French presidential election, 2022

[Frodo]

EU seeks recovery of funds from French candidate Le Pen: Report
A European Union anti-fraud agency report alleges that Marine Le Pen misappropriated public money while she was a member of the European Parliament (MEP).

[Vosem]

A request: I'm going to do some maps of the results at arrondissement and municipal level for the City of Paris and the Petite Couronne and happen to have a strongly principled objection to decision of authorities to include prisoner ballots in with the results from the 1st arrondissement - psephological vandalism in my view. Does anyone have the results for that arrondissement without the numbers from the prisoner polling district?

This article reports that 10,234 votes were prisoners' votes (leaving 8,632 actual votes in the 1st arrondissement, which sounds about right given that there were 9,026 in 2017) and gives you the percentages each candidate received among the prisoners out to the ten-thousandths. So you can use this to estimate pretty closely:

[Senator Incitatus]

Who are these Zemmour-Macron voters?

A lot of them very rich people, who are more likely to see le Pen as unacceptably "common".

Yeah. Though according to this (from 2017 so admittedly out of date) Le Pen is richer than Macron—and Mélenchon is richer than both lol.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Beautiful!

The Pyrenees and neighboring parts of what used to be called Languedoc and Gascony stand out as incredibly based-seeming areas of hard-left, residual-center-left, AND rural-interests-candidate strength, or at least relative strength. Conversely, this really drives home how toxic the Riviera's political climate is just a few hours east.

[Antonio the Sixth]

A request: I'm going to do some maps of the results at arrondissement and municipal level for the City of Paris and the Petite Couronne and happen to have a strongly principled objection to decision of authorities to include prisoner ballots in with the results from the 1st arrondissement - psephological vandalism in my view. Does anyone have the results for that arrondissement without the numbers from the prisoner polling district?

I think your best bet is to find the specific precinct where all these votes were dumped in (should be easy as it will contain more than half the votes in the 1st overall) and just remove it.

Precinct-level results can be found here (though I can't vouch for the data's accessibility): https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/election-presidentielle-des-10-et-24-avril-2022-resultats-definitifs-du-1er-tour/

[Shilly]

A request: I'm going to do some maps of the results at arrondissement and municipal level for the City of Paris and the Petite Couronne and happen to have a strongly principled objection to decision of authorities to include prisoner ballots in with the results from the 1st arrondissement - psephological vandalism in my view. Does anyone have the results for that arrondissement without the numbers from the prisoner polling district?

I think your best bet is to find the specific precinct where all these votes were dumped in (should be easy as it will contain more than half the votes in the 1st overall) and just remove it.

Precinct-level results can be found here (though I can't vouch for the data's accessibility): https://www.data.gouv.fr/fr/datasets/election-presidentielle-des-10-et-24-avril-2022-resultats-definitifs-du-1er-tour/

By removing the precinct "JUS1" here's what I got.
Arthaud 12 0.14%
Roussel 104 1.2%
Macron 3,715 43.04%
Lassalle 94 1.09%
Le Pen 508 5.89%
Zemmour 801 9.28%
Mélenchon 1,832 21.22 %
Hidalgo 187 2.17%
Jadot 631 7.31%
Pécresse 643 7.45%
Poutou  28  0.32%
Dupont-Aignan 77 0.89%

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Diolch to both of you!

[Oryxslayer]

Today's polls. Unless something dramatic happens, things are trending towards where they were before the campaigns, Ukraine, and Macron's retirement platform made the polling numbers god wildly up then down.

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1516082111702257667?s=20&t=RxCjvKy-q...

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1516081678837497860?s=20&t=RxCjvKy-q...

[Lief 🗽]

^^Good to see Macron's new campaign strategy immediately paying dividends.

[DL]

Do people think this will be LePen's last campaign? It will be her third loss, but i guess she is not that old. One thing for sure is that in 2027 Macron will not be on the ballot and Melenchon likely won't either - so it could be a very wide open contest with a whole new slate of contenders.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Her father ran five times and it would have been six had he managed to qualify for the ballot in 1981.

[Oryxslayer]

Her father ran five times and it would have been six had he managed to qualify for the ballot in 1981.

If the FN wins a decent number of seats in the legislative contests then it would be hard to not imagine her running again, if only because she would now have pressure coming from a bunch of elected followers dependent on her continuing presence in politics.

