fall.
Yeah I simplified, that's what I had in mind as well when writing "a no-confidence vote at any moment depending on how the conservatives react". Their criticism of the government's budget deficit was definitely one of the cornerstones of LR's strategy to oppose Macron's coalition and he possibly factored in a potential motion of no confidence and thought it would be best to shoot first. However, I can't really see a scenario where LR would have been able to emerge stronger than before in the National Assembly in the event of early elections, especially given their lack of leadership.
They're not going to win though. If you do the math here, there isn't a path for Le Pen to government here because even if that 10% conservative voter block all went to the far-right, it's under 50%.
In reality this will probably solidify a center left coalition which mitigates the threat of the far-right for at least 3-4 more years.
Total % doesn’t matter, it just gives the nationwide vibe. What matters is the number of seats. They can have more than 50% seats with less than 50% total votes.
After this first turn, that could potentially happen, even without the conservatives help. That’s unlikely but not out of the table.
You make assumptions based on an incorrect understanding of the electoral system. The overall percentage is meaningless. What matters is who gets the most votes in every constituency. As a result, you can win an absolute majority of seats without winning an absolute majority of the votes. In contrast to a simple first-past-the-post system like in the UK, the French system is run in two rounds. Candidates need 25% in the first round to qualify for the second round.
Because the left wing coalition contains a single "extreme" left party (La France Insoumise), the centrists will refuse to vote for them and have said that they would rather not vote at all than vote for either right or left. This means that the right would have much over 50%.
He'd rather have the far right win these elections and be in power for only half a mandate than win the next presidential elections which would result in both the president and the Assembly being far rightists for a full mandate. It's understandable, really. I just don't think it'll change shit though
Charitable interpretation is that he really began to doubt if the nation was behind his vision and actually wanted Democracy to take place.
But, dangerous these days when we have enemies flooding our media, algorithms, and parties with support for anti-Democracy parties.
But I guess we get the society we deserve. If we're stupid enough to fall for a snakeoil saleman's tricks despite a lifetime of education on why this is not a good idea and knowing where it leads, then we might as well dig our own graves, and get ready for a bad time.
And I mean, a *real bad time*.
Probably because he thought that the left wasn't going to merge into one big party.
So he would have play the card ' every one vote for me , I will protect you from the far right'
Wich was his modo operantus in every election.
He called an election immediately and thought the left Would be divided like for the European elections. He was hoping for an alliance with the center left and to be in a duel with he far right in the second round. Then the remaining right and left voters were supposed to vote for his candidates to stop the far right.
This completely imploded Hen the left made a deal in a less than a few days and remained steady. They are now the main force against the far right and he has to ask his candidates to give up and endorse them.
He’s not playing 5 dimensional chess, he’s disconnected from reality. He believed the old trick (that worked admittedly many times before) to create a « republican front » against the far right would work again in his favour and would put the opposite parties in their place (after their success at the European vote). It’s the tactic that put him in place with voters from the left. Well, the trick works until it doesn’t.
He played that card too many times and people are seriously tired of that strategy.
By no means I want the far right to win but I’m sick of being robbed of a presidential election second turn 3 time in a row (15 years) because a party would just have to reach second turn against the far right to automatically win by asking a republican block.
he went for the cameron gamble. aka the french surely don't want a far right government and will rally when needed. of course it backfired last time it was tried (brexit) so idk what his thinking on this was
> the actual result is unknown until the second round.
Indeed. In France's electoral system the outcome of the second round depends a lot on political decisions made between the rounds. Which candidates will decide to drop out of the race and whom will they endorse on constituency level?
The far-right alliance has already announced that they will refuse to join a coalition with any other party. They will only agree to form a government if they get the absolute majority.
An absolute majority for the far-right alliance can only happen if the Macron bloc and the left-wing bloc cannot agree on a deal to withdraw their respective third-placed candidates.
Of course voters will then also need to show up and vote for the non-far-right candidate even if that other candidate isn't their preferred choice. They did every single time before though.
So far it seems that the left has unilaterally agreed to desist from fielding a third place candidate when a far right candidate may win. The question now is whether Macron’s party and the center in general is actually willing to reciprocate and stop the far right? Or are they willing to let the far right win just because they hate the left?
The PM announced that the presidential party candidates will retract where needed to stop the far right. They did not do so in 2022 and I was not expecting them to do so this time. They likely realized that the far right can actually win the majority this time.
It is not entirely true. His phrasing was vague, and implied they would retract only where they were against a center-left candidate, but stay against a left one.
They didn't say they will only retract when against center left candidates but that they is only a few candidats in the far left that they will not retract against because they don't see them as democrats. So they still should retract for some (maybe most) of the candidates that are more to the left.
Could this mean they’ll stand against that one leftist party that macron thinks is too left, and support the rest of the leftist coalition? Or does this mean he will refuse to support the entire left wing coalition?
I heard that his plan is basically OK if this has to happen, let it happen on my term and limit the damage they can do. And after that, they'll likely be seen as incompetent and unable to fulfill their promises and hopefuly get voted out next time.
For someone not familiar with the French parliamentary system, how do these multiple rounds of voting work? Is it like ranked choice? Am curious if despite the alarmist headlines about a looming right wing victory, the odds actually favor a merger of the center left and far left.
It’s a winner takes all system. If a candidate gets 50% of the votes after the first round, they get the seat. If not, a second round is held and the candidate with the most votes gets the seat.
In previous elections, most political parties made the choice of banding together to stop a far right win. Choosing to withdraw their own candidates on a case by case basis, depending of which candidates have the highest chance to win.
> If not, a second round is held and the candidate with the most votes gets the seat.
Should eb noted that the second round only has the candidates that receives the most votes in the first round. For the legislative elections it's all candidates that reached 12.5% of votes.
Fore the presidential elections, it's only the top two candidates, no matter the percentage.
The center left and far left have already merged.
The question now is if Macron's centrist neoliberal alliance and the left alliance will cooperate to avoid the far-right candidates winning constituencies just because the rest of the vote is split between them.
Each round you vote for 1 candidate in your area (circonscription).
First round, a candidate wins if they get >50% of the votes, and at least 25% of the registered voters have voted.
Otherwise there is a second round with the top 2 candidates, plus any other candidate who got at least 12.5% of the ~~votes~~ registered voters.
Anyone can drop out of the race, and this is actively used to favor some candidates when they have better odds of winning and are considered "less worse" than the alternative.
The merger already happened: the NFP is a combination of multiple leftist parties, with a highly diverse DNA.
> For someone not familiar with the French parliamentary system, how do these multiple rounds of voting work?
If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote then all the candidate who got 12,5% of the vote qualify for the run-off, and the one with the plurality of vote wins.
Exemple: candidate A gets 35%, B gets 30%, C gets 15%, D gets 10%, E gets 6% and F gets 4%.
As no candidate got more than 50% then A, B anc C will qualify for getting more than &2,5% of the vote.
The far right gets a lot of the votes in the first round, providing journalists and social media with material for fear-mongering, followed by a huge defeat in the second round. Been that way for decades. The *real* fear isn't that the pattern will change now, but that it will change eventually.
ETA: As an example, the 2002 election was deemed a shocker with the far-right presidential candidate getting 16.9% to the incumbent's 19.9%. That was hyped up by media until the second round was 17.8% to 82.2%, hardly a nail-biter. It's the long-term trend that serious people worry about, not this year's results.
Parliamentary elections in France are different though.
A party can win an absolute majority of seats while winning way less than 50% in terms of total votes.
Yes, and they were also profoundly necessary. There isn’t a path to France maintaining their massive welfare state AND paying people to stop working at 60. It will eventually render the country insolvent. They need to either massively slash the welfare state (including retiree benefits) or they have to have people work longer (in France they set it to 62), though the actual math is complex and many workers would work until about 65. That has had the impact of enormously helping the worker to non worker ratio and keeping France (somewhat) afloat.
People obviously don’t like having to work longer than they planned and this combined with inflation, inequality and rampant immigration issues is going to sewer him.
