French legislative election 2012

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How do the elections actually work? Is it a FPP system?

2-round FPP. Candidates getting more than 12.5% of registered voters goes to the 2nd round. Then, the candidates with the most votes wins.

Wikipedia says a candidate can only win in the first round if they get >50% of votes and >25% of registered voters, and it it also specifies that if nobody gets >12.5% of registered voters, then the second round is just the top two candidates. Is this accurate? What happens when a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote but less than 25% of RV's? Or when only a single candidate gets more than 12.5% of RV's?

This is correct. I guess that if the candidate gets more than 50% but less than 25%, the second round is held normally. And if only one gets over 12.5, the runner-up still gets qualified.

This is correct. Happens in a lot of low-turnout cantonal by-elections, when turnout was very low but the winner got over 50% (sometimes nearer to 60%...) but a runoff was held because he didn't get 25% of registered voters.

BTW, it'd be much more preferable to start this thread after May 6, because prior to May 6 it's only the bad mindless hackery and hypotheticals.

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If I didn't work all day/week, work all evening on my blog and be in Montreal all weekend; I could put something together. But I should, given that journalists have proven that they know absolutely zilch about legislative elections, even less than what they know about presidential elections.

At any rate, the big showdown might/will be Panzergirl vs. Melenchon in Henin-Beaumont. If that contest doesn't end in a Hamilton/Burr duel, I don't know what would. Also, the people who say that there will 300+ triangulaires are idiots who should get laid instead of saying such things.

Also, it will apparently be stupid day all day long, because Panzergirl's loonies are running under the ultra tinpot label "Rassemblement Bleu Marine" and the Bearnese Moron seems bent on destroying his own party and is running his fools under the "Centre pour la France" label.

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So, anybody interested in a seat-by-seat profile/prediction on my part or something close to that?

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The parties of "the right" only have a lead if you are counting the Front National as part of "the right". The FN will refuse to withdraw any of its candidates before the second round and that will set up three way fights in every single seats where the FN had over 15% in the first round (i.e. most of them).

The last part of that comment is pretty stupid, so I won't bother answering it or else I'll get angry again. "National" polling for these elections already piss me off enough...

Anyway, you people would do better to read my predictions: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=153783.0

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In my constituency, the PS candidate would have 40% in the votes cast in person, against 20% for Fredo. Overall turnout would be 22%, including 14% by interwebs. She seems to be doing much better than Hollande, while Fredo is polling way less than Sarko. Servan-Schreiber would apparently be in third, seemingly with Balkany trailing. In South America, the EELV-PS candidate seems very optimistic.

Turnout seems downright horrible (single digits or low double digits) around the world. This likely opens the door to weird fluke results.

http://frenchmorning.com/ny/2012/06/02/soiree-electorale-en-direct/

http://www.slate.fr/france/57045/legislatives-francais-etranger-estimations

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In my constituency, the PS candidate would have 40% in the votes cast in person, against 20% for Fredo. Overall turnout would be 22%, including 14% by interwebs. She seems to be doing much better than Hollande, while Fredo is polling way less than Sarko. Servan-Schreiber would apparently be in third, seemingly with Balkany trailing. In South America, the EELV-PS candidate seems very optimistic.

Turnout seems downright horrible (single digits or low double digits) around the world. This likely opens the door to weird fluke results.

http://frenchmorning.com/ny/2012/06/02/soiree-electorale-en-direct/

http://www.slate.fr/france/57045/legislatives-francais-etranger-estimations

40% ? I guess that's good news ahead of the runoff ?

Quite. I've always said that Fredo is a terrible candidate when everybody else was banking on a legitimist UMP vote in the constituency. I would have been worried if Fredo had been kicked out by a stronger guy like Servan-Schreiber, but all the divers droite looneys cancelled each other out and I think that their voters probably won't care much about voting in the runoff, especially for a candidate like Fredo who was the focus of all attacks by the DVD candidates. Turnout is so pathetically low at this point that anything is possible, but I'm confident that the PS will win here. Not that I care all that much, but just the thought of having Fredo as my 'other' MP when my 'real' MP is retarded enough as it is... it's just torture.

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I can't really blame the PS candidate in Vaucluse-3, considering the UMP incumbent is basically a frontiste in UMP clothing.

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MMLP is definitely quite hot, but she has that weird Le Pen grin/nose/eyes which would remind me of Grand-Daddy every time. On the other hand; Duflot, Filippetti and Vallaud-Belkacem are all very hot, as is Sylvia Pinel.

Not sure I would qualify as a "great" predictor. My predictions were rather bad.

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I know that nobody ever reads my verbal diarrhea, but haha, my post on the runoff has a useful map for our little predictions:



(potential Sarkozyst vote vs actual runoff Sarkozyst vote, methodology explained in the post).

