France 2017: Results Thread

[parochial boy]

A map of the winner in each town sized by the population:

It's official: France has now become the US, with a cool trendy urban party and a mean scary redneck party and no left-right divide to speak of.

I think the Auvergnats might be a bit surprised to find out that they are "cool, trendy and urban"

My department (l'Aude) had the two anti system candidates arriving first (first Le Pen then Melenchon).  Does anyone know which other departments had the same result?

Off the top of my head, Pas-de-Calais, Nord, Vaucluse, Bouches-du-Rhône, Hérault, Gard, Pyrénées-Orientales. Basically the "populist" areas on the Med Coast (somewhat surprising) and the North (not surprising).

Ariège was the only place where Mélenchon came first and Le Pen second.

[parochial boy]

In Switzerland (apparently the biggest French abroad community):

Macron - 34.7% (45.6% in German CH; 32.7% in French)
Fillon - 30.8% (28.2% in German; 31.2% in French)
Mélenchon - 15.1% (10.3% in German; 16% in French)
Le Pen - 8.1% (6.1% in German; 8.4% in French)
Hamon - 5.9% (5.5% in German; 5.9%)

http://www.lematin.ch/monde/Les-Francais-de-Suisse-ont-plebiscite-Macron/story/18127329

Tribune de Genève even has detailed breakdowns by Canton in French Switzerland (and even more detailed for Geneva and Vaud).

Macron won in Vaud, Fribourg and Neuchâtel; Fillon in Geneva, Jura and Valais. Voting patterns in Geneva and Vaud were amusingly similar to voting patterns in Swiss elections.



Sometimes I wonder if we're even a different country...

[parochial boy]

Carrying on the map theme (blatantly ripping off Antonio's one).

The combined score of the left (Hamon + Mélenchon + Poutou + Arthaud) by department.

Anything marked with a star in the 25-30% category is where their combined score was above the national average of 27.67%

[parochial boy]

Asked this before but it got buried. What accounts for Le Pen's strength in some of the overseas departments/territories?

Of the ones I am more familiar with:

Guyane - major protests have been going on since March over neglect from metropolitan France. One of the major local sore points is the huge influx of immigrants, in particular from Haiti and Brazil.

New Caledonia - long standing tension between the pro-independence indigenous community, and the loyalist white settlers (who now outnumber the Kanaky)

Mayotte - similar to Guyane, in particular the huge number of illegal immigrants from the Comoros (who make up >60% of the population now). Mayotte is also French because basically everyone who was anti-independence in the Comoros moved there to create a loyalit majority (sort of, it's more complicated than that IRL) and there is a fair amount of antipathy towards the independent Comoran state.

St Martin and St Barthélemy - majority white, used to be part of Guadeloupe (which is majority black). That probably gives you some idea.

Polynesia - no idea, someone else is probably better placed to explain

[parochial boy]

Asked this before but it got buried. What accounts for Le Pen's strength in some of the overseas departments/territories?

New Caledonia - long standing tension between the pro-independence indigenous community, and the loyalist white settlers (who now outnumber the Kanaky)

I didn't know whites were a plurality there now. I'm leaning towards a "Stay with France" prediction for their referendum next year in that case.

I double checked the numbers, I think the Kanaky may still be a plurality infact, but it is murky due the the growing group of people who simply call themselved "Calédonien" (who I assumed were mostly European).

The métis also generally vote more in line with the Caldoches I believe.

[parochial boy]

I hope Macron gets his act together in the next days because the factory trip yesterday, in which the workers booed him and embraced Le Pen (who was there at the same time), had really bad optics. Just as his victory party after round 1 ...

On the other hand, workers are a decreasing share of the electorate everywhere. It might have been enough for Trump in the US and almost enough for Hofer in Austria (Austria is a very working class country), but it's definitely not enough for Le Pen in France. Still, Macron shouldn't get too complacent.

That factory is closing to move to Poland. It is potentially like the worst place in France Macron could possibly go if he wanted a friendly welcome.

Interesting that Mélenchon goes to the runoff there despite only winning a handful of departments.

That's thanks to Paris being a black hole for Le Pen.

Speaking of which, if one were to conjure a US-type electoral-college/single-round-of-voting scenario for France, how might the race have turned out?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/04/daily-chart-19

Tie between Le Pen and Macron in electoral college, effectively coming down to how Melenchon's electors vote.

Doing it with the fake new regions is incredibly lame. I'll try to do the calculations by Department when I have some time.

How would you calculate this by the way? You could do it US style with 2 per region + 435 allocated by department over population; but you could also do it by the number of sénateurs + the number of députés in each department, which would be a bit more logical.