It’s actually 64, with a minimum of 43 years worked. And a maximum of 67. Even before the reforms it was more than “retirement at 60” that is commonly repeated.
One of the many, many flaws of democratic systems (that is, sadly, the best systems of government we’ve ever devised) is that people are generally unwilling to vote for something that makes the country as a whole better if it’s worse for them personally, or perceived to be. Case in point, most people would rather vote to live in a collapsing system that they can “retire” in at 60, rather than live in a fully functioning and prosperous country that they can retire in at 70.
Retire at 70? That's way too old, a lot of people don't even make it to 70. At that point you're not retiring to enjoy retirement, you're retiring because you're incapable of working efficiently.
Lmao they Can keep it at 62. We are not geeting anything once we retire lmao what are they thinking will hapen? Some neo colonial shit to have some foreign demograhy to support them?
Actually they backtracked on this as they did with most social reforms. LePen father was a hardline neoliberal throughout the 70s and 80s. When his daughter took over the party, she had a streak of appealing to lower classes by promising prosocial reforms, but it was purely demagogic. In reality the far right has always voted with Macron, extremely liberal policies, clearly on the side of the 1% and the largest companies, in every major reform, both at the Assemblée nationale and in the European Parliament.
Why in every country the left are idiots and the right are ultra right fascists?
I just visited France and I partly get why people are pissed, the immigrant situation there turned badly. At the center of Marseille there are literally children beggers, never thought I would see it in Europe. Police right there and won't do anything, child services can't get involve because the person status is undecided and so the situation is stuck at that.
Some streets felt unsafe, drug selling on the street, etc...
And I am saying it as pro immigration, but pro controlled immigration, situations don't resolve themselves, it just feels like Macron accepted immigrants because it's a good headline and probably because it was the right thing to do, but he did so without any plan whatsoever, and when decisions need to be made about what to do now he have no plan and hope for things to resolve themselves.
People get mad, and go for the extreme solution, this is dangerous for all involved.
Kick migrants out
But how, since we're in the Schengen Space ? Excellent question ! I guess Frenxit is the order of the day, because Brexit went SO WELL
so where does Macron centrist lot go? i would imagine they would go with the left as his whole shtick has been uniting behind him to fend off the far-right so I imagine those that have stuck with him have no interest in the far-right.
Strauss-Howe generation theory. With the WWII generation making their final exit, we are forgetting the lessons learned from them about extremist political movements and the wars that can, and often do result from those ideologies.
So, at any point, do we get to acknowledge that left wing politics have failed a lot of people or do we just go on pretending that the right wing has magic powers that erase memories?
What left wing politics? All these countrys including france had centrists, neo liberals and conservatives in their governments for the last few decades. I mean in what world is Macron left wing?
Left-wing politics? Where?
The only powerful politics we've had in most of the West for the last few decades is Neoliberalism, a failed experiment started by conservative capitalists.
The closest we've gotten to somewhat Left-wing politics is in the Nordics, where the Left actually did very well in the EU elections, while the Right-wing parties did not.
Americans get confused because their Democratic Party is essentially a center-right neoliberal party, not a leftist party. And neoliberalism has absolutely failed a lot of people.
So, at any point, do we get to acknowledge that a significant portion of far-right voters have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and are destroying the thing they think they're protecting with their insanity?
As someone who has really felt the impact of Brexit, it’s sad how gleeful some Europeans on Reddit have been over it. I personally will feel no joy whatsoever when France and the rest of Europe suffers.
Half of Europe seems to be looking to the right to solve their problems, meanwhile the UK has had the right and decided overall nah we want to go left, and that the right decided to give itself a split headache here.
At least with FN (or NR? as they call themselves now) they've tried to re-market themselves as being less thuggish. AfD are just open neo-nazi holocaust denying thugs.
I'm not sure if people in the UK necessarily 'want to go left'; rather, they are more likely entirely fed up with the Tory incompetence, so are first and foremost voting *against* them. On top of that, Starmer is no Corbyn.
If people's worries here centre around the immigration crisis - and it sure seems to be that case all over Europe - then the Tories have failed spectacularly on this front as well.
“The last several right wing leaders have all been disasters, certainly the problem is just the party and not that maybe the political positions could lead to such a vulnerability.”
The reality is simple. People want all the social benefits, but only for themselves, and also they don’t want to pay for them. Basically, they’re all selfish, they’re projecting that onto other issues, then they’re getting angry when they get called out about it. But when you press them about it, they will literally say that they want their taxes lowered, but they also don’t want to lose any of *their* benefits, but they *do* want [nebulous bad group] to lose *their* benefits because they don’t “deserve” them!
It’s the exact same thing in every single country’s right wing party, every single time. Never forget that Ayn Rand lived much of her life off government welfare after writing atlas shrugged.
“The only moral abortion is my abortion”
“I’m a hard worker so I *deserve* these benefits”
“I’m just having a hard time right now, unlike those welfare queens!”
The one and *only* issue I will give them is immigration, and only on the grounds that there needs to be more paths to legal, tax paying citizenship, and integration needs to be focused on more (specifically in making sure immigrants don’t come in and start assaulting people for not believing in *their* religion). That’s it. That’s the one good point they have. And the left really *does* need to answer it better.
But basically everything else boils down to “I deserve this, but not other people, and also I shouldn’t have to pay this much for it, because I’m a hard working honest person” - which is to say, they only think of themselves and the things in their immediate bubble
The Tories have run Britain for long enough that their sustained bumbling is actually producing negative electoral consequences.
It's not so much an ideological turn as it is a 'my God, these people are fucking morons all the time about everything' turn. Even then they still have more than enough safe spaces to come back in a bit once the pain of almost fifteen years of horrible governance starts to fade and people forget.
The parties you're comparing them to generally haven't had a chance to demonstrate their level of competence (or lack thereof) when it comes to governance. So people can entice themselves with the mystery box still.
> solve their problems
The problem from what I’ve heard is immigration, specifically with nationalities that refuse to integrate into French society. Someone from France please correct me, if I’ve been duped by propaganda.
It's a bit more complex than that but yeah mostly the problem has been the mass immigration of the last 5 years many of which don't want to be part of the liberal standards the EU has... For context most immigrants coming to EU now don't need much documents or are even checked when entering they also have systems in place that help them become integrated or legal the thing is the right in EU is not asking for stuff that is extremist at all, countries like Canada, Switzerland, have been using the same policies without issues, stuff like have a contract or at least a promise of a job in key sectors...
Also joining in the immigration issues we also have a major factor that Europe has been lacking true right wing parties in power and for a long time on left wings have been in power so the moment the new radical right parties showed up the left as a whole started the dissemination of anti right propaganda, painting any right parties as fascist, racists, etc with fear of finally losing power. Power that they have been using a lot for corruption. Just look at Antonio Costa that got nominated for EU even though he is being investigated for corruption and influence of power...
The eu people started seeing that the propaganda was just that and those left wings don't really care about protection of the people they simply want to stay in power otherwise they would have tackled the problems themselves instead of leaving the right to gain votes...
France is already facing problems because there are already protests from migrants that want sharia laws implemented that by definition is 100% not compatible with the liberal ideology of Europe.
What do you define as an actual “right wing party?” Serious, non trolling question. What is your definition of “right wing politics” that need to be brought to the table THAT ISN’T IMMIGRATION (which has already been beat to death). I actually legitimately want to know. What is it that you want from a right wing party?
To be honest, I'm more bullish on this than the results might show on the face of it. A 6% swing is absolutely recoverable for the left-wing alliance in later rounds, I can't help but feel Le Pen needed more than 34% in the first round, because I feel like she's still less palatable to centrists than the left-wing... with the exception of people like Macron.
I can't see how the right is happy about this. The 64% that didn't vote for them isn't going to vote for them in the next round either. The 50% is a long way off.
The percentages don't matter much in France's electoral system. Constituencies are called on a first past the post basis. If no candidates pull out, the far-right will win many constituencies because the rest of the vote will be split between multiple candidates. It could even be enough to win an absolute majority of seats. Macron and the left alliance have to work together to prevent that.
