2017 French Presidential Election

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I was not active at the time that I guess the thread vanished - sometime quite late last night - so I'm at a loss as to what happened to it.

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Why is PACA so right-wing?

In a nutshell, pieds-noirs, the tourism industry, and strong anti-immigration sentiment. Gaël would have a lot more to say about it, of course.

That's a fair summary, although I'll just say that people seriously overstate the importance of the pied-noir and that there's something to be said about the bleak sh**ttiness of the many small and mid-sized towns which are massive FN strongholds (Le Luc, Cogolin, Le Pontet, Beaucaire, Carpentras, Monteux, Brignoles etc.).

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This thread is about France, not Austria.

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This board has certain rules which are explicitly set out, including the need to "contribute relevant content to the threads" and refraining "do not add any insightful value to the thread and discussion", and as is also explicitly set out, as moderator it is to my discretion how to treat such posts - and sometimes I choose to delete posts, without giving any 'infraction points'. The quality of discussion and analysis on the forum has shamefully collapsed in recent years, and this board is one of the few boards which still retains some level of interesting and relevant intelligent analysis, and I really intend to keep it that way. Ceaseless "Let me tell you how it is done in Austria!" posts are not helpful and contribute nothing to this thread, particularly when there's already an active thread about Austria where such posts would obviously be more than welcome (and please don't pretend that you're doing comparative politics, because that's not what comparative politics is). For that reason, for example, I won't go about making "Let me tell you how it is done in Canada!" posts in a thread about Austria, because posts like that wouldn't add any insightful value to the discussion.

Throwing around your favourite little epithets willy-nilly isn't helpful to anyone here and really doesn't elevate the quality of debate, which isn't very high to begin with on this forum. Nor are little "I can do what I want!" fits.

That's all I will say on this topic. If you wish to discuss it further, you may send me a PM.

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Another aspect of his education policy appears to be "5 year old kids will learn to respect authority!"

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There's little conclusive evidence of the FN systematically and substantially overperforming their pre-election polling, ftr.

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I'm not sure if this was mentioned at the time, but two weeks ago, Robert Hue backed Macron.

The first Blairite-communist?

To be fair, Hue has turned into a #woke progressive - his party's candidate, random guy Sébastien Nadot, weirdly boasted of having a VR campaign billboard and cited Justin Trudeau as an example for something. Still, no less hilarious. Also hilarious: former PCF deputy Patrick Braouezec (who, tbf, left the party a long time ago) endorsed Macron but also said he'd support the FG/whatever candidate in June because we need an 'anti-capitalist counter-power'. Heighten the contradictions, comrades.

Much less publicized by the Macronistas, but Macron is seemingly supported by Jean-Noël Guérini, the old criminal boss of the PS in the Bouches-du-Rhône who has dedicated his life since 2014 to destroying the remnants of the local PS. Flawless Beautiful Macron got signatures from guériniste senator Michel Amiel, Guérini-friendly and indicted PS deputy Jean-Pierre Maggi, a number of Guérini-friendly PS dept'al. councillors and - most tellingly - 2nd sector mayor (reelected in 2014 in a crass alliance with Gaudin) and departmental councillor Lisette Narducci, Guérini's closest ally (his binôme partner in 2015). The Macronistas have publicized the support of Christophe Masse, because he is less closely associated to the old Guérini faction, but Masse was certainly Guérini-friendly in a very recent past. In conclusion,

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Hamon's campaign is the RMS Titanic.

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As I've already said, there's no conclusive evidence of significant or persistent underpolling for the FN. Panzergirl slightly overperformed her last polling numbers in 2012, although the difference was never very large and probably within the margin of error. Since then, polling for the FN has been right on the spot or very close in both 2014 and 2015, when it wasn't any more or less 'shameful' to tell a pollster you backed the FN.

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There's a major difference, one which should be pretty obvious, between polling for an election which will draw some 30 million voters and a primary, even a high turnout one, which draws at most 4-5 million voters.

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The issue with Ségo wasn't her ideology (insofar as she actually had a coherent one, which is questionable) but that she was a fruitcake. 

