France: Départementales 2015 - March 22/29, 2015

[Zanas]

Good, Hash, I was considering doing this kind of post. A few remarks :

- While FN will end up first in the vote, they won't actually win any stable presidencies. Their best bet would be Vaucluse, and still it would be with Bompard's Ligue du Sud's support, which is not a given thing. Any talk right now in the French media about them gaining any other département is ludicrous. Aisne is just silly, Pas-de-Calais, they will gain cantons there but not nearlt enough, and Var and Alpes-Maritimes should be locked UMP wins.

- This map you posted, well, since we are on a serious board with knowledgeable people, I think we should not even post it. It's full of ridiculous things. Jura is actually PS right now, and will be one of the first to fall. Indicating Haute-Vienne falling, quite a looong shot even with Limoges' fall last year, before even considering Haute-Saône as more than a "?", and furthermore having Saône-et-Loire staying PS, it's all a good laugh, but not really anything related to psephology.

- I'm currently following these quite closely on a French forum, politiquemania, where we have a relatively good picture of what should be happening. I'll try to compile a post this weekend for y'all. Broadly speaking, PS should stay with only 10 to 25 départements.

[Zanas]

I will put up a list of départements by category this week. The category "Safe Left Hold" is basically nil. Only a handful départements can belong there : Aude, Gers, Landes, Haute-Vienne, Dordogne, Lot, Ariège, Hautes-Pyrénées, Guadeloupe. Oh and Paris, with no election up. A small dozen other are Lean Left, but up for grabs. Basically everything else is Safe UMP, Vaucluse being only Lean UMP vs. Far Right (LDS + FN), and a handful  verging on ungovernable (Bouches-du-Rhône, Pas-de-Calais ?, Aisne ?, Hérault ?, Gard ?)

[Zanas]

the situation:

Ipsos poll

Hollande: favorable: 26%
               unfavorable: 69%

Valls: favorable: 42%
         unfavorable: 52 %

That doesn't say much, though. Or even at all. The executive had quite a bit of a bounce with #jesuischarlie bullshyte, and they are again on the descending slope. Real approvement levels are around 12-15 for Hollande and 25-30 for Valls.

[Zanas]

Turnout is somewhat up at 43% at 5 PM, against 36% in 2011, and 54% in 2008 when there were municipal election coupled to the cantonales.

Turnout especially up greatly in places like Pas-de-Calais and Moselle. Make of that what you want.

[Zanas]

It may be a Forbach 2014 runoff or Doubs-9 2015 runoff kind of effect.

[Zanas]

Valls says Left had `Honorable score' in Local Vote.  If exit polls are right and the Left takes around 35% of the vote then would that not be the worst result ever for the Left? Of course a lot of it has to do with the surge of FN.  Still, even if FN is kept out of first place I fail to see how the Left had a 'Honorable score' with the worst result in history.

Well they were predicted to do even worse, so it's a kind of relief for them. Several départements where we thought the Left would be wiped out totally from the council will in the end still send a few left-wing councillors.

Still, not exactly a great night for the Left in general.

[Zanas]

"We won".

Because everyone in the election night pretended to be happy with the results.

Wouldn't that be "nous avons gagné", however?

In oral French, nobody ever uses the person "nous" anymore, and "on a gagné" is the typical rooting chant when one is victorious in sports or other fields.

As for the other question, one who dislikes the FN cannot be happy with those results. FN is settling everywhere, they are going to win something between 50 and 120 cantons, and that gives them proximity office holders who can then be credible candidates in next elections, especially the législatives. Not good.

[Zanas]

How many did the left win then? If I count I get 30 excluding Tarn et Garone. So Bérézina it is!!

You should add Paris, Guadeloupe and Martinique, which weren't up for election because their political organization is different, but which technically count as Départements. So that's 33.

Or 34, if you could Gérard Collomb (PS), president of the Grand Lyon, which is technically a collectivité territoriale on par with a department.

Does that mean that the Rhône Département has lost all jurisdiction over the greater Lyon, and that the latter has all the competences of a Département? And if so, why didn't they do the same with Marseille, which is even bigger?

Yes, the Rhône has for all intents and purposes lost all jurisdiction over the Grand Lyon. The reason this came to be is that there was, in 2012, an agreement between Collomb and Michel Mercier (the then-president of the CG). On the other hand, the new Aix-Marseille Métropole was rammed down everybody's throat by the government and the local politicians by and large hate it (which is part of the reason why Guérini did so well in the senatorial elections last year), so I suppose that making the new structure even more powerful would make everybody go bonkers. On top of that, it's the Bouches-du-Rhône, all their politicians are crazy and hate each other's guts, so the chance for a Collomb-Mercier agreement is nil.

Fun fact: The new Rhône department is non-contiguous.

Cool, let's make the French territorial map even messier!

Really the common sense solution is to abolish Departments and restore the 20some regions map with increased power.

To be fair, Vaucluse and Pas-de-Calais Nord (and 3 other), at least, were already non-contiguous.

The tl;dr version of these elections is the following : the front républicain still pretty much works. Differential abstention makes everything. Voters, left or right though a bit more left, can be bothered to turn out in a second round to prevent FN to be elected.

See ya in the régionales in December ! (Will it be the first time a national election is held in December ?)