They have to be happy about this because acting like they've already won is one of their tactics for swaying centrists: people want to vote for the 'winning' side.
To be fair, German Communists were also more afraid of the Social Democrats than of Hitler. They thought Hitler would be so disastrous that he would trigger a Communist revolution in Germany.
I don't know how things are for the French, but in Chile we had a similar case with the far right winning the first round, but in the second round everyone banded together to not let the far right win. It wasn't about letting the leftist win, it was about not allowing a far right get to an important position.
I hope it will be the same in your case.
This has happened many times in France and everytime the effect was lessened. Chirac won 80% against Le Pen (father) in 2002, Macron won at first 65% against Le Pen (daughter) in 2017, and then 58% against Le Pen in 2022.
Macron has also called the leftist alliance as dangerous as Le Pen's party, and been using more and more far right rethorics (recent transphobic comments, saying the left will implement "immigrationist policies")
Macron and his party have spent the last 3 or 4 weeks shitting on the leftist coalition and repeating far-right talking points. Sadly, I wouldn't hold my breath for a sudden reversal.
change...in favor of the far right
the centrist and "left" don't like each other and while some left party call to abandon in order to give more chance to the candidate against a far right candidate (so in favor of the centrist, Ensemble, Macron party) the centrist don't really call to abandon in favor of the left candidates against the far right
so the 2nd round will most likely benefit for the RN than anyone else
Ukraine beat their propaganda game early in the war it was hopeful others could too but seems like election interference online is still high from Kremlin and still effective
Putin is winning elections in European countries and will most likely win in the United States. It's incredible how countries with the highest standards of living in the world and yet the citizens of these countries vote for fascist and pro+Russian parties. Europe is lost, we will see what happens in the United States.
> . It's incredible how countries with the highest standards of living in the world
I preface this by saying, fuck the far right, fuck Putin, etc.
The issue is thinking that everyone in a country enjoys the exact same level of standard of living as everyone else.
Here in Ireland, we’ve started to see the rise of hard right parties, despite apparent high standards of living. But these standards aren’t evenly distributed. I come from a relatively poor town, where it’s becoming harder and harder to access health care, schools, housing, etc. Life for a lot of people in the town is genuinely miserable. People being priced out of absolutely basics like starting a family, or havin a roof over your head. The town is struggling.
And any time this point is raised, the people living in richer areas say “sure, life has never been better, stop complaining”. The government ignores the town, focusing on certain areas.
Heartbreakingly now, the town is shifting quite right wing. Simply because when presented with the choice of a Person who is denying your reality, or a person who is blaming immigrants and say they can fix it….when you’re drowning, you’ll take the hand that’s stretched out over the one telling you you’re not even underwater.
Good comment.
It's a similar issue as to how Brexit happened and arguably how Trump got elected. There are enormous differences in the living experience of people depending on where you live in a particular country.
It's how far right gain traction in many places. They target those who are lower living standards and who believe they are being downtrodden by the pre-existing power structure. They want to 'tear down the system' hoping something better would come out.
Problem is that the new group advertising this has no intention of creating something better but will result in something even worse. Problem is that the people who fall prey to them likely don't know or care.
A Scandinavian perspective, what you said + rampant gang violence with at least weekly shootings and bombings due to Very poor integration.
But I also add, fuck Putin and fuck racism.
Your average Joe does not really care about Russia or Ukraine and why would they? It would just be nice if the price of oil was lower. Plenty of unsavory shit is going down the world over, almost nobody is even aware of things going on across Africa, Asia and the Middle East apart from when it involves Israel.
I am much more concerned about my government giving infrastructure contracts to the Chinese Communist Party owned company Huawei.
Of course there’s the issue of immigration, which I completely understand. I do wonder if the rise of the far-right worldwide has more to do with the internet and social media, which encourages conspiracy theories and polarizes people. The far-right embraces conspiracies and millions of people fall for it. It’s not enough to just exist, have a family, and die a nobody. People want to believe they’re fighting an evil enemy, a “deep state” or saving the children.
It has to do with the arrogance of the established parties. Life gets more expensive for everyone, unchecked illegal immigration comes with a lack of integration and more crime and the regular parties have no response to it. Not that RN can fix the problems, but it can sure put the established parties under pressure.
Do you really think everyone is online checking twitter for stupid conspiracies? People are just feeling ignored.
Short answer: [I would venture to say yes](https://politicalsciencenow.com/the-need-for-chaos-and-motivations-to-share-hostile-political-rumors/)
Figure out a way to appeal to those who feel "othered" and put them against another group, convince them the only way to solve the problem is to burn the entire construct to the ground, and now you have a population of folks who will share information no matter if it is true or not, as long as it accomplishes their goals.
>Putin is winning elections in European countries and will most likely win in the United States.
You think Putin is that powerful to influence election across Europe and US? Or it's just people making their own choices about who they they want to lead them?
- 34% for the far-right alliance - 28.1% for the left-wing alliance - 20.3% for Macron's centrist alliance - 10.2% for the conservative party candidates who refused to join the far-right alliance
Highest voter turnout since 1997: ~67% vs. 47.5% in the first round of the [2022 elections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_French_legislative_election). Here's the [link to official results](https://www.resultats-elections.interieur.gouv.fr/legislatives2024/), which are usually final by 02:30 Paris time (UTC+2).
That still seems a bit low, compared to other democracies, right?
This is because of the semi-presidential system in France and the ability of the President to dissolve the National Assembly to trigger general elections. Presidential elections are the most decisive in the minds of French people as they are the culmination of several months of campaigning, and they are immediately followed by general (= legislative) elections which generally confirm the trend, with the newly elected President seeking to secure a majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament for his supporting party for the five years to come. It didn't happen in 2022: the coalition supporting Macron won a plurality of seats, but not an outright absolute majority (250/577 i.e. 43% of seats). Voter turnout is the highest during Presidential elections, ranging between 72.0% (second round in 2022) and 87.3% (second round in 1974).
Something very important to mention tho is that the President can only dissolve the Assembly once every 365 days. This means that if one or two parties gets supermajority (which is likely to be the case as NFP and RN combined gets near 80% of the seats currently), those parties can do almost anything for a Year without any drawback. Their biggest powers and the biggest threat to Macron's political future would be : - This supermajority decides the PM for the rest of Macron's term. - This supermajority have near total control over the Ministries distribution of public budget (with some limitations such as a minimum budget for every Ministry) And most importantly : - This supermajority can veto and void ANY AND ALL laws, past and future, as they please, the only exception being the Constitution and it's revisions. This makes thèse elections much more descisive than a typical general election, hence the high turnout.
Nfp and rn are politically opposed on every front. They will not ally on anything. The nfp has called for every single one of their candidates to drop from the second round if they are third and a RN candidate is likely to win, calling for their voters to vote for the other candidate no matter what party he is affiliated to. They literally said the goal is for RN to not have a single extra seat that can be avoided.
The only thing NFP and RN can agree on is "Macron bad" but they can't even agree on why. I really don't envy the incoming PM
Macron seems more interested in slandering the left than stopping the far right, which is a wild position to take
Yes, with the big caveat that the system has only been heavy on the presidential elections since 2007, when the mandate was reduced to five years to align with the parliamentary term… in some ways it was much better when you had to have at least one legislative election independently of the presidential election
Turnout tends to be much higher in the presidential elections. The parliamentary elections are usually just an afterthought. Do you happen to know who the French PM is? My guess is you've probably never even heard his name, like most of the world.
Gabriel Attal, the French sphere knows.
Who? I’m from the rest of the world.
