French Deparmental and Regional elections - 20th/27th June 2021

[parochial boy]

The touted postponment until 2022 is apparently no longer on the cards, so March 2021 is all but confirmed. Therefore welcome to episode 4 of "Les Aventures de Jupiter: Petit Manu et le professeur Marseillais"

Regional and Departmental elections planned to be held simultaneously in March 2021 So many fascinating mysteries to solve including:

 - "Will the Rassemblement national finally even win a department let alone a region?"

 - "Does the general meaninglessness of the exercise means that LREM finally breaks through at the local level?"

 - "Exactly how badly do LR and the PS get routed?"

 - "Will anyone ever actually figure out what a Region is even supposed to do?

 - "Do CNews finally come out in support of Adolf Hitler?"

All that and more over the next 6 months!

[parochial boy]

Bump... because these are actually taking place in June. And because it might give an indication of how the left will unite, or as is more likely, won't unite for 2022 here is a little explainer of the current status of alliances on the left for the regionals:

https://twitter.com/Ariel_Guez/status/1372220082374504448

Or in other words:

EELV won't unite with ayone unless they get to be at the top

Génération.S have been fully subsumed into EELV

PS are desperate and will work with anyone. As long as they still get to be in charge. So in practice mostly irrelevant micro parties like Place Publique or the Communists

LFI are surprisingly OK about not heading lists

Also, "Auvergne Rhône-Alpes" ‍🤦‍♂️

[parochial boy]

Is PS even participating in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur elections?

They're supposed to be announcing a joint list led by EELV today. Without LFI though.

[parochial boy]

I haven't paid any attention to these either as it turns out - no-one has as far as I can tell. One thing to look out for, if not mentioned already, is whether or not (most likely not) we see much in the way of "désistements républicains" in the second round. As in, back in 2015, the PS /left stood down in the second round in Hauts-de-France and PACA to block the RN's way. This year, relations between left and righ having soured quite noticeably - it seems rather unlikely that this will happen again.

Or to put it in other words, LR/LREM treading ever more on the RN's turf has served to both normalise the far right - and to very much quash the potential for anti-RN "republican fronts" (quite a few right wing politicos and pundits have already quite explicitely expressed a preference for the far right over the left).

[parochial boy]

Bevet Breizh!

[parochial boy]

The thing is, as things stand, this is all rather reminiscant of the municipals last year in so far as it's disspointing for LREM (which we knew already), dissapointing for the RN (more of a surprise); and a little more encouraging than expected for the "traditional" parties in LR and the PS. All in a way that seems to rather contradict all the national/presidential level polling.

In reality you can put it down to LREM's lack of local notables - a bit - because it's not like Dupond-Moretti & cie aren't all big figres; and the same with the RN - a bit - because the fact remains that they seem to be down on 2015 actually, and there aren't the same excuses here that they had in the municipals.

So I live in hope - but not much - that there is a potential route in 2022 that isn't what the polling and the discourse is all suggesting. It seems a stretch, but the fact is, Macron is still widely hated beyond his core support of ~25% of the electorate... and Le Pen too. The reason they poll well is down to how bad the alternatives are, not down to the fact that people actually like them.

[parochial boy]

So I live in hope - but not much - that there is a potential route in 2022 that isn't what the polling and the discourse is all suggesting. It seems a stretch, but the fact is, Macron is still widely hated beyond his core support of ~25% of the electorate... and Le Pen too. The reason they poll well is down to how bad the alternatives are, not down to the fact that people actually like them.

You do realize that a candidate only needs a core support of 25-30% to guarantee advancement in a two-round runoff system? Said systems benefit those with decently-sized and supportive bases of support. All you need is enough partisans are the rest of the electorate will be forced to decide which of you is least worst - see the recent Peruvian contest. Peru is actually a great example of how the flaws in these systems trend towards electoral instability and net unpopularity. To have a third candidate hit the 25% mark despite the wide field would be statistically hard if not impossible.

Yes, I am aware of how the presidential election functions. The point is, a majority of the electorate viscerally hate one or both of Le Pen and Macron, and one of the defining features of the French electorate is a weak party system and weak party loyalties which means that polling intentions can change very quickly when minds start to be focussed (cf, among other examples, the rise and fall of Chevènement in 2002, or even more pertinent, the fall and fall of Balladur in 1995). After all, you only need to look at 2017 to see what can happen to a candidate with a solid 20% base, but who is widely hated by the rest of the electorate.


I'm not saying I think it will happen, but there remains the possibilty that a candidate on either the left or right manages to rally round the 25% of the vote or so it would take to knock out one of either Macron or Le Pen.

That excuse works better with LREM than RN. With LREM they had no notables running this time round. RN did (for example, Mariani in PACA).

Yet again a reason why I think the results were worse for RN than LREM.

Yeah, worse for RN - but LREM still had Dupond-Moretti in the Hauts-de-France; Marlène Schiappa heading the list in Paris and Gabriel Attal on a list in Essonne (or was it Hauts-de-Seine, the ninety-something departments are all indistinguishable imho) among others. Those are all pretty big national profiles, even if without the local fiefdoms that Laurent Wauquiez or whoever might have.

[parochial boy]

I forget who coined it, but Macron has been FBM, for "flawless beautiful Macron" for a while now

[parochial boy]

And in News™, Valérie Pécresse is calling for a "front républicain" (including, apparently, a certain Nicolas Dupont-Aignan) against... the Greens.

Country's fücked, lol

[parochial boy]

Like in the first round, Le Callenec’s list swept the area of Vitré, winning 43.9% in the commune itself, while coming first in southeastern Côtes-d’Armor (35.2% in Loudéac), Léon (28.8% in Saint-Pol-de-Léon), the area of Saint-Malo (31.3% in Saint-Malo itself; 32.1% in Dinard), Vannes (25.3%) as well in seaside resorts like Perros-Guirec (25.7%), Bénodet (38.7%), Roscoff (34.9%), Sarzeau (27.1%), Larmor-Plage (29.6%) or La Trinité-sur-Mer (41.3%)

The answer to the question that nobody asked