French Legislative Election 2017

[parochial boy]

The fact that the legislatives could take place slap bang in the middle of an all out FN civil war could cause them to nosedive in support.

The knives already look like they're being sharpened for Philippot; and I can't really see the niece winning over swing voters in the North East so much.

[parochial boy]

Valls officially sells out.

For those of you who don't know: Valls formally leaving PS to join République En Marche and is running as a REM candidate in the législatives.

First of many, I fear.

Valls has officially joined REM?

It's then end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine).

[parochial boy]

So Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is out. She will be back in 10 years, I'm pretty sure.

So without Panzergirl and Panzerbabby, who leads the FN?

It really has to depend on which faction wins the upcoming fest.

[parochial boy]

I have a dumb, and slightly irrelevant question, but has there ever been a case of the party that finished third in the first round winning a triangulaire?

[parochial boy]

Looks like François Bayrou is furious over the REM list that includes 24 PS MPs and only 35 on the list are from MoDem.  Mr Bayrou told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine that he and Macron had agreed before the election that about a quarter of the constituencies would be allocated to MoDem, while the remaining three quarters would be represented by REM. He said this represents the weight of the contribution he provided during Macron’s campaign.

This is actually something of a financial blow for MoDem - they were hoping for about 100 constituencies; including 30 "winnable" constituencies; in order to hopefully get 15 people elected - enough to form a parliamentary group in the assembly and receive associated funds.

So if MoDem genuinenly only have 35 candidates in there, they could be losing out on quite a lot of funding; and they are fairly cash strapped as it is/

[parochial boy]

Looks like François Bayrou is furious over the REM list that includes 24 PS MPs and only 35 on the list are from MoDem.  Mr Bayrou told Le Nouvel Observateur magazine that he and Macron had agreed before the election that about a quarter of the constituencies would be allocated to MoDem, while the remaining three quarters would be represented by REM. He said this represents the weight of the contribution he provided during Macron’s campaign.

This is actually something of a financial blow for MoDem - they were hoping for about 100 constituencies; including 30 "winnable" constituencies; in order to hopefully get 15 people elected - enough to form a parliamentary group in the assembly and receive associated funds.

So if MoDem genuinenly only have 35 candidates in there, they could be losing out on quite a lot of funding; and they are fairly cash strapped as it is/

Did MoDem even have 100 people who could have been candidates? My impression was that the party was moribund before Macron. Bayrou had even lost his own seat.

I think that is a big part of why they were really hanging on getting a lot out of Macron - even some no hoper would be useful as long as they could get over the 5% threshold; which would be pretty likely with the LREM endoresement.

[parochial boy]

No LREM candidate standing against Maryam El-Khomri. Shame, if there was one PS member I really wanted to out of parliament.

[parochial boy]

    So it looks like there will be many seats where after the 1st round we might have a REM, Republican, a FN and a left candidate all making the 2nd round. In such circumstances what kind of stand down agreements are likely, if at all.

Is that true? With the 12.5% of registered voters threshold and turnout around 60% or even lower along with some nulls one would need 21% to get into the second round.  I find it hard to believe that we will have 4 candidates all above 21% in many seats especially with PS, FI/PG and FCP splinting the Left vote.

 

I can't see the PCF playing much of a spoiler role - basically all their current parliamentary delegation, and half the municipalities they control were won off the back of alliances and hand outs from other parties. Without the support of Mélenchon's name recognition, they won't play much of a role.

[parochial boy]

Agreement between Bayrou and LREM.
LREM has yet to formally accept the agreement this morning.

How many "winnable" seats did Bayrou extract?

Not yet confirmed it will seem, but the 428 LREM candidates announced so far won't change.

If anyone is interested Libé have an interactive map of where LREM have announced candidates. I think you can start to get a decent picture of where the left might hold on from that.

http://www.liberation.fr/apps/2017/05/circonscriptions-en-marche-candidats/

A lot of incumbents in both PS and LR also feel pretty confident about their chances as they see the LREM candidates as being complete nobodies, and LREM don't have anything like the ground game.