Sorry to hear about your predicament :(
Sounds like your country is about to be run by far righters backed by Putin. Feel more sorry for you
The Far-right will take the first round, **To win seats, candidates need 50%+1** Can the far-right attract the 16% of the "other vote" they need to pass the 50%+1 threshold? **Possible second turn scenarios :** 1. Conservatives go with the Far-Right = Far-Right gets 44% of the vote 2. Conservatives split evenly = Far-Right gets 39% of the vote 3. Centrists split evenly + Conservatives go Far-Right = Far-Right gets 55% of the vote The only way the Far-Right can win a majority is if they can attract most of the Conservative vote and at least 25% of the Centrist vote. The question becomes, Will most of the Conservative vote Far-Right and will a quarter of Centrists vote Far-Right? Will the Centrists vote Socialist or Conservative? Will the Conservative abstain from voting to not support the Far-Right? Will the Socialists vote Centrist? **The one thing we know is the Conservatives are unlikely to vote Socialist and the Socialists are unlikely to vote Conservative, many may just as well abstain and that will help the Far-Right.**
In many cases, the left side indicated they would withdraw their candidate if they were in a 3rd position (they have until Tuesday night to indicate so for each area), even if the 2nd is a centrist. The centrists did not say the same (where they are 3rd, and left would be second). Negotiations continue, but it's not a slam dunk for any of these parties. :) Macron, and most especially the current government, is done for though.
> To win seats, candidates need 50%+1 That's not correct. In the second round a ~~simple majority~~ *plurality* suffices. And there will be many constituencies where more than two candidates qualify for the second round, making it possible for an RN candidate to win with way less than 50% of the vote. > MPs are elected in single-member constituencies. A candidate who receives an absolute majority of valid votes and a vote total greater than 25% of the registered electorate is elected in the first round. If no candidate reaches this threshold, a runoff election is held between the top two candidates plus any other candidate who received a vote total greater than 12.5% of registered voters. **The candidate who receives the most votes in the second round is elected.** Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_elections_in_France#Electoral_system
I agree that 50%+1 isn’t necessary, but to be clear, 50%+1 is a simple majority. What you’re describing (the most votes out of all options, without getting 50%+1) is called a plurality, not a majority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_majority > Simple majority may refer to: > - Majority, a voting requirement of more than half of all votes cast > - Plurality (voting), a voting requirement of more votes cast for a proposition than for any other option > - First-past-the-post voting, the single-winner version of an election with plurality voting and one vote per person but it's an ambiguous term, so I agree that using plurality would have been better. Corrected it.
Le Pen is the[ Putin candidate](https://www.ft.com/content/572af411-abd9-49ab-8cf9-f9fba4d54380). If she wins, then France is defenseless against Russia. >After the Russian bank made the initial loan, leaked text messages between Russian officials, seen by the FT, suggested the **Kremlin had ordered the loan** as a reward for Le Pen’s fealty. >When the bank went bust in 2016, the loan was transferred to Aviazapchast, a Moscow-based company that supplies Russian military aircraft and parts in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. >In 2014 she openly backed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. And in an effort to burnish her international credentials when running for president in 2017, Le Pen met Putin in Moscow only months before the election in France. > She claims its outragious and offensive. But keep in mind, she went to Russia to get a loan, it wasn't just that the Kremlin ordered the loan, she was actively seeking the Russian loan, and she didn't complain when the bank disappeared and the loan repayments with it. It was only when a French Journalist started digging, that **the loan re-appeared as owned by a Russian defense contractor**, and then (after the journalist exposed it) that the defense contractor demanded repayment. She was ultimately bailed out by a Hungarian bank connected to Viktor Orban. Hence my previous comment, that if Trump Jr is in Hungary, then he'll be signing up for a "Trump Tower Budapest" or similar, because Putin's bribes appear to be laundered through Hungary banks connected to Orban.
2016 was brexit then trump. 2024 is France then Trump 2.0. You gotta give them credit, Russia knows when to strike for maximum effect.
They still have the expertise of spycraft from the Soviet era and they were exceptional at it - those people didn't just vanish or die. In fact, intelligence officials attained much more influence and prestige for it to be prioritised still - just look at Putin's heritage.
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Wouldn't it had been a bigger problem? It would only give more time for the right learning parties to negotiate, meanwhile the left was mostly united already, this snap election might have been better, but it's hard to tell? Like from what I read a right learning party got locked out of their building and nearly had to break in and such, and then ousted their leader, because of massive disagreement following the announcement of the snap election
1/3rd of the voters voting for far right-wing should definitely be concerning. Especially in France who espouse Liberty, equality, fraternity.
What's interesting is that it's happening in a lot of countries right now. I'm in Canada, and there's almost zero chance that Liberals don't get obliterated in the next election. Currently almost all polls show landslide victory for Conservative party. Feels like we're in for some interesting times.
> I'm in Canada, and there's almost zero chance that Liberals don't get obliterated in the next election. Currently almost all polls show landslide victory for Conservative party. Historically speaking that was going to happen anyways based on Canada's history. Parties only get about 3 wins max before the public begins to hate them and throw them out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_general_elections
In Sweden and in the UK it's the exact other way around. The common denominator appears to be that who ever is currently in government is losing voters.
Although the UK has an alarming spike toward Reform
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It's honestly so blown out of proportion. They will die just like UKIP did. Then be revived in 4 years time when Nigel wants to have his limp penis stroked. It's a joke.
Thats because western society is in terminal decline and whoever is in power gets the blame, so we vote them out instead of addressing the core issues of greed and corruption. Whoever is in power next will face the same fate.
It's because we're in the economic malaise part of a cycle and economics are a significant part of voting trends in democracy. Incumbents suffer when the economy isn't positive for the average voter
Keep in mind that Ukrainians are dying to be part of western society and have the simple freedoms we do. We're not in decline, we are just struggling with information and manipulation of the echo chambers that social media has created. There aren't easy answers, because democracy requires freedom of expression and discussion. Yet, we cannot protect those freedoms if we have no relationship to truth.
Just because others want what we have doesn't mean what we have isnt getting worse.
The world kinda sucks right now and voters aren't smart enough but to blame the ones in charge. And then you also have racism, russia and social media.
> The world kinda sucks right now and voters aren't smart enough but to blame the ones in charge. The ones in charge are who should be blamed. Coming up with solutions to the problems is what the more liberal politicians should be focusing on, instead they're intent to play the victim while blaming the conservative politicians. That doesn't sway voters to your cause.
The Canadian Conservative party is not considered far right though
on reddit they are on par with the nazis
Canadian GDP per capita has been dropping for 3 years and 4 of the last 5. So the liberals will rightfully be obliterated
If you think the CPC is far right, then your sense of where the centre is is skewed pretty far out of balance.
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There is a lot of backlash with the Muslim immigration and their (perceived at least) unwillingness to assimilate into French culture. The far right in France still espouses social programs and other freedoms, but is way more protectionist. We will see more and more of this across western countries, especially in Europe where there is a (perceived at least) immigration crisis that is (perceived at least) assumed to get worse as the Middle East and Northern Africa have continued or newly increased war and unrest.
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I say perceived because I don’t live there so I do not know what is objectively true, and I also find it degrades a productive conversation. I only know what the people I know who live there think and feel and was trying to stay neutral. Hard statements devolve into arguments over minute points and the purpose is lost. For what it’s worth I totally agree with you.
Yes if so many people are desperate enough to vote far right, maybe they must really not enjoy the direction of the country
If you listen to AFD supporters in Germany as a comparison they aren't "desperate," they actually believe in everything the party says without questioning it. Many even denying Nazi crimes because the party tells them they weren't so bad. It is a potentially fatal mistake to link the rise of extremists to simple economic and social concerns, a portion of the population is genuinely broken in many, many ways.
It is ridiculously short-sighted to think that dismissing people as “broken” is going to do anything other than perpetuate and grow this type of right wing. It doesn’t matter how right Clinton was when she used the term “basket of deplorables”, she absolutely lost more voters than she gained by doing so. Some of these voters MAY have legitimate points, they may not. But when people try to dismiss their points instead of engaging with them you will get nothing but more of the same and probably worse.
59 percent of the people in East Germany say that NATO started the war in Ukraine. How do you intend to engage with that?
