2022 French legislatives

[Zinneke]

And the secret is revealed:

Ipsos statistic: 72% of Round 1 Ensemble voters in NUPES/RN runoffs stayed home, with the rest dividing marginally for NUPES. So All that was left in the electorate was LR/UDI voters, who went RN, and the now outnumbered NUPES.

Anyone who now supports Macron is more evil than the far-right itself.

This is just obviously untrue, I don't think there's anything more to be said.

it's proven this night.

I really don't think people who stay home in left-far right runoffs are worse than people who actually vote for the far right, although they've definitely earned a place chasing the banner in the vestibule of hell.

Do people like Laki who advocated for voting for the far right over Macron as a leftist also belong in a "vestibule of hell"?

Laki has his reasons and I don't think they are as cynical as the vast majority of those who abstained when faced with a ENS-RN or NUPES-RN run off.

[parochial boy]

Are there ANY policies whatsoever where there is a difference of opinion between Ensemble and LR?

There are some pretty major policy differences between LR and LR at the moment. Between the Macron compatible ones and the likes of Ciotti or Wauquiez who have parked themselves somewhere to the right of Le Pen. The internal tension over how, or how not, to collaborate with Macron is likely to be one of the defining features of the upcoming legislature though.

Taken as a whole though LR are perceptively to the right of Macron though - remember that LR themselves have gone through a process of radicalisation over the last 5 or so years. For instance, Macron might be an ideological economic right winger, but he isn't quite on the brain melting "let's sack 600 million public sector employees" type stuff that LR come with these days - so whatever economic reforms Macron wants, LR will push to do them harder and faster.

More to the point though, LR's line is much more culturally right wing than Macron's. Macron may have a habit of targetting muslims, but at least he steers clear of the rather more racially tinged great replacement rhetoric that LR indulge these days. Similarly, even if still in a fundamentally market-liberal style way; Macron still has culturally liberal positions on things like gay marriage, parental leave, extending fertility treatment rights to lesbian couples and so on that LR would oppose. These are all issues that fall into the background relative the hot topics of immigration/identity, the state of public services, living standards and all the rest - but they still are ones where there is daylight between the Macron centric constellation and the old right.

[CumbrianLefty]

Also comparing an online poster with powerful and influential people around Macron is whataboutery, pure and simple. Equating the mainstream left with the far right is not only morally disgusting but just about the most myopic and short term "strategising" imaginable.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think we can use our psephological senses to work this one out as well: what sort of constituencies do LR's remaining deputies represent?

[PSOL]

I think this election disproves the notion of both “anti-system” voters existing and any sort of wish of a liberal opposition against the far right once it comes down to whatever their media says.

I had a feeling LFI would underperform the minute they decided to make backroom deals with the greens and socialists instead of sniping them. Still, LFI increased their seat count and at the end of the day that’s all their base cards about. That is however still keeping them in opposition, and the emboldened social liberals in will just cave into helping Macron govern and the PCF has its own agenda.

Like I’ve been saying; LFI is not just Melenchon alone but his host of friends and allies in the Left party, Ensemble, Ruffin, and others. It cannot be described as the same personality vehicle Le Pen or Macron has. Once he angers his allies, and he will, and they cease propping LFI up the entire party will soon fold from lack of useful idiots doing most of the work.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Also comparing an online poster with powerful and influential people around Macron is whataboutery, pure and simple. Equating the mainstream left with the far right is not only morally disgusting but just about the most myopic and short term "strategising" imaginable.

The original comparison was to simply EN voters who abstained in Far-left vs nupes run-offs not "powerful and influential" people. And i'm not realy equating them, more pointing out a strange double standard where a left-wing person can actively support voting for the RN, while EN supporters who merely obstain deserve to be cast into hell.

[Zinneke]

Also comparing an online poster with powerful and influential people around Macron is whataboutery, pure and simple. Equating the mainstream left with the far right is not only morally disgusting but just about the most myopic and short term "strategising" imaginable.

To be fair I saw Le Monde post showing that the LREM losers in the first round who had NUPES-RN as a run off many endorsed NUPES or explicitly said not to vote RN.

Lors de sa prise de parole ce dimanche soir, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a dénoncé « l’échec moral » de la majorité présidentielle, estimant que « sur 65 face-à-face entre la Nupes et le Rassemblement national, les donneurs de leçons de la macronie ont été incapables de donner une consigne claire dans 52 cas ».

