Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections

Perhaps you can share the source of your 'fact' so we judge that for ourselves?

You claim they won the most seats. You are the only one doing so.

I dont know where you get your 'facts' from but in the absence of a citation when declared like that they are not a reliable guide to the truth.

According to France24 and every other major news outlet the National Rally are projected to be 3rd in number of seats:

"France's New Popular Front has won the largest number of seats in the final round of snap parliamentary elections, leaving behind the remnants of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp and the far-right National Rally trailing in third place."

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240707-france-s-leftist-new-popular-front-wins-a-shock-victory-%E2%80%93-but-now-the-hard-part-begins

I know that but it seems like they don't know what they are referring to.

This doesn't make any sense if interpreted that way… "seats out of 7 parties."

So it doesn't make sense even as a reference to the anti far right pact of the New Popular front and Ensemble \ Macron's Centrist alliance, which is made up of more parties than that.

And nowhere else on the thread are discussions down to that level, comparing the number of seats of specifically the National Rally with say Renaissance rather than the Centrist alliance, or La France Insoumise versus New Popular Front.

There is no meaningful sense in which they got the "most seats", given how French elections are run.

It is like someone who has lost the game complaining about the rules… oh no the other side ganged up on me!

This is how it is actually reported by reputable news organisations such as France24:

France's New Popular Front has won the largest number of seats in the final round of snap parliamentary elections

Number of seats won by the parties and share of the vote overall against blocks of parties. So they are far and way the most popular party.

Firstly, he's not pro leaving the EU. Secondly, most people aren't single issue. Personally for me, I view Le Pen to be a sanitized version of her father. I would suspect she still shares plenty of his views, simply isn't as vocal. Then there's the racism and her relationship with Russia. The latter position completely endangers all of Europe and the EU doesn't need another Russian puppet in a position of power.

Nobody else is talking about 'most popular party'. Nowhere else on this thread have you shown any concern for the number of seats e.g. of Renaissance.

If the shoe was on the other foot, and Renaissance had most seats as a party, but the RN 'block' had more seats overall, there's no chance you'd be saying oh but Renaissance are the most popular party. None whatsoever and don't pretend otherwise.

Even the image you provided totals the seats up by the blocks of parties.

And the RN are themselves part of a block, it is not some conspiracy to 'gerrymander' against them as you misrepresented earlier.
National Rally presented themselves to the electorate as part of a block.

It appears to be a desperate form of 'copium', as noted in other posts, because they came 3rd in the election.

No, you aren't.

The French system is designed to let people decide between minor differences of opinion in the first round without splitting the vote between them as they have a final round for people to then decide what their effective next preference is from the most popular options. It doesn't stop extremes so much as it stops the center from splitting their vote and being forced into a single party to be effective.

Vote share is irrelevant because both the center and the left withdrew candidates from the final round. Coalition is more important than party as well.

People did this in the UK as well to overestimate the importance of the far right. They split the stats into ways the system simply discourages. If France had a different system that relied more on parties then many of those parties would join together, if they were more about vote share across the country then many of those candidates would not have dropped out. All parties targeted seats by group and RN was 3rd far below expectations.

They made an electoral pact only to prevent RN getting more seats.

RN was up against 7 parties with differing views and they won more seats as a block because most of the seats were from big cities that have different demographics than traditional rural areas. Paris for example is probably not the greatest place for a right wing party to gain votes and probably people in rural areas don't want their towns and villages turning into what Paris is becoming.

Given that RN had dozens of votes with 47%+ in two horse race races and lost, it is quite clear what would of happened in a 3 horse race.

Nothing illegal about it, just the way it is and it worked. Same as it worked against the communists for all those years.

If you can't understand the difference between a party and an alliance is your fault not mine. It was repeated enough for you and pointed out to you by others.

The interesting thing about the distribution of votes is that both Melenchon and Le Pen have both had their best ever showing at an election. If you look at the voting patterns of young people the difference is even more pronounced between the two opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Macron might have been able to stop Le Pen thanks to his voting pact, but that doesn't really address the root issue that France has become a highly polarized society where the centre ground is being abandoned.

I don't really know where France goes from here. In the short-term, it'll probably mean gridlock as no single grouping will have a large enough block of votes. Longer-term, all bets are off really, especially if the economy was to hit trouble.

You're missing the point here, and it's odd coming from someone who (I suppose) is Irish and so should be aware of how vote transfers work, ie that some parties are more polarising than others and thus are unable to gain the support needed from a wider section of society that would allow them to transform their points (first preference votes) into goals (transfers in the STV system, extra votes in the second round in the French system).

Your point about the Communists illustrates the same phenomenon, but you seem to think it's a failure of democracy, when in fact it's a way for the widest possible section of society to get behind the elected government. Communism had a significant level of support, but society as a whole wanted "anyone but the Communists". That's a perfectly valid choice to make. And so far, that has also been the case with the far right/Le Pen party.