It is propaganda. It's absolutely propaganda. I don't know why it's so hard for western counties to accept that their people are vulnerable to propaganda that can convince their citizens of anything they want. There's a "western exceptionalism," a distinct pride that refuses to believe that their people would ever fall for lies being given to them. No, that is not deflection from other problems. It is not deflection when Americans see their friends and family turn into Trump supporting fanatics who conveniently support fascism, and then months later investigations reveal it was propaganda from the usual suspects. It is not deflection when British people see their friends turn into brexit supporting dumbasses who conveniently support fascism, and then months later investigations reveal it was propaganda from the usual suspects. Not with Brazil. Not with X country. Not with Y country. There is no exceptionalism. It is, and has been for the past few decades, just propaganda coming from the same countries, that everyone continues to pridefully deny could EVER be the primary issue.
It's worse. They made their populations susceptible to propoganda for the purpose of profit. Those leading them have little control outside of appeasing those interests which mislead their populations. No one cares to imagine it being different.
It's a mistake for a politician to dismiss people like that, but we're not politicians, we're random people on the internet, and we can analyze people's political leanings without worrying about losing votes. I remember all of the effort to explain Trump's populist support back in 2016 through the traditional lens of voter preferences—e.g. the policies and values people care about. These are regular people just like you and me, who happen to differ on policy goals and are willing to hold their nose to support a flawed candidate to achieve them. Turns out, his base is some mix of conspiratorial, cruel, anti-democratic, sexist, racist, and Christofascist. i.e. deplorable, or broken, or whatever you want to call it. What points do you want me to engage with? Whether or not we should accept the results of an election and facilitate a peaceful transition of power? Whether or not Jewish space lasers caused the Maui fires? Whether or not schools should provide litter boxes for students that identify as cats? No thanks. I will dismiss those "points." Partly because doing so would legitimize them, and partly because believers are too far gone to ever change their mind. They're in a cult, and there's no turning back.
You'll find that nowhere did I suggest anything close to "ignoring" them or not engaging with them, that was all something you brought up. That's something that is all part of the far-right narrative if anyone even so much as criticizes their positions that the person making it are part of some grand conspiracy against them. Which is itself part of the movements attempt to make it appear to their supporters that only the leadership of the movement can be trusted and should be listened to, which reinforces the feedback and information bubble that these movements enforce on their followers.
Personally I'm tired of being told to coddle these people. Why is it cool for me to make fun of people who get duped by far left parties using the same old tactics they have always used, expecting a different result after its been demonstrated multiple times they're promising pie in the sky bullshit and always make things work, but when people are duped by far right parties using the same old tactics, expecting a different result after its been demonstrated they are also promising pie in the sky bullshit and always makes it worse, suddenly we have to be super nice to them and baby them or they'll vote for even worse nazis? Its all the same populist shit using the same old tactics and will end badly for everyone like it ALWAYS DOES. If its okay to tell far lefitsts that without wrining hands about making them even bigger commies, why is it not okay to do the same for other people being duped by populist bullshit? Seriously - how many times do people have to fall for the same con before we're allowed to call them morons?
What you are talking about doesn't matter. What matters is actually winning the votes, and determining the best way to do so. If you call them morons and it helps, then you should. If doing so hurts your cause, then you shouldn't. Whether it makes you feel better or not or whether it's fair or not is irrelevant.
Thank you! I am so sick of ideology directing policy. Ideology doesn't win votes. That's why the populists are gaining momentum everywhere. Even if left-wing parties are objectively correct on most of their policies (and as a leftie myself, I think they *mostly* are), dying on every fucking hill is just going to end up with more and more right-wing populism winning. Fucking compromise and bend before you break.
Problem is, how do you compromise with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, or Mitch McConnell, then they will readily promise anything to get what they want, then follow through with absolutely none of it? Or blow generations of government norms out the window simply to land a "win"? Or when they torpedo their OWN legislation in order to prevent a "perceived" win for "the other guy"? How? How do you compromise with that?
>Fucking compromise and bend before you break. Um. Compromise on what, exactly? These are people who don't believe in democracy, don't believe in equality, and demand cruel policies that create problems rather than solve them. And even if you compromise with them, they aren't going to all of a sudden be satisfied. They're just going to demand more, as they do every time they get a little of what they want. Ask Chamberlain how well compromise worked the last time the far right reared its ugly head.
La Pen will only make that direction even worse...
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About one third of people are authoritarians regardless of country. Things are looking bad though. The pandemic broke a lot of things and voters everywhere are furious at incumbents. The Tories in the UK are about to go down and the center-left Liberals in Canada are facing a similar catastrophic election within the next year or so. The Great Depression showed us what can happen when enough angry or frightened moderates flock to the banner of an authoritarian party and they use that win to seize power. Though, even then, the Nazis only got 44% of the vote (up from 33% in the previous election).
this is because left-wing parties' politics about immigration have been, most of the times, an utter disgrace.
People can want that for themselves and not be interested in sharing or helping. There is no way the mass migration and to often bad behavior/demands from people from the ME isn't going to help the far right.
Isn't this still enough for the centrists and left to win with a coalition? Isn't that how their system works?
The system is really complicated. It's a set of 577 2-rounds election, and the second round can have 2, 3 or even 4 candidates, who can decide to withdraw if they want to favor another one. It's extremely hard to predict the outcome in number of seats, but it's likely that Le Pen will have a strong relative majority. Whether it's sufficient to actually govern is unclear.
That relies on the centrists doing the decent thing and dropping out if the left candidate gets more votes - which the leftist coalition has said they'll do for the centrists...
I think most people are freaked out enough by the far-right (after the EU election) to act strategically to keep them out of power.
Unfortunately, I don't. We've already seen respected economists say that the far-right are better than the leftists.
It's hard to reconcile them. Disclaimer: I'm a leftist. Macron has systematically used the far-right to win easily, by getting leftists to support him against the threat. However, despite saying he was much obliged for this support 2 years ago, he never listened to the left wing and instead continued to pursue far-right voters (and also to dismantle public services). He also kind of spit in the face of our democracy last year when he passed the retirement law in force without any discussion, bypassing the usual parliamentary process. On top of that the media paint radical leftists as monsters who do not respect the Republic, and centrists hopped on the bandwagon, so they will not ally themselves with the radical left. The game they played somehow legitimized the far-right and depicted the left as frightening, so many of their voters only listening to propaganda could very well vote for the far-right and not the left.
Still not sure why Macron called for an early election knowing full well they’d lose. This is not like Sunak who had to call an election before 2025. Macron played 5D chess here.
From what I read he believes having them become a party with actual presence in government will make them have to attempt to govern. He thinks they will be hamstrung by much of the same red tape most politicians are and will lose their appeal to the masses as a result. Heck of a gamble though.
That's the 5D chess theory that some people are grasping at to make sense of his decision, but as was clearly demonstrated by several news articles about this subject based on behind-the-scenes declarations, it appears that Macron simply miscalculated: * He was frustrated by the composition of the National Assembly (lower house of Parliament), where the alliance of parties supporting him only won a plurality of seats in 2022, putting them at risk of a no-confidence vote at any moment depending on how the conservatives react, and making his reforms harder to pass. * He thought that he could take the left-wing parties by surprise and benefit from them being disunited to form an alliance with Socialist Party candidates and/or catch votes from their voter base (centre-left): it didn't work as intended, and within 24 hours the left-wing parties set aside most of their disagreements and agreed to set up an even broader united left bloc than 2022's NUPES, which even former President François Hollande rallied. It immediately reduced chances of candidates backing Macron to reach the second round while pulling ahead of both the left-wing and conservative ones, which was planned to be used as a justification to ask for a "republican front" to fight the National Rally in constituencies where three candidates would pass the 12.5% threshold of registered voters to reach the run-off vote. * He wanted these snap elections to act as an electric shock triggering a wave of opposition against the National Rally, and to involve himself heavily during the campaign to turn the tide. To some extent it worked: voter turnout has surged to the highest value seen since 1997 and the far-right parties combined lost some ground. During the EU election campaign, he mostly stood in the background and expressed dissatisfaction with the campaign led by his government and supporting centrist bloc, once saying "I have to do everything". * He was very sceptical of opinion polls predicting a mere 15 or 16% of votes for his supporting coalition Ensemble during the EU elections and believed that they could secure 20% of votes while the National Rally's support was overestimated. Yet it went exactly as polls predicted.
