France 2017: Results Thread

[Maxwell]

RIP the Socialist Party, and despite Macron moving forward (maybe because of it), this is incredibly rough result for the left.

I mean say what you will about the disastrous campaign of Fillon, but his party managed 20% of the vote despite their candidate being exposed as a crook. The right survives

[Maxwell]

Hâmon endorsed Macron.

calling Le Pen "an enemy of the republic".

poor hamon.

[Maxwell]

I wouldn't be surprised if Fillon wanted to endorse Le Pen - what with his whole French Thatcher thing.

[Maxwell]

Wikileaks should have quite the interesting dump on Macron tomorrow😒

so Wikileaks is essentially giving up the pretense of being neutral

also yeah I'm thinking similar to Al on the results - bad but not the worst.

[Maxwell]

wow. well i guess it makes some sense - considering Macron is already pretty right-wing.

[Maxwell]

Le Pen is preferable to Macron, honestly.

unsurprisingly internet far leftists will continue to fall for the "Trump is the real left wing choice" fallacy over and over again.

[Maxwell]

Five years and countless attacks later and Le Pen only improves her showing by about 4%. Europe is doomed. Europeans are just too stupid.

Hasn't there been a major trend toward the far right anyways though? And France is a country that is particularly vulnerable to it's influences.

This strikes me as similar to what happened in Holland - The Far Right gets over-inflated results a year or two away from the election (Le Pen scored as high as 32% at some points in 2014 and 2015) only to end up slightly on the up tick from where it was last time.

[Maxwell]

Interestingly, the one Department she won last time was Gard with 25% of the vote - she's getting 30% there this time (a kind of marginal improvement and fits in with the national average). Comparatively, Melenchon shot up 9% in the same area from 13% to 22%. It fits in with what they did but I've seen harder swings to Le Pen elsewhere and seems to fit with the narrative that there are areas where Le Pen's support is being eaten up somewhat by Melenchon.

[Maxwell]

well one error i made in my prediction is that I assumed more Les Republicans would last minute decide "eh, Fillon's scandals aren't that bad" and vote Fillon. Polls were pretty much dead on.

[Maxwell]

One debate on May, 3.

Prime-time interview of Le Pen tonight on TF1, Macron on Thursday.

Mélenchon has launched a consultation online today, asking his supporters what they intend to do between abstention/blank vote/vote Macron.
The result will be released on May, 2.

Mélenchon himself will speak on his Youtube channel tomorrow or Thursday.

wow what conviction.

[Maxwell]

Wasn't Le Pen leading Flanby even before Flanby reached negative approval ratings? Granted, Flanby is Flanby, but Le Pen looked pretty scary when she was polling at 30% in the first round 3 years ago.

[Maxwell]

Considering the fact she was actually leading Flanby in 2013-2014, no, this is not impressive considering Macron embodies largely the same policies.

[Maxwell]

Yeah I just don't get the appeal of Le Pen for any person, and I know enough TRUMPers to see from a 5000 foot view why someone would vote for trump - even the far right has to see her as a major political opportunist who has sold out everyone around her for power, and her family have not exactly been "outsiders". If she loses, the National Front will probably still have appeal but I see discontent growing, and if she wins (!!!), discontent among National Front ranks will probably grow a lot faster.

[Maxwell]

There's something very embarrassing about being 18 points down, claiming that as a win, and then just getting exposed as a clown in the debates and trailing by now 24 points, and having to rely on hackers to save your flailing campaign.

If I were Marine Le Pen I'd be embarrassed.

[Maxwell]

"Le Pen can't win. The polls are never off by more than 20%"

National polls (which were accurate) do not equal State Polls (which were horrible), American polls (mixed record, as stated earlier) do not equal French polls (shockingly accurate in the first round), ect. ect.

[Maxwell]

yeah that's probably going to be a very common refrain.

[Maxwell]

that god damn electoral college is going to f***ck Macron, though, right bronz?

[Maxwell]

74% turnout is terrible. There's going to be millions of blank votes, so the real turnout is probably going to be below 70% - the lowest since 1969. I'm pretty sure most of those are people who said they were voting for FBM. Not good.

That looks very bad in the french context - but that would be TREMENDOUS turnout in the United States.

[Maxwell]

Here's something - Macron was actually a very very good candidate. Macron was underestimated at every turn, called a poor debater, his poll numbers wouldn't show up, ect. ect. and you know what, he over shot his coverage in the first round and now is just dominating in the second. Macron is killing it.

[Maxwell]

Keep in mind that exit polls also showed Clinton winning easily, okay??!1!

/s

ahahahaha yeah Le Pen can still win this thing folks! Just cross that 30% distance.

[Maxwell]

question for the French posters - are the hardline National Frontistas going to revolt now?

[Maxwell]

question for the French posters - are the hardline National Frontistas going to revolt now?

Just like they would've when Trump won, right?

Oh, wait, NO. There's a thing called democracy. Americans and the French respect it.

that's not what I meant - I meant that the National Front, as a party, was going to move in a more right-wing direction and abandon Lyin Le Pen and her more vaguely "moderate" ways.

[Maxwell]

lol after all the media hype of MUH MELENCHON FOR LE PEN VOTERS, only 11% of Melenchon voters voted for Le Pen. Sad!

also the key problem is that Le Pen's name is still Le Pen. It's a horrible family and at least 51% of French voters would never vote for it.

[Maxwell]

her best was so far from good enough. she ran a campaign that was both horrifying and offensive AND pandering, overly political, and unsubstantial. She deserves the derision of everyone INCLUDING the far right.

also that is a really pathetic portion of NDA voters that Le Pen got despite getting his endorsement.

[Maxwell]

This election was a weaker 2002 result, where the large mainstream of the French electorate united (for the most part) against the extreme right. Very impressive for Marine though, to improve by about double what her father got 15 years ago. I'm gonna assume, based on the increasing social liberalism of Western electorates, that Jean-Marie would've done worse in 2017 than he did in 2002. That means Marine had to break through even further than her father could have.

I'm ready to say that it's not all that impressive, for a couple of reasons.

1. Marine revamped her party, kicking her Nazi dad out of the party and making it so that many voters could imagine voting for it.
2. The political establishment HAD failed the people of France time and time again with Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Francois Hollande.
3. Le Pen polled as high as 32% in the first round during 2013-2015.
4. The left was in total dissary, the right considered coalescing around SARKOZY and ultimately coalesced around someone who did a lot of worse.
5. early polls had Le Pen up to 41%, and Macron was considered not that great and an empty movement that would collapse.