French elections: Left projected to win most seats, ahead of Macron's coalition and far right
French elections: Left projected to win most seats, ahead of Macron's coalition and far right
According to initial estimates, the Nouveau Front Populaire left-wing alliance is projected to win between 172 and 192 seats in France's Assemblée Nationale, ahead of Macron's coalition (between 150 and 170) and the far-right Rassemblement National (between 132 and 152).
Ok now I'm so confused, can someone more in tune with French politics enlighten me? Just last week it seemed really doom and gloom with all the talk of the far right Le Pen and her party dominating the polls, then Macron and his party (ig a center or center left party?) talking about dropping out to deny Le Pen the majority
But now the actual left wing party is appearing to actually dominate? Were the French polls wrong like they are in the US or something?
The French Left and Macron's centrists both agreed to drop out of competitive races and support each other's candidates. With that, many of the races that were previously considered to be in the far-right's favor changed to favor the left, no longer having to split the vote with the centrists.
My understanding is:
There were elections, no one paid any attention to them, the nazi party won a ton of seats and everyone went "WTF?"
Macron immediately called a snap election to give themselves a mulligan, did an all out media blitz to get people to pay attention, made a deal with the left wing where the centrists dropped out(they are unpopular), opening the door for the left wing to swoop in and save the day.
Kudos to him for a ballsy move to keep Nazis out of power.
The far-right won big in elections for the EU.
Macron called a snap election for the FRENCH legislature in the hopes of using "Far right is winning, SUPPORT THE NON-FAR-RIGHT" (implicitly, Macron's centrists) to renew his mandate to rule.
However, the far-right won big in the first round of elections, sending everyone into a panic, since they were projected to get close to or an actual majority in the French legislature.
Macron and the Left then agreed that in races where both of their candidates were competitive, the weaker of the candidates in each of the races would drop out to bolster the other, because as much as they hate each other, they hate the far-right more.
That's an overall accurate analysis, but more leftists have dropped out than centrists. A number of centrists refused to drop out, leading to far right seats rather than leftists.
Following the European elections Macron decided in all his hubris and contempt, to dissolve the Assembly. The far right basically won the elections, (roughly 40% of the votes with a 60% abstention rate, definitely not legitimate but they still won).
The dissolution called for early parliamentary elections, which was pretty much unexpected. The far right rejoiced, especially because of their fresh results from the European elections. Pretty much all the left parties panicked (justifiably so) and banded together as the NFP.
France being a shit country when it comes to actual press freedom (90% of mass media are controlled by a dozen people roughly, mostly billionaires, including Vincent Bolloré, our very own Rupert Murdoch), the media unleashed an absolute massive amount of right wing and far right propaganda to discredit the NFP and its program (supported by multiple economists, including but not limited to, Esther Duflo the Economy Nobel price laureate, specialized in poverty).
Said program is fairly softly leftist, with a big emphasis on massively raising tax revenue for the richest people and increasing public spending for everyone else. It got demonized by the bourgeois owned media and our own brainwashed population.
The first round of the election projected an absolute majority of RN in the assembly. With a significant number of three people in the second round, the NFP removed all its candidates that ended up third, the current ruling party took its time but ended up doing the same to limit vote division and prevent a far right massacre.
With a massive mobilization, the leftist party ended up with a majority apparently, which is good, but not really good enough to wreck shit up like they wanted. Now we can take a breather and hope they won't go back to their petty infighting and do what they promised to do, because if they don't, we will have a far right president in 2027.
It's a bit simplified obviously, but that's the gist of it.
The right was never dominating the polls. They had ~30%. It was always going to play out this way. The doom and gloom was that actual fascists had 30% of the vote.
It was only individual candidates being encouraged to drop out strategically.
France has a slightly less shitty electoral system than e.g. UK, US, Canada, so a party with 30% was never going to win absolute power.
Edit: when I say "it was always going to play out this way" l just mean the right weren't going to win a majority. The left still seems to have done surprisingly well in the second round.
Also, it's still shitty that the fascists won so many seats..
France has a slightly less shitty electoral system than e.g. UK, US, Canada, so a party with 30% was never going to win absolute power.
They were projected with 240-310 seats (out of 577) before the Centrists and Left agreed to cooperate. If things were a little more dysfunctional, it could very well have ended up very ugly.
This is comforting given the outlook on the US election.
The problem with the US (and Canada, and to a lesser degree the UK) is that the centrists would rather lose to the far right than legitimize actual leftism.
We’ve seen this in Canada several times, at all levels, where the Liberals would rather go down in flames in an election, knowing that they'll get another shot in a few years time, then share power with actual leftists in order to keep the right from doing more damage.
I'm really impressed with Macron. That's a level of long term holistic thinking that you don't normally see from neoliberal politicians.
It seemed to have been a bet that the left would be completely divided so that he could place his party as the defender against the far right in order to get an absolute majority (he only had a relative majority until now)
That didn't work because the left parties managed to create a united front in less than a week.
But let's not forget the following: yes, the left parties have a relative majority (or at least should given the last estimations), but the far right did gain a lot of seats in the elections compared to last time. So yeah it could have been worse, but it's not exactly a comfortable situation either
Per first hand accounts, Macron called the elections because he legitimately thought he could win this, and then did backroom deals for his MP candidates to not drop out where in competition with the left against the far right, despite publicly claiming he would support the drop out scheme. He's a fool and an incompetent that got France in this situation in the first place.
In fact it's not even certain that he won't just try to make a government by allying with the far right. He's really got his head that far up his own ass.
The Liberals could have prevented a Conservative majority by implementing election reform. They were worried that it might hurt them a tiny bit, so that was enough to scrap the idea.
We’ve seen this in Canada several times, at all levels, where the Liberals would rather go down in flames in an election, knowing that they'll get another shot in a few years time, then share power with actual leftists in order to keep the right from doing more damage
Aren't we right now under a coalition between the liberals and the NDP? One that has been on for 3 and some years?