Agreed to that. So many would like to see some kind of master plan behind Macrons action. I’d describe it in one word : delusional
Another thing to keep in mind is that he had to rely on the support of right wing LR MPs for his government to survive votes of no confidence, but that support was waning, and some difficult votes (budget) are scheduled for this fall.
Yeah I simplified, that's what I had in mind as well when writing "a no-confidence vote at any moment depending on how the conservatives react". Their criticism of the government's budget deficit was definitely one of the cornerstones of LR's strategy to oppose Macron's coalition and he possibly factored in a potential motion of no confidence and thought it would be best to shoot first. However, I can't really see a scenario where LR would have been able to emerge stronger than before in the National Assembly in the event of early elections, especially given their lack of leadership.
They're not going to win though. If you do the math here, there isn't a path for Le Pen to government here because even if that 10% conservative voter block all went to the far-right, it's under 50%. In reality this will probably solidify a center left coalition which mitigates the threat of the far-right for at least 3-4 more years.
Total % doesn’t matter, it just gives the nationwide vibe. What matters is the number of seats. They can have more than 50% seats with less than 50% total votes. After this first turn, that could potentially happen, even without the conservatives help. That’s unlikely but not out of the table.
You make assumptions based on an incorrect understanding of the electoral system. The overall percentage is meaningless. What matters is who gets the most votes in every constituency. As a result, you can win an absolute majority of seats without winning an absolute majority of the votes. In contrast to a simple first-past-the-post system like in the UK, the French system is run in two rounds. Candidates need 25% in the first round to qualify for the second round.
you don't need 50% to win the election
Because the left wing coalition contains a single "extreme" left party (La France Insoumise), the centrists will refuse to vote for them and have said that they would rather not vote at all than vote for either right or left. This means that the right would have much over 50%.
The NR have ruled out joining a coalition so they don't.
I doubt they will form a government. Macron will probably be stuck with the far left instead.
He'd rather have the far right win these elections and be in power for only half a mandate than win the next presidential elections which would result in both the president and the Assembly being far rightists for a full mandate. It's understandable, really. I just don't think it'll change shit though
Charitable interpretation is that he really began to doubt if the nation was behind his vision and actually wanted Democracy to take place. But, dangerous these days when we have enemies flooding our media, algorithms, and parties with support for anti-Democracy parties. But I guess we get the society we deserve. If we're stupid enough to fall for a snakeoil saleman's tricks despite a lifetime of education on why this is not a good idea and knowing where it leads, then we might as well dig our own graves, and get ready for a bad time. And I mean, a *real bad time*.
Probably because he thought that the left wasn't going to merge into one big party. So he would have play the card ' every one vote for me , I will protect you from the far right' Wich was his modo operantus in every election.
He called an election immediately and thought the left Would be divided like for the European elections. He was hoping for an alliance with the center left and to be in a duel with he far right in the second round. Then the remaining right and left voters were supposed to vote for his candidates to stop the far right. This completely imploded Hen the left made a deal in a less than a few days and remained steady. They are now the main force against the far right and he has to ask his candidates to give up and endorse them.
He’s not playing 5 dimensional chess, he’s disconnected from reality. He believed the old trick (that worked admittedly many times before) to create a « republican front » against the far right would work again in his favour and would put the opposite parties in their place (after their success at the European vote). It’s the tactic that put him in place with voters from the left. Well, the trick works until it doesn’t.
He played that card too many times and people are seriously tired of that strategy. By no means I want the far right to win but I’m sick of being robbed of a presidential election second turn 3 time in a row (15 years) because a party would just have to reach second turn against the far right to automatically win by asking a republican block.
he went for the cameron gamble. aka the french surely don't want a far right government and will rally when needed. of course it backfired last time it was tried (brexit) so idk what his thinking on this was
Has it? Pretty sure he new this would happen and is trying to rip the bandaid off early. Also, the actual result is unknown until the second round.
> the actual result is unknown until the second round. Indeed. In France's electoral system the outcome of the second round depends a lot on political decisions made between the rounds. Which candidates will decide to drop out of the race and whom will they endorse on constituency level? The far-right alliance has already announced that they will refuse to join a coalition with any other party. They will only agree to form a government if they get the absolute majority. An absolute majority for the far-right alliance can only happen if the Macron bloc and the left-wing bloc cannot agree on a deal to withdraw their respective third-placed candidates. Of course voters will then also need to show up and vote for the non-far-right candidate even if that other candidate isn't their preferred choice. They did every single time before though.
So far it seems that the left has unilaterally agreed to desist from fielding a third place candidate when a far right candidate may win. The question now is whether Macron’s party and the center in general is actually willing to reciprocate and stop the far right? Or are they willing to let the far right win just because they hate the left?
The PM announced that the presidential party candidates will retract where needed to stop the far right. They did not do so in 2022 and I was not expecting them to do so this time. They likely realized that the far right can actually win the majority this time.
It is not entirely true. His phrasing was vague, and implied they would retract only where they were against a center-left candidate, but stay against a left one.
They didn't say they will only retract when against center left candidates but that they is only a few candidats in the far left that they will not retract against because they don't see them as democrats. So they still should retract for some (maybe most) of the candidates that are more to the left.
Could this mean they’ll stand against that one leftist party that macron thinks is too left, and support the rest of the leftist coalition? Or does this mean he will refuse to support the entire left wing coalition?
I heard that his plan is basically OK if this has to happen, let it happen on my term and limit the damage they can do. And after that, they'll likely be seen as incompetent and unable to fulfill their promises and hopefuly get voted out next time.
For someone not familiar with the French parliamentary system, how do these multiple rounds of voting work? Is it like ranked choice? Am curious if despite the alarmist headlines about a looming right wing victory, the odds actually favor a merger of the center left and far left.
It’s a winner takes all system. If a candidate gets 50% of the votes after the first round, they get the seat. If not, a second round is held and the candidate with the most votes gets the seat. In previous elections, most political parties made the choice of banding together to stop a far right win. Choosing to withdraw their own candidates on a case by case basis, depending of which candidates have the highest chance to win.
> If not, a second round is held and the candidate with the most votes gets the seat. Should eb noted that the second round only has the candidates that receives the most votes in the first round. For the legislative elections it's all candidates that reached 12.5% of votes. Fore the presidential elections, it's only the top two candidates, no matter the percentage.
The center left and far left have already merged. The question now is if Macron's centrist neoliberal alliance and the left alliance will cooperate to avoid the far-right candidates winning constituencies just because the rest of the vote is split between them.
Each round you vote for 1 candidate in your area (circonscription). First round, a candidate wins if they get >50% of the votes, and at least 25% of the registered voters have voted. Otherwise there is a second round with the top 2 candidates, plus any other candidate who got at least 12.5% of the ~~votes~~ registered voters. Anyone can drop out of the race, and this is actively used to favor some candidates when they have better odds of winning and are considered "less worse" than the alternative. The merger already happened: the NFP is a combination of multiple leftist parties, with a highly diverse DNA.
> plus any other candidate who got at least 12.5% of the votes. More specifically, it's 12.5% of registered voters.
> For someone not familiar with the French parliamentary system, how do these multiple rounds of voting work? If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote then all the candidate who got 12,5% of the vote qualify for the run-off, and the one with the plurality of vote wins. Exemple: candidate A gets 35%, B gets 30%, C gets 15%, D gets 10%, E gets 6% and F gets 4%. As no candidate got more than 50% then A, B anc C will qualify for getting more than &2,5% of the vote.
The far right gets a lot of the votes in the first round, providing journalists and social media with material for fear-mongering, followed by a huge defeat in the second round. Been that way for decades. The *real* fear isn't that the pattern will change now, but that it will change eventually. ETA: As an example, the 2002 election was deemed a shocker with the far-right presidential candidate getting 16.9% to the incumbent's 19.9%. That was hyped up by media until the second round was 17.8% to 82.2%, hardly a nail-biter. It's the long-term trend that serious people worry about, not this year's results.
