French Legislative Election 2017

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Benchmarks from the rest of the Fifth Republic to keep in mind for the inevitable hideous defeat of the Left...

1958: 50 seats (SFIO 40, PCF 10)
1968: 91 seats (FGDS 57, PCF 34)
1993: 91 seats (PS 53, PCF 24, Others 14)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Benchmarks from the rest of the Fifth Republic to keep in mind for the inevitable hideous defeat of the Left...

1958: 50 seats (SFIO 40, PCF 10)
1968: 91 seats (FGDS 57, PCF 34)
1993: 91 seats (PS 53, PCF 24, Others 14)

And with FG/FI and the PCF out for each other's blood, those results will look positively peachy in comparison!

Right now a sub-1958 result looks pretty likely, yeah.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is PCF still something relevant? With 1-2 % in opinion polls, it seems they diminished to the level of Trotskyists.

They have a strong local government base in parts of the country, notably in old red belt of working class residential areas around (well these days in in all senses except officially, and not even in the outer ring...) Paris and some areas of former heavy industry:



Of course given that French Commie Local Government was almost as good an argument against Communism as the USSR this fact is a bit of a mystery, but such is France.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, if you are going to define the Left as Left of REM

Which we must because Macron is not on the Left and has been quite clear about this.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They were massively racist iirc?

Yes

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L'Île-Saint-Denis, which, as the name suggests, is an island. Population of around 7k.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Offhandedly, what intrigues me is that for all of FN's gains, they not only couldn't win anything in Panzergirl's strongest department, Aisne, but the strongest presidential FN constituency in Aisne actually went for the Socialists!

That constituency has somehow been held consistently by SFIO/PS since 1967 despite increasingly appalling Presidential results there. Think it may be their longest continually held seat now. It's a bunch of spectacularly bleak manufacturing towns, the sort of places you don't ever have to go through unless you actually live in them. But what it does show is the extent to which a lot of FN gains were basically gifted them by the Left going mad and running a thousand candidates per seat; Left candidates can beat the Fash in the properly grim parts of postindustrial Northern France, Macarons can't...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amazing, it's almost like working class people in Western Europe are still inclined to vote for left-wingers or something

Next thing you know you'll be telling me that the Tories paying for extremely expensive wrap-around newspaper adverts in Barnsley was the most hilarious waste of money in a British election ever.