The RN have the largest number of seats, but are so wildly unpopular among the majority of French society that most voters finally chose "anyone but the RN". As they were entitled to do.

You mean if France had had a First Past the Post system? They don’t though- and that’s a choice.

I mean they definitely would have won more if no one had opposed them either. Or if another right wing party had been running they potentially could have done far worse.

I mean it seems likely but also many voters would have started tactically voting in round 2 based off of the 1st round.

The voters made their choice and if their candidate had pulled out after the 1st round they could have switched to RN, the fact that they didn't showed the majority were against RN and had a preference for the left.

This is the fundamental idea behind the French people, an unpopular party should not rule because the most popular viewpoint disagrees on minor details and splits the vote. The weirdness in the system meant that this depressed the vote of the parties pulling candidates but it reaches a decent end result.

Edit: if the people were as opposed to the centre or the left as they are on the right they would not have switched their votes for whichever of them stayed in the race.

No I definitely don’t think they would have got an overall majority. Because there was nothing stopping them from getting a majority except the fact that they didn’t get enough votes.

RN did not stand down anywhere - it was the other parties that did that. The voters were entirely free to reject that strategy and to vote for the RN candidate if they wished.

That such a large majority went along with it in the secrecy of the polling booth shows that they agree with that rejection of RN.

There are not enough French people who want to see RN in power to give them a majority.

It’s that simple.

Yes exactly: it's just making it explicit for people how they can vote tactically to keep RN out - if that is what they want to do.

It doesn't force anyone to vote against RN if they don't want to do that.

Looking at some of the "how to destroy your economy and make everyone poor" proposals from the NPF

• Price controls
• 90% tax on 400k plus
• Lowering retirement age to 60

Glad they kept the far right out, but the far left really do live in some sort of magical alternative reality

And there is more to unpopularity than numbers. There is also the depth of unpopularity wherein we can truly despise a party that has its roots in JMLePen for whom the concentration camps in the last world war were a "detail in history" ,where their candidates are recently seen sporting Nazi hats and ,in all likelihood (a long time since I was in France) odious racist attitudes lurk beneath the surface or perhaps above the surface.

Not quite what the article says is it?

While Moshe Sebbag certainly did not welcome the New Popular Front victories, he ultimately lamented about the mainstreaming of antisemitism in general.

Strange, earlier on the thread, you were supporting RN and here you claim to be concerned about anti-semitism. So I guess you are switching your support to Macron now?

And yet, one of the people interviewed in an article you referenced says:

In an interview in Paris, the writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy said: “All the Jews I know agree they will of course never vote for France Unbowed, and they will never vote for Marine Le Pen.”

When it came to RN, he said: “There is absolutely no evidence of a deep change on the matter of antisemitism.”

RN, originally named Front National, was co-founded by Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is well known for his antisemitic remarks. He has been convicted several times of contesting crimes against humanity, including for his claims that the gas chambers used to kill Jews during the Holocaust were only a “detail” of history… Even after its rebranding, RN has continued to face repeated scandals, including election candidates making allegedly antisemitic remarks.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/06/french-jewish-people-second-round-elections-antisemitism-voting-choices

Being raised by a holocaust denier does not make their offspring one also, it is not some sort of hereditary thing passed down through generations you know.

The main concern for the French people now is the eagerness of the radical left fanatics to increase uncontrolled immigration into France nevermind reduce it. Macron also joining up with them must horrify the vast majority of French citizens into their futures and serious questions need asking why are doing so against the will of the vast majority of the public.

The vast majority of people throughout Europe are asking the very same questions of their leaders and voices are going to get louder and louder.

I mean if you take over the party run by an anti semite it is going to be pretty tough to make your case.

Not just anti semitism they have plenty of candidates that are racist including stating that Northern Africans should not hold high office. They did force the nazi cap candidate to step down but as long as these incidents keep happening in large numbers with candidates they have little chance of removing the racist tag.

Of course the far right will always have the issue that they will attract racists and not many racists are smart enough to keep the quiet part quiet

https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-france-elections-2024-national-rally-paris-jordan-bardella-emmanuel-macron-europe/#:~:text=French%20investigative%20journalism%20outlet%20Mediapart,its%20support%20from%20their%20campaigns.

Macron's letter is an invitation to the moderate left to dump the far left and join him. The problem is that he's is in the position of the boy who cried wolf, because he promised during previous second round campaigns (particularly during the 2022 legislatives) that if the left supported his candidates so as to block Marine Le Pen, he would listen to their concerns and run a more left wing government. Once elected of course, he did nothing of the sort.

His advantage of course is that the left wing coalition is a shaky structure which presumably won't last long as it is anyway, so there will be a temptation for some if the posts offered are big enough.

My guess - and that's all it is - is that it is too soon for the left's coalition to break up, but it will happen sooner or later.

Looks like the radical left are calling for protests and talk of action ahead of the Olympics which start in 2 weeks. One thing for certain is a lack of torches won't be complained about.