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People are a bit late on the pickup? Anyhow, It's fun to assign ideological labels like "centrist" or "centre-right" to voters in a place which has lost all sense of left-right politics in recent years, but in reality the bulk of the remnants of Urbaniak's vote are a personal vote in Noyelles-Godault (where he won 40.3% against 31.5% for Marine), where he has been mayor since 1983. And Noyelles-Godault is hardly any different from the other communes. Marine won 32% there and won 48% in the 2007 runoff.

I should be posting my predictions tonight.

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There's no chance in hell that the moron Flipout or whatever his name is will win. His first round result (26%) was actually a pretty crappy result for some heavily flaunted star candidate, and a duel is always near-impossible for the FN to win. While the coal mining basin of Forbach/Freyming certainly isn't historically left-wing, it voting for the left is imaginable and has happened in the past (1997).

That retarded douchebag Collard will probably (hopefully?) lose, but it would be fitting for possibly the worst place in the country to have the worst deputy ever.

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Anyway, here are my predictions (which are very close to Fab's):

By party winner (using my own labels, instead of the Ministry's horrible stupidities, and separating all Radicals from the UMP):


FG 10
MUP 1
MRC 4
EELV 19
MIM (reg.) 1
PNC (reg.) 1

PS 291
DVG (PS dissidents) 18
PRG 12
(PS+PRG+DVG 321)
LEFT 357

MoDem 2

AC 1
NC 14
PRV 12 (including a few elected under UMP banners, under as DVD, others as PRAD... lol france)

UMP 173
DVD 12
DLR 2
PCD 1
MPF 1
RIGHT 216

Ligue du Sud/divers EXD 1
FN 1

By seat ratings (first round winners counted as 'safe'):


Safe left 220
Left favoured 46
Lean left 51

Tossup - left edge 40

Centre favoured 1
Lean centre 1

Tossup - right edge 38

Lean right 54
Right favoured 59
Safe right 65

Lean EXD 1
Tossup - EXD edge 1

General comments:

I've again hesitated a long time before putting too many seats as 'safe right', so 'right favoured' is close to safe, but I chickened out. On the other hand, I was quite liberal in placing seats as safe left, even those with defending UMP incumbents, but in some places their results were so bad that it's impossible to have them win.

I basically used Fab's methodology and relied heavily on my map to determine FN and centrist transfers to the right. I assumed very good transfers to the PS from the FG and EELV, and mediocre transfers from the far-leftie fringe. I didn't really take into account additional or lesser turnout, but I don't think there should be game-changing turnout swings in that many constituencies. In triangulaires with the FN, using the lessons of 2010 and 2011 rather than the history of 1997, I am assuming that the FN vote either remains stable or trends up rather than down.

As for EELV, I am assuming that, in the end, the leftie dissidents' vote will not transfer all that badly to them. We all know what all the anecdotes about your uncle's friend's cousin twice removed about "ZOMGZ I REFUSE TO VOTE FOR TEIHS CANDIDATE!1111" amounts to in the end... still, I might be being generous to them. At this point, it isn't an issue of whether EELV can win in places like Firminy which are probably the last places where Greens would win in normal circumstances, but rather whether the left as a whole can win in those places.

Yeah, I'm placing Le Pen 3.0 as the winner in Carpentras-sud, though it is a very close call (the department is a hellhole, but they make elections interesting to watch). But I don't see either Collard or Panzergirl winning their seats.

In terms of groups on these numbers, EELV can easily form a group which Angelini would join. The PRG, if it can get the MRC, MUP and/or a few PS dissidents to join, could also have its own little group. The FG would need the MRC and MUP's members to join with it if it wants a group. NC can probably save a centrist group with the AC, the MoDem and maybe some DVDs. It would be fun to have, on top of the PS and UMP groups, a EELV group, a PRG group, a NC group and perhaps even a FG-MRC-something group.

btw, these predictions also integrate my older predictions for the 11 'foreign' seats, which I split 7 PS/3 UMP/1 EELV

There are a few seats where I'm starting to lose sleep over my predictions because it's so damn close:
Bouches-du-Rhone 11th
Val-de-Marne 4th
Hauts-de-Seine 13th
Wallis et Futuna
Loiret-1, 2 and even 3 and 6
Drome-2nd
two Alsatian right-right battles

But you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there's something wrong in the UMP when two seats in Vendee are tossups.

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How is Yonne 1re considered slightly Gauche?? I hope you're right, but the UMP+FN are 10 points over FG+PS. I know that FG voters are more likely to vote for PS than FN are to UMP (and there will be more FN people voting for PS than FG ones for UMP). However, a 10-point advantage for the right is just too much, don't you think? 

How many times do we need to say that adding UMP and FN votes is a stupid idea? There right doesn't have a "10 point advantage" or whatever here unless you're a braindead journalist.

55-60% of FN voters here will vote UMP, 90-98% of FG voters will vote PS (plus the Green and some far-left voters). On these numbers, the left has a (small) edge, without even counting any FN transfers to the left. Notice the gap?