Either way, St Pierre et Miquelon will be hysterically overrepresented compared to Paris or the Nord.

[parochial boy]

I'm bored, so here is a map showing the combined scores of "establishment" candidates (Macron, Hamon and Fillon). Together they scored a shade over 50% nationally, so spot the unhappy people.

Seems suspiciously similar to the combined left wing candidates map.

[parochial boy]

Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but Mélenchon has not said who to support in the second round. However, he will definitely vote, and he will definitely not vote for Le Pen.

[parochial boy]

On the flip side, Trump inspired mayhem and Brexit turning out to be a disaster could severely undermine the FN, and the far right across all of Europe.

[parochial boy]

A few thoughts about the left -

Bear in mind that Hamon's terrible performance was at least in part becuase he ran a bad campaign; and lost a stream of voters to both Mélenchon and Macron who were voting tactically to keep out both Fillon and Le Pen. I have seen lots of people being positive about Hamon's programme, but voting for someone else as a "Vote Utile".

So if you think 6% is genuinely where the mainstream left is at the minute, you are living in a dreamworld.

Likewise, the PS, with its current branding may not survive, but it's legacy probably will live on as the main representative of the French mainstream left for a few reasons:

1. The Mainstream left does still have a place, and is going to be the best placed to win. Mélenchon's Euroscepticism is a big turn off for a lot of people, including people who are quite radically left wing. Just ask Marine Le Pen how many votes there are to win in wanting to pull France out of the EU.

2. Like it or not, the PS has the infrastrucucture/networks/machine to carry on winning votes, whereas FI is basically a machine for Mélenchon. Post-Mélenchon, FI is basically nothing, and and organised left will need the groundgame that the PS currently has, and will be able to take into any future main party of the left.

[parochial boy]

It is quite interesting, how much of a meltdown the left is having about macron. Whereas backing Chirac in 2002 was seen as obvious. Even for the PCF

[parochial boy]

The FN reaching second round was really unexpected. Also Jean-marie Le Pen made holocaust denial remarks that was widely condemned. Plus there was no Melenchon like figure on the left. And Marine le pen made a lot of steps to "normalize" the FN for the public by expelling openly racist FN figures even her father and enforced stronger party standards to prevent members from giving racist statements that characterized the FN during her father. As a result 41% of the french public in recent polls considered the FN a "normal regular party" and 43% consider it a threat to the republic in contrast to 2002.

Yes, but you don't exactly have to dig deep to find some prety unpleasant views. Panzerbabby, whose wing could well be in charge come the end of the year (and who would turn the party in an economically liberal direction) in particular doesn't seem particularly worried about outright fascists coming to her meetings.

From what I gather, Le Pen Sr was an unexpected shock, Le Pen Jr wasn't and stopping Le Pen would've been done if Hamon had just dropped out earlier, which would've put Melenchon over the line to compete with Macron.

Hard to fault the side that was less than 2 points away from having it all when that itself was not really expected.

I think it might be a bit optimistic to suggest Hamon dropping out would have put Mélenchon through, don't underestimate quite how many people on the left Mélenchon puts off; a lot of Hamon's support would have dribbled away to Macron or even Poutou.

In any case, Mélenchon supporters right now seem very much aware that Le Pen is worse than Macron; they just don't want to "legitimise" Macron's presidency, and seem to be hoping that the rest of the country does the dirty work of actually voting for Macron for them.

[parochial boy]

The last poll had Hamon's support going 50% to Melenchon, which would be enough to surpass Le Pen by a point.

Pre-second round polls also had Mélenchon's supporters going 80-20 to Macron in the second round; hypothetical polls should be treated with a lot of caution. Who knows how Hamon dropping out would have affected right leaning Fillon or NDA voters?

[parochial boy]

Ipsos, Cévipof, Le Monde poll by regions

PACA:
Le Pen 50.5% - Macron 49.5%

Hauts-de-France:
Macron 50.5% - Le Pen 49.5%

Grand-Est:
Macron 52.5% - Le Pen 47.5%

Bourgogne-France-Comté:
Macron 54.5% - Le Pen 45.5%

Normandie:
Macron 56.5% - Le Pen 43.5%

Occitanie:
Macron 56.5% - Le Pen 43.5%

Centre-Val de Loire:
Macron 57% - Le Pen 43%

Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes:
Macron 60% - Le Pen 40%

Nouvelle-Aquitaine:
Macron 63% - Le Pen 37%

Pays de la Loire:
Macron 64% - Le Pen 36%

Bretagne:
Macron 69% - Le Pen 31%

Île de France:
Macron 69% - Le Pen 31%

Must be pretty likely that Macron gets close fo 90% in Paris intramuros no?