Mais le leadeur de La France insoumise (LFI) exagère. Selon notre décompte, il y avait pour ce second tour des législatives 61 duels entre un candidat d’extrême droite (RN, Debout la France ou autre) et un candidat de la Nupes. Nous avons recensé les consignes et réactions des candidats d’Ensemble ! défaits dans ces 61 circonscriptions.

Avant ce 19 juin :

*16 candidats de la majorité présidentielle avaient clairement appelé à voter pour leur ex-rival de gauche ;
*16 avaient appelé à ne pas voter pour le RN ;
*12 étaient sur une ligne « ni-ni » ou souhaitaient voter blanc ;
*15 ne donnaient pas de consigne de vote ;
*2 ne s’étaient pas exprimés.

Ainsi, au moins 32 candidats d’Ensemble ! avaient donné une consigne claire pour ce second tour, contrairement à ce qu’affirme M. Mélenchon

It's not as clearcut , Macron should have communicated better.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Also comparing an online poster with powerful and influential people around Macron is whataboutery, pure and simple. Equating the mainstream left with the far right is not only morally disgusting but just about the most myopic and short term "strategising" imaginable.

Also, many online posters now realize this (at the very least here).

[Mike88]

And it begins:
https://twitter.com/Mediavenir/status/1538872686163771394

ALERT INFO - The PS, the PCF and EELV oppose Jean-Luc #Mélenchon's proposal to form a single #NUPES group in the National Assembly. (BFMTV)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In fairness they have no obvious reason to support a unified parliamentary group, whereas absent an electoral pact it would clearly have been 2017 all over again.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/nicolasberrod/status/1538839504324284416?s=20&t=VVoqvdui...

Harris's estimates of the electorates behavior is less dramatic than ipsos', but still shows the dominant reaction to any runoff without a preferred candidate was abstention. This includes runoffs with RN, and so their cordon collapsed.

[Epaminondas]

Many of these RN deputies look a) very young (under 30) and b) quite clueless about running a country. At least the 2017 FI cohort did their homework, now the French assembly might just devolve into bad faith gotcha moments for YouTube and campaign material for the next 5 years.


Another question:
Eyeballing the results shows dozens of results 50.xx - 49.xx, often at the expensive of NUPES.
Would anyone have a list of races ranked by closeness?

[PSOL]

Let the jockeying begin

[PSOL]

Also, where in the world did POI win a seat and what were the results now and in 2017.

[buritobr]

Why is the Côte d'Azur so far-right?

[DL]

Why is the Côte d'Azur so far-right?

I have wondered about this as well. You'd think that anyone lucky enough to live in a paradise-like place like the Cote d'Azur would be too happy to vote RN. Usually the extreme right appeals to angry, unhappy people filled with resentment. Who do you resent when you live in a place like Antibes or Cannes? 

[Zinneke]

Why is the Côte d'Azur so far-right?

. Who do you resent when you live in a place like Antibes or Cannes? 

The people who visit Antibes and Cannes

[parochial boy]

Part of the story is that the cool and trendy crowd have decamped to Biarritz these days.

Which means that what remains is just old people; pieds noirs (although very much overrated as a factor); migration; the development of a particular economic model with huge levels of inequality, lots of especially precarious jobs (especially logistics or tourism oriented), car dependence, appaling sprawl etc, etc.. which all leads to a particularly acute sense of cultural and social anxiety.

[DL]

I thought old people were the most pro-Macron and the least pro-LePen voting block?

[Oryxslayer]

Part of the story is that the cool and trendy crowd have decamped to Biarritz these days.

Which means that what remains is just old people; pieds noirs (although very much overrated as a factor); migration; the development of a particular economic model with huge levels of inequality, lots of especially precarious jobs (especially logistics or tourism oriented), car dependence, appaling sprawl etc, etc.. which all leads to a particularly acute sense of cultural and social anxiety.

The thing is that this alignment has persisted for some time, its not a new thing. Panzerdady did comparatively good along the Mediterranean coast in 2002. The regions alignment pre-2017 defaulted to LR, and legislatively any strong party could win a decent amount of seats here if they top-two'ed versus then-FN - as LREM did in 2017.  Obviously if you go too far back the trend vanishes cause Gaullism-hatred was a larger force. And remember this is not a RN vote for fostered by economic precariousness. Alongside the 2002 vote we have Zemmour's 2022 vote, which was the best in the south coast as well as the previously-discussed favored quarters.

In light of this evidence, I tend to think then that the first three listed reasons are the most important. Pied Noirs are obviously less of a force give the temporal distance since the 60s, but any group of that size makes a lasting impact on culture. For example, there are very few people left in the US South who can remember their actions against desegregation, but there are plenty of people who are their children or children's children. And they group up in homes and environments that imparted a altered version of the parents views. So it's no surprise that given the migration into southern France, the cultural legacy and 'training' left behind by the previous generations comes bubbling back up.