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How is Yonne 1re considered slightly Gauche?? I hope you're right, but the UMP+FN are 10 points over FG+PS. I know that FG voters are more likely to vote for PS than FN are to UMP (and there will be more FN people voting for PS than FG ones for UMP). However, a 10-point advantage for the right is just too much, don't you think? 

How many times do we need to say that adding UMP and FN votes is a stupid idea? There right doesn't have a "10 point advantage" or whatever here unless you're a braindead journalist.

55-60% of FN voters here will vote UMP, 90-98% of FG voters will vote PS (plus the Green and some far-left voters). On these numbers, the left has a (small) edge, without even counting any FN transfers to the left. Notice the gap?

I think I said that it's not accurate to add FN to UMP votes... In fact, what I said was that FG voters are more likely and vote more for the PS than FN do for the UMP. But, Yonne 1st is a right wing place, so I don't think PS has the edge there. Let's wait until Sunday. You know more about French politics than me. You may be right.

So, please, next time, don't call my ideas 'stupid'. It's unnecessary.

Oh, for Christ's sake. Because you're so insistent, you've forced me to re-run my numbers on the constituency. And I still get 47.5% for the left and 46.1% for the right, on a generous assumption of 60% of FN voters going UMP (and even if 60% was 65%, the left would *still* have an edge). Then there's the strength of candidates. The PS candidate is the mayor of the biggest town by a mile in the constituency and has a strong local political footing. The UMP incumbent is retiring and their candidate is a regional councillor and former suppléant. And, no, don't play the argument that being a 'right-wing place' means that left cannot possibly win it; unless you feel like explaining to me why Jean-Christophe Lagarde and Marc Le Fur will probably win reelection or why the PS won both seats in the Meuse in 2002. I wouldn't be shocked if the UMP did win here, but I would not be placing money on that outcome.

I didn't call *your* ideas stupid, but I called the general idea - which 99% of casual observers are guilty of - of even thinking about adding UMP and all FN votes, regardless of whatever justifications you put for it. If you felt like I insulted you, I apologize, because that wasn't my intention, but I'm terribly fed up and exasperated by all the inanities and stupidities which have been said about these elections by all kinds of people. And regardless, adding UMP and FN votes is a stupid idea, though people who do it are not necessarily stupid. But in the realm of ideas, it is only stupid rather than moronic.

Now can I get back to serious business?

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-In Europe the concept of a single person controlling executive and legislative authority is widely accepted. Let France be the example: the presidential election is what really matters, in which the quasi-monarch is elected. The legislative election follows not because it is a serious contest, but because it legitimates the president's power. The president's party is supposed to win the legislatives. If the elections were held at the same time, you could have a president facing an opposition parliament - which would be awkward indeed.

This is correct, but only since 2000. Prior to that, legislative elections were far more important and were much less (except for elections like 1981 or 1988) confirmations of the president's mandate.

Anyhow, I changed my predictions to give NKM the edge. So subtract one from the PS and overall left and add one to the UMP and overall right.

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BTW, Gaël, I assume there will be a #legislatives2012 party once again on mibbit ?

Yeah, with the added fun of a Greek election doom and gloom "party" at the same time

Also, once again, no leaked results or exit polls before 20h.

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My chatroom thing is online, if anybody wants to chit-chat with me in this last hour.

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linky dinky?

Mibbit

#legislatives2012

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linky dinky?

Mibbit

#legislatives2012

That's... weird? You're sure you're doing all the steps correctly?

Can't find it.

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AP says the socialists will have an outright majority in parliament

Are you illiterate, retarded or missing a chromosome?

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Panzermiss is subjectively hot, but she's not remotely "sweet".

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fab you were right : Gorges in Eure-et-Loir-1 makes it, but really close...

Actually, I had predicted that before even the first round, when Fab didn't predict it until after the first round

I'm pleased by my predictions overall, with 92% correct thus far. Especially constituencies like Drome-2, Isere-7, Seine-et-Marne-7 where I disagreed with Fab Not so happy about BDR-11 and Yonne-1, where Julio can come and drool on my ruins.

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Green underperformance (that is, when compared to a more 'normal'  Left candidate) very obvious...

Just looked at that narrow Strasbourg seat and thought the same.

Strasbourg is not the place to notice it, because Buchmann did very well in what has always been the most right-wing of seats in Strasbourg and always the least likely to switch to the left. In Firminy, Toulouse-Balma and even Bergerac it is a bit obvious (but not massive). And overall, there was a Green underperformance of sorts, but I wouldn't make a huge case out of it, and all things considered, PS dissidents who were eliminated in the first round transferred their votes in a rather orderly fashion to EELV despite any bad blood.

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You didn't use my base map

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One thing that is very clear from the results is that there is less stigma attached to the FN than a decade ago. And I'm not even really thinking of those places where an FN candidate can now expect to poll better in a two-candidate runoff than a mainstream Right candidate.

Absolutely. The number of left-FN races where the FN broke 40 or even 45% is terrifying.

Indeed:

Nord-12: 18% to 42.5%
Tarn-et-Garonne-2: 19% to 40%