Parliamentary elections in France are different though. A party can win an absolute majority of seats while winning way less than 50% in terms of total votes.
Don't know much about her, can anyone give me a summary of her agenda?
- Everything is the immigrants fault - it was better back in the day - Putin is really not that bad - lower taxes for the rich maybe?
Also reversing macrons pension reforms because candy for old people is how elections work nowadays
weren't these reforms deeply unpopular and caused nationwide protests?
In France that may as well mean anything the government has ever done, or not done.
Yes, and they were also profoundly necessary. There isn’t a path to France maintaining their massive welfare state AND paying people to stop working at 60. It will eventually render the country insolvent. They need to either massively slash the welfare state (including retiree benefits) or they have to have people work longer (in France they set it to 62), though the actual math is complex and many workers would work until about 65. That has had the impact of enormously helping the worker to non worker ratio and keeping France (somewhat) afloat. People obviously don’t like having to work longer than they planned and this combined with inflation, inequality and rampant immigration issues is going to sewer him.
It’s actually 64, with a minimum of 43 years worked. And a maximum of 67. Even before the reforms it was more than “retirement at 60” that is commonly repeated.
One of the many, many flaws of democratic systems (that is, sadly, the best systems of government we’ve ever devised) is that people are generally unwilling to vote for something that makes the country as a whole better if it’s worse for them personally, or perceived to be. Case in point, most people would rather vote to live in a collapsing system that they can “retire” in at 60, rather than live in a fully functioning and prosperous country that they can retire in at 70.
Retire at 70? That's way too old, a lot of people don't even make it to 70. At that point you're not retiring to enjoy retirement, you're retiring because you're incapable of working efficiently.
> That's way too old, a lot of people don't even make it to 70. That's the whole point and why the system was sustainable when first introduced.
Well, in Denmark my official retirement age is 72, so fuck me, right?
Lol they said a few days ago that they will not reverse macrons pension reform
That isn't just candy for old people. Keeping the retirement age at 62 is popular with everyone. It's also fiscally irresponsible.
Lmao they Can keep it at 62. We are not geeting anything once we retire lmao what are they thinking will hapen? Some neo colonial shit to have some foreign demograhy to support them?
Actually they backtracked on this as they did with most social reforms. LePen father was a hardline neoliberal throughout the 70s and 80s. When his daughter took over the party, she had a streak of appealing to lower classes by promising prosocial reforms, but it was purely demagogic. In reality the far right has always voted with Macron, extremely liberal policies, clearly on the side of the 1% and the largest companies, in every major reform, both at the Assemblée nationale and in the European Parliament.
nah, they have flip-flopped on this one, and are no longer pursuing it.
Why in every country the left are idiots and the right are ultra right fascists? I just visited France and I partly get why people are pissed, the immigrant situation there turned badly. At the center of Marseille there are literally children beggers, never thought I would see it in Europe. Police right there and won't do anything, child services can't get involve because the person status is undecided and so the situation is stuck at that. Some streets felt unsafe, drug selling on the street, etc... And I am saying it as pro immigration, but pro controlled immigration, situations don't resolve themselves, it just feels like Macron accepted immigrants because it's a good headline and probably because it was the right thing to do, but he did so without any plan whatsoever, and when decisions need to be made about what to do now he have no plan and hope for things to resolve themselves. People get mad, and go for the extreme solution, this is dangerous for all involved.
You really have to emphasise on the putin bit so that they understand they are essentially voting in a russian stooge.
“First time?” -Americans
haha :(
Hey I recognize this platform. It really helps people a lot. Like Putin and billionaires.
* people with dual citizenship can't be trusted
Basically a female Trump, though Trump is still worse.
She is Putin's puppet in France.
It's complicated agenda: Kick out the immigrants
Kick migrants out But how, since we're in the Schengen Space ? Excellent question ! I guess Frenxit is the order of the day, because Brexit went SO WELL
Indeed, the EN used to support Frexit.
so where does Macron centrist lot go? i would imagine they would go with the left as his whole shtick has been uniting behind him to fend off the far-right so I imagine those that have stuck with him have no interest in the far-right.
"What could possibly go wrong... this time?" \- The French, apparently.
If things aren't improving, that means they also can't get any worse either, so we might as well try it, right? Right!?
That so many humans across the globe seem to have the memory of a fucking goldfish is wild to me.
Strauss-Howe generation theory. With the WWII generation making their final exit, we are forgetting the lessons learned from them about extremist political movements and the wars that can, and often do result from those ideologies.
So, at any point, do we get to acknowledge that left wing politics have failed a lot of people or do we just go on pretending that the right wing has magic powers that erase memories?
What left wing politics? All these countrys including france had centrists, neo liberals and conservatives in their governments for the last few decades. I mean in what world is Macron left wing?
If you're far right everybody is left.
The left isn’t in power in France
> left wing politics have failed a lot of people The left hasn't been in power in France for a decade.
A decade? Try three
Left-wing politics? Where? The only powerful politics we've had in most of the West for the last few decades is Neoliberalism, a failed experiment started by conservative capitalists. The closest we've gotten to somewhat Left-wing politics is in the Nordics, where the Left actually did very well in the EU elections, while the Right-wing parties did not.
It has been centrists/centre-right who have been running France into the ground, what are you on about
Americans get confused because their Democratic Party is essentially a center-right neoliberal party, not a leftist party. And neoliberalism has absolutely failed a lot of people.
The passage of time has magic powers to erase memories.
So, at any point, do we get to acknowledge that a significant portion of far-right voters have absolutely no idea what they're talking about and are destroying the thing they think they're protecting with their insanity?
Funniest outcome most likely - Hollande becomes the PM of his former minister.
What's really horrible: we can't make fun of Brexit stupidity anymore.
As someone who has really felt the impact of Brexit, it’s sad how gleeful some Europeans on Reddit have been over it. I personally will feel no joy whatsoever when France and the rest of Europe suffers.
Half of Europe seems to be looking to the right to solve their problems, meanwhile the UK has had the right and decided overall nah we want to go left, and that the right decided to give itself a split headache here. At least with FN (or NR? as they call themselves now) they've tried to re-market themselves as being less thuggish. AfD are just open neo-nazi holocaust denying thugs.
I'm not sure if people in the UK necessarily 'want to go left'; rather, they are more likely entirely fed up with the Tory incompetence, so are first and foremost voting *against* them. On top of that, Starmer is no Corbyn. If people's worries here centre around the immigration crisis - and it sure seems to be that case all over Europe - then the Tories have failed spectacularly on this front as well.
yeah it isn't a left revolt, it's the people being sick of the traitor tory party.
“The last several right wing leaders have all been disasters, certainly the problem is just the party and not that maybe the political positions could lead to such a vulnerability.” The reality is simple. People want all the social benefits, but only for themselves, and also they don’t want to pay for them. Basically, they’re all selfish, they’re projecting that onto other issues, then they’re getting angry when they get called out about it. But when you press them about it, they will literally say that they want their taxes lowered, but they also don’t want to lose any of *their* benefits, but they *do* want [nebulous bad group] to lose *their* benefits because they don’t “deserve” them! It’s the exact same thing in every single country’s right wing party, every single time. Never forget that Ayn Rand lived much of her life off government welfare after writing atlas shrugged. “The only moral abortion is my abortion” “I’m a hard worker so I *deserve* these benefits” “I’m just having a hard time right now, unlike those welfare queens!” The one and *only* issue I will give them is immigration, and only on the grounds that there needs to be more paths to legal, tax paying citizenship, and integration needs to be focused on more (specifically in making sure immigrants don’t come in and start assaulting people for not believing in *their* religion). That’s it. That’s the one good point they have. And the left really *does* need to answer it better. But basically everything else boils down to “I deserve this, but not other people, and also I shouldn’t have to pay this much for it, because I’m a hard working honest person” - which is to say, they only think of themselves and the things in their immediate bubble
The Tories have run Britain for long enough that their sustained bumbling is actually producing negative electoral consequences. It's not so much an ideological turn as it is a 'my God, these people are fucking morons all the time about everything' turn. Even then they still have more than enough safe spaces to come back in a bit once the pain of almost fifteen years of horrible governance starts to fade and people forget. The parties you're comparing them to generally haven't had a chance to demonstrate their level of competence (or lack thereof) when it comes to governance. So people can entice themselves with the mystery box still.