[parochial boy]

The thing is that this alignment has persisted for some time, its not a new thing. Panzerdady did comparatively good along the Mediterranean coast in 2002. The regions alignment pre-2017 defaulted to LR, and legislatively any strong party could win a decent amount of seats here if they top-two'ed versus then-FN - as LREM did in 2017.  Obviously if you go too far back the trend vanishes cause Gaullism-hatred was a larger force. And remember this is not a RN vote for fostered by economic precariousness. Alongside the 2002 vote we have Zemmour's 2022 vote, which was the best in the south coast as well as the previously-discussed favored quarters.

In light of this evidence, I tend to think then that the first three listed reasons are the most important. Pied Noirs are obviously less of a force give the temporal distance since the 60s, but any group of that size makes a lasting impact on culture. For example, there are very few people left in the US South who can remember their actions against desegregation, but there are plenty of people who are their children or children's children. And they group up in homes and environments that imparted a altered version of the parents views. So it's no surprise that given the migration into southern France, the cultural legacy and 'training' left behind by the previous generations comes bubbling back up.

The thing is the pied-noir vote is likely overrated because they aren't especially numerous and, even if somewhat out of date, the stuff that is around tends to suggest the children of the pieds noirs have rather blended into the background in terms of their voting behaviour.

Overall, the region concentrates multiple far right votes. Yes, the Zemmour vote - and tangetially Ciotti's crowd - is the factor of a certain type of bourgeois racist. But the RN vote is a different phenomenon, in which case it is important to bear in mind the point I made. PACA is not a poor place overall, but it is a deeply divided and unequal one with a lot of people stuck in precarious and insecure jobs. Add to this, many of the old social structures and institutions have collapsed leading to a particularly difficult degree of social and cultural atomisation. For example, it doesn't necessarily mean an RN vote, but as you can see the entire Med Coast was alongside Normandy and the North as one of the hotspots of gilets jaunes activity, which is a big indicator of people feeling an economic pain.

Or point being, the Meditteranean departments (both the Côte d'Azur and further west), concentrate a number of social and economic factors - inequality, a precarious and insecure employment market, a declilne of old traditions that have led to a new atomised lifestyle emerging (often particularly the case in places that went through a precocious decline in religious practice - see the North East v Brittany), a sense of cultural anxiety, that we know leads to the RN vote further north. Yes there are certain cultural factors in the Midi that means that RN vote is rather more individualistic in its outlook that the northern vote - but it is still one that you can mostly tie back to all of this rather than it being especially down to pieds-noirs or to rich Auteuil-Neuilly-Passy transplants.

[Oryxslayer]

Anyway, lets look at the breakdown of the six main runoff situation - like I did before the vote - and see how things stood up. Like before the vote I will not include the Overseas departments, so this is only a analysis of the 543 mainland and expat seats that had runoffs. I will also for simplicities sake include minor parties that align with a block - except those minor leftists explicitly a rebel against NUPES - in their runoff contests. As usual, depending upon how one defines things, a seat may move between categories.

Ensemble+ vs NUPES+, 276 seats. 181 Ensemble+, 95 NUPES+. So I internally basically hit this exactly on the nail. The seat projections I had were not 100% correct, but there were the same amount of marginals called wrong for either side. Which all suggests I had the right thoughts before the election. NUPES had essentially no transfer potential. By contrast, Ensemble could count on enough of the LR/UDI voters to carry them. The NUPES parties, by unifying, ensured they made many runoffs but could not hold up in round 2. Despite the lack of data, its surprising how predictable the electorate behaved.

Ensemble+ vs RN, 108 seats. 55 Ensemble+, 53 RN. Obviously all of our projections were way off in regards to this group. Left-aligned voters reciprocated the actions of Ensemble voters in the next category and screwed them both. Some combination of a belief that RN was not a threat, Ensemble needed to be denied a majority, 'both are the same,' and abstention do to lack of motivation screwed Ensemble's transfer potential in these round 2 runoffs. I called about 25-30 seats incorrectly for Ensemble, and this was basically the entire missing margin. Interestingly I incorrectly called both the same amount of seats wrong in both the north and the south. Most of the miscalls were marginal - like the situation in Eure - but the collapse of the cordon caught us all by surprise. In both this and the following category, I saw the potential for a RN gain above what the polls said, but not to the extent which occurred.