[parochial boy]

Big ask, but does anybody have a list of which constituencies have the highest combined left vote and are most likely to have left candidates in the second round?

I'm sure someone has got better, but I found a not very great breakdown of results by constituency and came up with a total of 2 constituencies where Mélenchon + Hamon got over 50% (not including Poutou or Arthaud); Seine-St-Denis-2 and Seine-St-Denis-7

and another 26 where they got over 40% combined:
6 in Seine-St-Denis
4 in Paris
4 in Val de Marne
2 in Bouches-du-Rhône
2 in Val d'Oise
1 each in Hauts de Seine, St Pierre et Miquelon, Hérault, Haute-Garonne, Nord, Martinique, Seine Maritime and Gironde

[parochial boy]

Philippe is PM.

You can't see it, but I'm sighing really hard right now.

I wonder if this might backfire, and picking a right wing PM might put off the left leaning voters who made up the backbone of Macron's support

[parochial boy]

Macron really blowing away the old order with this cabinet. Le Renouveau my backside.

[parochial boy]

At 6% in the polls, it will be an uphill battle for the PS to win anything at all, which could at least mean the consolation of seeing Myriam El Khomri kicked out.

But then again, Macron won easily in Paris-18, so she sadly probably will make it.

Le Foll has got to be in danger though.

[parochial boy]

Ugh Mélenchon needs to f**k off. What a piece of sh*t. I'd honestly vote for the LREM guy over him in that constituency if that's the choice.

Really? Given that Macron's cabinet makes it look like he intends to govern as a more socially liberal version of LR, I would have thought it was crucial to put as many left-wingers in parliament as remotely possible.

[parochial boy]

I hope Hamon rebuilds the party, he is a good politician & a decent person & more preferable to Melenchon!

I hope so too, but what Mélenchon is doing is to make sure that this rebuilding never happens. He wants to kill the PS outright and leave no room for any political force between him and FBM. This is, again, the best way to ensure that the French left remains irrelevant.

A space between Macron and Melenchon is just a Muslim vote bank.

Really? Are there even 7% (Hamon's percentage) of muslims in France with the right to vote?

And was Hamon basically a muslim candidate? >.>

Well Hamon's best scores were in Brittany, which is quite noticeable for its lack of muslims

[parochial boy]

Valls is clearly very proud of his party...

[parochial boy]

OpinionWay

LREM: 28% (+1 since last week)
LR: 20% (=)
FN: 19% (-1)
FI: 15% (+1)
PS: 10% (-1)

Seats (based on the 535 seats in metropolitan France)
LREM: 310-330 (+30)
LR: 140-160 (-10)
PS: 25-30 (-15)
FI: 25-30 (+5)
FN: 10-15 (=)

Historically has PS support on the first round been quite uniform or not?  I find it hard to believe with a vote share of 10% PS-PRG-EELV can win 25-30 seats especially with EELV running against PS in a good chunk of the seats.  The only way to explain it is if PS has a couple dozen strongholds where support has not drifted to FI or LREM AND LREM happens to have a weak candidate for the second round.

I assume it's because, where they do make it into the second round, they would have a good shot.

Especially in places like Paris-18 where LREM aren't standing or where the PS can position themselves as the main representatives of the left.

[parochial boy]

I think that, while LREM are clearly going to be the largest party by some margin in the first round, they won't win that huge of a majority.

Remember that in the second rounds, LREM candidates are going to be coming up against much more region appropriate candidates than Le Pen was - a PS or FI candidate in the Lot or Ariège; or conversely an LR candidate in Haute-Savoie or Loiret is going to puch up a much sterner challenge than Le Pen did. And bear in mind that the nature of a triangulaire means you can't just expect that all right-wing voters would jump over to an LREM candidate in the case of an FI/PS one winning in the first round

[parochial boy]

Excuse my ignorance, but in the first round don't candidate who get 12.5%+ make it to the second round? Or is it top 2?

If no candidate gets a majority of all registered voters, then any candidate who recieved at least 12.5% of registered voters can participate in the second round. If no one meets that threshold, then the top two candidates go to the second round.  

Any candidate who makes the second round can withdraw before the date of the election, and to win you only need a majority of votes actually cast.