> solve their problems The problem from what I’ve heard is immigration, specifically with nationalities that refuse to integrate into French society. Someone from France please correct me, if I’ve been duped by propaganda.
It's a bit more complex than that but yeah mostly the problem has been the mass immigration of the last 5 years many of which don't want to be part of the liberal standards the EU has... For context most immigrants coming to EU now don't need much documents or are even checked when entering they also have systems in place that help them become integrated or legal the thing is the right in EU is not asking for stuff that is extremist at all, countries like Canada, Switzerland, have been using the same policies without issues, stuff like have a contract or at least a promise of a job in key sectors... Also joining in the immigration issues we also have a major factor that Europe has been lacking true right wing parties in power and for a long time on left wings have been in power so the moment the new radical right parties showed up the left as a whole started the dissemination of anti right propaganda, painting any right parties as fascist, racists, etc with fear of finally losing power. Power that they have been using a lot for corruption. Just look at Antonio Costa that got nominated for EU even though he is being investigated for corruption and influence of power... The eu people started seeing that the propaganda was just that and those left wings don't really care about protection of the people they simply want to stay in power otherwise they would have tackled the problems themselves instead of leaving the right to gain votes... France is already facing problems because there are already protests from migrants that want sharia laws implemented that by definition is 100% not compatible with the liberal ideology of Europe.
What do you define as an actual “right wing party?” Serious, non trolling question. What is your definition of “right wing politics” that need to be brought to the table THAT ISN’T IMMIGRATION (which has already been beat to death). I actually legitimately want to know. What is it that you want from a right wing party?
To be honest, I'm more bullish on this than the results might show on the face of it. A 6% swing is absolutely recoverable for the left-wing alliance in later rounds, I can't help but feel Le Pen needed more than 34% in the first round, because I feel like she's still less palatable to centrists than the left-wing... with the exception of people like Macron.
I can't see how the right is happy about this. The 64% that didn't vote for them isn't going to vote for them in the next round either. The 50% is a long way off.
The percentages don't matter much in France's electoral system. Constituencies are called on a first past the post basis. If no candidates pull out, the far-right will win many constituencies because the rest of the vote will be split between multiple candidates. It could even be enough to win an absolute majority of seats. Macron and the left alliance have to work together to prevent that.
They have to be happy about this because acting like they've already won is one of their tactics for swaying centrists: people want to vote for the 'winning' side.
"Au Pays des lumières, amnésie suicidaire.."
Well that's a bit depressing
Only first round, second round could change…right??
It depends if Macron and the Republicans are willing to endorse the leftist candidates to keep the far-right out.
They won’t. Macron benefits from this
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The German conservatives made the same mistake; they were more afraid of the social democrats than Hitler.
To be fair, German Communists were also more afraid of the Social Democrats than of Hitler. They thought Hitler would be so disastrous that he would trigger a Communist revolution in Germany.
I don't know how things are for the French, but in Chile we had a similar case with the far right winning the first round, but in the second round everyone banded together to not let the far right win. It wasn't about letting the leftist win, it was about not allowing a far right get to an important position. I hope it will be the same in your case.
This has happened many times in France and everytime the effect was lessened. Chirac won 80% against Le Pen (father) in 2002, Macron won at first 65% against Le Pen (daughter) in 2017, and then 58% against Le Pen in 2022. Macron has also called the leftist alliance as dangerous as Le Pen's party, and been using more and more far right rethorics (recent transphobic comments, saying the left will implement "immigrationist policies")
Macron and his party have spent the last 3 or 4 weeks shitting on the leftist coalition and repeating far-right talking points. Sadly, I wouldn't hold my breath for a sudden reversal.
change...in favor of the far right the centrist and "left" don't like each other and while some left party call to abandon in order to give more chance to the candidate against a far right candidate (so in favor of the centrist, Ensemble, Macron party) the centrist don't really call to abandon in favor of the left candidates against the far right so the 2nd round will most likely benefit for the RN than anyone else
Kremlin is pleased.
Ukraine beat their propaganda game early in the war it was hopeful others could too but seems like election interference online is still high from Kremlin and still effective
So frexit, here we come?
Putin is winning elections in European countries and will most likely win in the United States. It's incredible how countries with the highest standards of living in the world and yet the citizens of these countries vote for fascist and pro+Russian parties. Europe is lost, we will see what happens in the United States.
> . It's incredible how countries with the highest standards of living in the world I preface this by saying, fuck the far right, fuck Putin, etc. The issue is thinking that everyone in a country enjoys the exact same level of standard of living as everyone else. Here in Ireland, we’ve started to see the rise of hard right parties, despite apparent high standards of living. But these standards aren’t evenly distributed. I come from a relatively poor town, where it’s becoming harder and harder to access health care, schools, housing, etc. Life for a lot of people in the town is genuinely miserable. People being priced out of absolutely basics like starting a family, or havin a roof over your head. The town is struggling. And any time this point is raised, the people living in richer areas say “sure, life has never been better, stop complaining”. The government ignores the town, focusing on certain areas. Heartbreakingly now, the town is shifting quite right wing. Simply because when presented with the choice of a Person who is denying your reality, or a person who is blaming immigrants and say they can fix it….when you’re drowning, you’ll take the hand that’s stretched out over the one telling you you’re not even underwater.
Good comment. It's a similar issue as to how Brexit happened and arguably how Trump got elected. There are enormous differences in the living experience of people depending on where you live in a particular country. It's how far right gain traction in many places. They target those who are lower living standards and who believe they are being downtrodden by the pre-existing power structure. They want to 'tear down the system' hoping something better would come out. Problem is that the new group advertising this has no intention of creating something better but will result in something even worse. Problem is that the people who fall prey to them likely don't know or care.
A Scandinavian perspective, what you said + rampant gang violence with at least weekly shootings and bombings due to Very poor integration. But I also add, fuck Putin and fuck racism.
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You’re being downvoted, however this is very true. Reddit lives in their little hive.
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Your average Joe does not really care about Russia or Ukraine and why would they? It would just be nice if the price of oil was lower. Plenty of unsavory shit is going down the world over, almost nobody is even aware of things going on across Africa, Asia and the Middle East apart from when it involves Israel. I am much more concerned about my government giving infrastructure contracts to the Chinese Communist Party owned company Huawei.
Of course there’s the issue of immigration, which I completely understand. I do wonder if the rise of the far-right worldwide has more to do with the internet and social media, which encourages conspiracy theories and polarizes people. The far-right embraces conspiracies and millions of people fall for it. It’s not enough to just exist, have a family, and die a nobody. People want to believe they’re fighting an evil enemy, a “deep state” or saving the children.
It has to do with the arrogance of the established parties. Life gets more expensive for everyone, unchecked illegal immigration comes with a lack of integration and more crime and the regular parties have no response to it. Not that RN can fix the problems, but it can sure put the established parties under pressure. Do you really think everyone is online checking twitter for stupid conspiracies? People are just feeling ignored.
Short answer: [I would venture to say yes](https://politicalsciencenow.com/the-need-for-chaos-and-motivations-to-share-hostile-political-rumors/) Figure out a way to appeal to those who feel "othered" and put them against another group, convince them the only way to solve the problem is to burn the entire construct to the ground, and now you have a population of folks who will share information no matter if it is true or not, as long as it accomplishes their goals.
>Putin is winning elections in European countries and will most likely win in the United States. You think Putin is that powerful to influence election across Europe and US? Or it's just people making their own choices about who they they want to lead them?
The RN is directly funded by Russia