French legislative election 2012

[lilTommy]

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That's an interesting discrepancy because, extrapolating from Gaël's constituency-by-constituency analysis, I come to the conclusion that the left's victory should be lower than in 1997. So looking at national number, the left is far ahead, while if you look at individual races it's almost a tossup.
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From following Hash DAILY, hes doing some fantastic work, and from somone who only knows french politics form a superficial perspective its been a wonderful education.... we can all thank Marleix's gerrymandering the constituencies (attempt in some cases) where you have huge safe left seats "reserves", but fewer competative ones (at least on paper right) leading to a large number of toss-ups where i would expect the local issues/candidates to be more important?

Also, i have a question... whats a suppleant? why are some/most parties basically presenting two candidates?

[lilTommy]

Thanks! i thought it was more the second option (minister), i didn't know they can by-pass a by-election all together... interesting.

... it seems that happens all the time, dissidents running, many look to be because they don't support the parties choice of another parties candidate (ie the PS endorsing the EELV and so on) or personal clashes and infighting.

Any news on the campaigns? who becomes the main spokesperson now? i'm looking from a NA perspective here; is Hollande actively campaigning and promoting PS policies? or is Aubry the main PS leader out-and-about? is Sarko the face of the UMP during the campaign? are policy directions even hashed out?