Adding to this slightly - if only one candidate gets more than 12.5% of registered voters, but falls short of 50% of votes, there will be a second round, even if the second placed candidate wins less than 12.5% of registered voters

Likewise, in order to win in the first round, a candidate needs to win over 50% of votes, but also over 25% of registered voters. It is therefore possible (and has happened in the past) for someone to win over 50% of votes, but for there still to be a second round as a result of low turnout.

Also, as an example of how hillariously balkanised the left is at the moment - the following 6 candidates are all standing in Haute-Savoie 4 (in a part of the country with absolutely no left wing tradition):
Annie Anselme   (PCF - Front de gauche)               
Anne Favrelle (PS)            
Sabrina Ghoual (Lutte Ouvrière)                     
Michèle Kobus (FI)                     
Patrick Royer (Mouvement 100%) ecologists            
Catherine Walthert Selosse (EELV)

Amusingly, a Savoie independentist and and Islamist are also standing in the constituency.

[parochial boy]

an Islamist are also standing in the constituency.

So this guy's party, the "Equality and Justice" party (PEJ) have been accused of being an unofficial front for, and backed by Erdogan and the AKP.

They will undoubtedly be completely irrelevant in the elecltions, with the possible exception of round Strasbourg, which has a large Turksih community; but it does raise the prospect of continuing attempts by Turkey to interfere in European democracies.

it was always baffling for me that the "demo for all"-movement was able to rally sooo many french people.....wasn't nearly as successful in other european countries, who are not known for sexual ...well..liberty.

/stereotype

Well they're French, nothing they love more than a good protest...

[parochial boy]

First results

French abroad, 1st (North America)
Lescure (LREM): 54.26%
Lefebvre* (LR): 13.37%
Langlois (FI): 12%
Chantrel (PS): 9.13%

Runoff Lescure - Lefebvre

French abroad, 2nd (South America) (80% in)
Forteza (LREM): 43.32%
Conorado* (FI-EELV): 24.24%
Drouhaud (LR): 10.36%

Runoff Forteza-Conorado

(* = incumbent)

No run off North america when Lescure gets over 50 percent?!

You need to get 25% of all registered voters as well as a majority of votes to be elected in the first round, turnout was only 19% so there will be a run off.

[parochial boy]

TBH, if you can win 75% of available seat of off 30% of the first round vote, then it's a pretty clear signal that France desperately needs electoral reform

[parochial boy]

From what I remember of the presidential, the regional polls that came out there were pretty off (like Fillon was going to win in IdF for instance).

Some of the numbers in that regional poll above look pretty bizarre. LREM are really going to get a bigger score in Pays de la Loire and Normandy than in IdF or Brittany? they're going to do better in Hauts-de-France than in Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes? really?

[parochial boy]

Get the f**k out of this thread you dumbass.

Lol, sorry, but I really would like to see EM's success replicated elsewhere, particularly in the UK. Plus, Corbyn really could become PM soon enough, and I think it'd be a disaster.

"Flawless, beautiful" to a tyranny-of-the-centre fault.  That is, boring as f**k.  The only un-boring thing being the plethora of first-round knockouts for sitting parliamentarians (incl. Hamon).

Maybe you do, but I don't mind politics being boring at all.

The think is, Britain was led by Flawless Beautiful Centrists from 1997-2007 and from 2010-2016. In case you hadn't noticed,  on both occasions it ended in a complete disaster.

[parochial boy]

Final map by constituency:

Are the FN areas all large immigrant areas as well?

The ones in the South around Marseille, Nice, Monaco etc. I guess are having a big share of immigrants.

The ones in the North are 95%+ French and mostly struggling former PS areas, coal mining and industrial areas ...

The FN ones in the South aren't around Nice or Monaco. They're near Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), Nimes (Gard), Béziers (Hérault), Perpignan (Pyrenées-Orientales).

They're areas with high immigration, but also are poorer than the swanky areas around Nice. They've also got a large proportion of pieds-noirs (French-Algerians who were kicked out after independence), elderly people and artisans/small shopkeepers. All of those are strong FN demographics.