NUPES+ vs RN+, 65 seats. 30 NUPES+, 35 RN+. Similarly, all of our projections were off when analyzing this group. Ensemble voters reciprocated the actions NUPES in the previous category to deny NUPES seats, but it screwed them both. Encouraged abstention, 'both are the same,' picking the 'lesser evil' - and likely many more issues led to Ensemble voters screwing NUPES in the runoffs. But here it wasn't just Ensemble, LR/UDI when confronted with these runoffs went much more for RN then expected, and Ensemble wasn't there to buttress NUPES. I called about 20 seats here incorrectly for NUPES, which was basically all their missing seats.

There are two differences between the Ensemble vs RN runoffs and these though. Firstly, geography was  a major factor. A lot of the seats I got wrong were traditional conservative seats like Ain 4 and Loiret 4 where the expectation was that the regions continuing revulsion to RN would lead to some untraditional representation. However, these were areas where traditionally LR/UDI voters very prominently saw NUPES as the greater evil. Secondly, there were embarrassing losses. I have already analyzed the situation in places like Avignon. There were other areas, including these previously mentioned conservative seats, where RN won by large margins when it should have been a NUPES victory if they got their transfers. The one consistent thread is that the loser was often LFI, meaning that LFI was seen as the greatest evil and Ensemble voters really followed their leaders when they said to conditionally abstain depending upon which NUPES party was facing RN.

Parliamentary Right+ vs RN, 31 seats. 29 Right+, 2 RN. Predicted this category exactly right except for Bouches-du-Rhône 12. That said, it wasn't hard to see what would happen. The Right's overall collapse filtered out anyone who could lose round 2, and history showed that their presence vs RN denied the Far Right any transfers. This precedent proved predictive, with almost no marginal races vs RN, besides the two losses.

Ensemble+ vs Parliamentary Right+, 20 seats. 5 Ensemble+, 15 Right+. I called about 5 more for Ensemble. Some were close races Ensemble lost, like Rhone 8 and Habib in the 8th Expat seat. But a few were places I underestimated how much NUPES voters saw both parties as equals, but RN voters did not and acted appropriately very fiercely.

NUPES+ vs Parliamentary Right+, 26 seats. 2 NUPES+, 24 Parliamentary Right+. Another category we called almost all correctly, but unsurprisingly. A lot of the runoffs were against LR candidates with huge round 1 pluralities, or in areas where it was easy to anticipate both Ensemble and RN voters running to the Right's camp. Only seat missed was Rhone 7, which was another embarrassing loss for the Left. This was a urban seat, a strong Melenchon seat, and LFI still lost it.

There were 10 two-candidate seats outside this analysis. 5 feature regionalists, 4 were NUPES vs Dissident Left, and Gers 2 saw a Left dissident defeat Ensemble.

Of the 7 triangulaires (the third candidate in the 8th withdrew), Ensemble won 3, NUPES won 2, LR won 1, and RN won 1. I anticipated 4 of the 7 correctly.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/jo_redachef/status/1538893092715122688?t=KJFBG-1DU85-PX3O_1u...

16k votes and NUPES would have potentially overtaken Ensemble. Fine margins.

[H. Ross Peron]

[/sub]

Part of the story is that the cool and trendy crowd have decamped to Biarritz these days.

Which means that what remains is just old people; pieds noirs (although very much overrated as a factor); migration; the development of a particular economic model with huge levels of inequality, lots of especially precarious jobs (especially logistics or tourism oriented), car dependence, appaling sprawl etc, etc.. which all leads to a particularly acute sense of cultural and social anxiety.

Is there a reason Biarritz has become much more popular compared to the Cote d'Azur for the rich and famous? For Anglophones, Nice, Cannes etc. are still the still bywords for luxurious resort towns.

Thanks for your analysis of the underlying socioeconomic factors driving political patterns in the Cote d'Azur. It is comparable in some ways to the political dynamics of the American Sunbelt but with a much smaller nonwhite population.

[Mike88]

Elisabeth Borne tender her resignation to Macron, but he refused:

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne offered her resignation to President Emmanuel Macron in the wake of the ruling party losing its majority in elections, but the head of state turned it down, the presidency said on Tuesday.

Macron believes the government needs to "stay on task and act" and the president will now seek "constructive solutions" to the political deadlock in talks with opposition parties, said a presidential official, who asked not to be named.

Macron’s discussions with opposition leaders will start on Tuesday with Christian Jacob, head of the traditional conservative Republicains (LR) party that has been in decline in recent months but could be courted to give Macron a parliamentary majority.
(...)

Macron is also set to meet with Le Pen, but Mélenchon is not expected to do the same.