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There have been lots of defections to support Macron, but the party is backing Fillon again. Lol "centrists", I never understand why France is full of these joke parties that are basically just annexes of the bigger one - UDI for LR; PRG for the PS...

Hilariously, the UDI isn't even a single party but rather a federation of party made up of four parties and four 'associated structure', much like the old UDF (and, like the old UDF, it is also possible to directly join the UDI as an 'adhérent direct'). It is currently made up of the Lagarde and friends' microempresa electoral (FED), Hervé Morin's useless NC (now called 'Les Centristes'), the Radical Party and Jean-Marie Bockel's utterly irrelevant La Gauche moderne. Jean Arthuis' Alliance centriste was excluded for supporting FBM. In 2014, the Radicals were the largest party with around 6,000 members, followed by the FED and NC with over 5,000 each (LGM claimed about 1,100 and AC 476) --- somewhat amazing that the FED had over 5,000 purported member, considering I've never seen that party as anything else than the product of Lagarde's personal feud with Morin and that no normal person has heard of it, although Lagarde has clientelistic networks so...

Some other parties originally joined but have since left or been expelled: Neuilly mayor Jean-Christophe Fromantin's micro-party (TEM) left, the irrelevant Parti libéral démocrate came and went and the old but useless right-wing CNIP was expelled shortly after Gilles Bourdouleix's "Hitler probably didn't kill enough" (Roma) comment.

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Lassalle continues to be hilarious. Seems to be slightly drunk (or it might be his natural insanity).

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Fillon displays his utter ignorance of Venezuelan constitutional law. Sad!

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Which one is Borloo's faction and why hasn't kicked them up the arse for supporting Fillon?

Also, the mention of Lagarde and UDI remants reminded me of this abomination :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyLOy7l_jP4

Borloo was with the Radical Party. Despite its pretensions, the PRV has declined into obscurity and irrelevance once more, unable to exist without others' goodwill. In any case, Borloo is nowhere to be found, presumably too drunk to care. It's unclear if he has some kind of secret master plan but it's irrelevant since he's proven that he's incompetent and a failed politician.

The UMP lipdub is one of the greatest moments in recent French history. A shout-out to the IMF director's sick dance moves, Wauquiez checking out the girl next to him, whatever the hell my lovely deputy Frédo Lefebvre was doing there and Jean-Pierre Raffarin's timeless goal of being that hip kewl kid.

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Hamon 72%
Arthaud 68%
Poutou 67%
FBM 65%
Mélenchon 60%
Cheminade 56%
NDA 53%
Panzergirl 48%
Fillon 46%

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Arthaud's the candidate for Lutte Ouvrier - Workers' Struggle. It's a Trotskyist party.

Sect.

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Given Panzergirl's electorate, the typical FN voter would have been in the STO. But I digress, this is a dumb point to be discussing.

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The easiest way to understand the vagaries of French politics is to keep in mind that (a) with very few exceptions, every single French politician of national stature is an arrogant egomaniac who believes that he/she is a truly incredible genius and that everybody else is a nincompoop, and (b) the presidential election is the most important election in France by miles (especially post-2000) and there is a huge incentive for every party to 'get counted'. Once you understand these two facts, you will understand why French politics works the way it does.

Alternatively, you can do like I do and treat French politics the same way I treat Colombian or Paraguayan politics.

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The region as a whole has moved to the left as it has become more secular, in particular the far east of the region, and around the Monts d'Arrée in Finistere, which are traditional catholic strongholds.

I don't bother posting here anymore (too many morons), but the Monts d'Arrée were not a traditional Catholic stronghold - in fact, it has been a stronghold of the radical/revolutionary left since at least the nineteenth century, already being described as such by André Siegfried in 1913. It is a very poor, militantly secular and typically rebellious region which has a long history of radical left politics - the old canton of Huelgoat was held by the PCF between 1945 and 2008, Robert Hue was winning over 30% of the vote in some communes in 1995 (placed first in four) and Mélenchon did very well in 2012 too (not as well as Hue). The Catholic stronghold par excellence of the Finistère is the Léon, which was extremely right-wing until recently (still somewhat visible), and to a lesser extent some of the Montagnes Noires.