[parochial boy]

The people of France are very definitely losing

[parochial boy]

Arguing about definitions is always a painfully futile argument. But a few things to remember about Le Pen:

 - She has an absolutelyt horrendus attitude towards minority groups, even if this isnt necessarily reflected in policyb
 - The FN still has some uncomfortable links with explicit white nationalists
 - She wants to cut taxes, and ultimately cut government spending. So much for "left wing" credentials.
 - She wants to destroy the EU, which is only ever going to benefit the big corporations by giving them even more free reign to rip off an exploit the rest of us

All of that makes here a worse prospect that Macron, regardless of his own completely horrible economic programme

[parochial boy]

So it turns out the best way to make French people angry is to say that chocolatine is gross. Which it is!

I find this highly offensive.

I know, right? We aren't in Toulouse here, so please use the correct terminology, which is pain au chocolat

[parochial boy]

Guys, it would also be nice not to post leaks or early exit poll results or anything from the Belgian/Swiss TV or newspapers.

Just post the links and not the actual results/leaks.

Thx.

Especially since they would be fake anyway.

The Belgian/Swiss stuff is usually not fake ...

They were pretty hopelessely wrong in the first round

[parochial boy]

Paris went 89.7% Macron
Rennes went 88.4% Macron

Do any other big cities give him bigger numbers?

Also, it's quite interesting to compare round one and round two numbers - the correlation between a high left wing vote in the first round and a high second round vote for Le Pen looks surprisingly weak. In particular round the South West.

[parochial boy]

Paris went 89.7% Macron
Rennes went 88.4% Macron

Do any other big cities give him bigger numbers?

Also, it's quite interesting to compare round one and round two numbers - the correlation between a high left wing vote in the first round and a high second round vote for Le Pen looks surprisingly weak. In particular round the South West.

Nantes: 86.52%
Bordeaux: 85.92%
Toulouse: 82.97%

Lyon was in the mid-to-high 80s Macron also, but would need to add up the arrondissements.

Also:

Strasbourg: 81.24%
Lille: 78.27%

So there wasn't an *enormous* regional variation in the big cities themselves. The exception obviously is Marseille, where Macron only managed about his national figure overall (but again would need to add up the arrondissements).

I looked at a few more out of curiousity: Lyon in at 84.1%; Grenoble at 82.7%; Nancy at 81.4%; Metz at 72% Marseille at 64.4% and Nice at 60.4%.

So yeah, no huge variations city-to-city, with the stand out exception of the South East.

The South East big cities vote a lot like the regions that they are in; whereas the cities in North/East, the other FN stronghold, vote much more like big cities across the rest of country.

Rennes gave Hollande the best score of any big city last time; and Macron the second highest after Paris this time.

[parochial boy]

It seems that there is positive correlation between increase in abstention and first round combined Fillon/Melenchon vote.



But going against conventional wisdom there is negative correlation between first round combined Melenchon/Fillon vote and blank/invalid in the second round.

The Communes with the highest abstention (in Metropolitan France) were -

Vaulx-en-Velin - 43.2%
Behren-lès-Forbach - 41.6%
Gaillard - 40.6% (my neigbhbours )
Roubaix - 39.8%

All are working class Banlieues with big migrant populations; which are exactly the sort of places you would expect to have high abstention (as opposed to blank or nul votes).

I can see this would correlate to a high Mélenchon vote; and even to a relatively high Fillon one as these sorts of areas would hardly be expected to be Le Pen friendly. Gaillard gave Fillon 23% in the first round for example.

[parochial boy]

A little attempt to map urban-rural polarisation across France; comparing Le Pen's result in each department to her result in the largest commune in each department. Darker green means Le Pen did relatively worse in the biggest town; red means she actually did better.



Obviously, massive pinch of salt because darker shades of green tend to just mean larger towns, but there does seem to be some sort of regional pattern - urban areas were relatively less friendly to Macron in the North East as well as the heavily urban cluster in Rhône-Alpes.

In contrast, there is less of a difference in the rural South West, PACA and Brittany (which was strongly pro-Macron in both urban and rural areas).

[parochial boy]

I'd noticed that too. This one seems to work down to a commune level

https://www.publicsenat.fr/article/politique/presidentielle-2017-carte-interactive-des-resultats-en-temps-reel-58975

Ifop also have some pretty good maps by candidate and stuff

http://www.ifop.com/?option=com_cartos