[DL]

What happens to LREM once Macron is no longer running? Does it fall apart? Does it change its name to something more generic and holds a primary to pick a new candidate for president?

Similarly, what happens to France Insoumis once Melenchon is out of the picture?

Its a weird sitaution because the three parties whose candidates won almost all the votes in the first round are all 'personality cult" parties that have shown little evidence of being able to survive without their figurehead

[parochial boy]

Mostly for my own curiosity - but the combined scores of the left wing candidates in a bunch of the large cities. Villes-centres only, but enough to profile several different "types" of large city because they aren't at all that homogenous actually. (M) indicates Macron finished first, in all the others Mélenchon did.

Grenoble - 53,5%
Lille - 53,3%
Rennes - 52,8%
Montpellier - 52,1%
Toulouse - 50,1%
Nantes - 48,7%
Strasbourg - 46,1%
Rouen - 45,8%
Besançon - 44,6%
Clermont-Ferrand - 44,2%
Saint-Etienne - 43,7%
Lyon - 43,4% (M)
Caen - 42,8% (M)
Paris - 42,3% (M)
Bordeaux - 42,3% (M - alias - Paris #2)
Nancy - 41,9% (M)
Le Havre - 41,0%
Marseille - 40,3%
Annecy - 34,2% (M)
Reims - 33,6%
Nice - 31,2% (M)
Toulon - 27,2% (Le Pen wins)

[rob in cal]

Questions about Le Pens referendum proposal. Is it just one question, and how exactly would it restrict immigration?  Have there been polls on how people would vote on it if it actually happens? Have there been polls on whether it is a good idea to have such a referendum in the first place?

One reason I was hoping Fillon would have won in 2017 is that he was promising a series of such referenda on immigration related issues, and they might have been held without the additional political emotional drama brought on by a Le Pen presidency, which would be the case now.  I find it healthy when the electorate can vote directly on issues of national/internationalism direction of the country that they are citizens of.

[Oryxslayer]

What happens to LREM once Macron is no longer running? Does it fall apart? Does it change its name to something more generic and holds a primary to pick a new candidate for president?

Similarly, what happens to France Insoumis once Melenchon is out of the picture?

Its a weird sitaution because the three parties whose candidates won almost all the votes in the first round are all 'personality cult" parties that have shown little evidence of being able to survive without their figurehead

Firstly, the personalization is probably not going anywhere, unfortunately.

Secondly, its hard to know what the world will look like in 5 years. Others can better speak on the internal politics of LREM, but I think the chatter earlier in the thread was that Édouard Philippe seems like the heir with a big enough ego to build a new movement from the old. Obviously if LREM absorbs or vassalizes LR/UDI during those five years then their image and the power brokers might shift.

Melenchon's movement meanwhile IS Melenchon. His electoral weakness though is also that he is Melenchon, and comes with all the baggage of a lifetime in politics. Polls showed, unsurprisingly, that  much of Melenchon's vote came to him during the last few weeks and days - but these tactical voters were not enough because too many reformist voters couldn't stomach him. The question is therefore not who will inherit the movement - they will probably be some nobody - but rather whose personality will inherit the energy of the consolidated tactical socialist vote? This person and their personality could be a nobody right now, or could be a local politician waiting to make their move. We don't know. The only likely thing is that they will probably not run under the PS label.

[PSOL]

I mean, Melenchon’s movement is propped up by most of the Trotskyist elements which engaged in entryism into PS and local machines that split apart. It’s going to be a bloody showdown for the scraps, but there should be enough to sustain the movement as the leader among the nominally left parties. It’s not like other personalist machines like Mahathir’s UNMO or Bibi’s Likud collapsed after their leader got out of the picture in power or in leadership.

Melenchon’s greatest asset, also, is that he is melenchon and comes with being as much of a stubborn @$$ as some second-generation diaspora’s intellectual-minded progeny. Say what you want, but he does represent the working class Maghrebis, French intellectuals, and opportunistic community leaders to build a solid coalition.

[parochial boy]

As for LFI, there was a fair amount of "Adrien Quatennens 2027" noise over the last few weeks, as he got his profile out there quite a lot during the campaign and had a few TV outings where he demonstrated that he is actually a strong performer. But obviously tranlsating activist buzz to an actual profile is another thing. LFI overall do have a few profiles, who generally speaking are good and would have an appeal to a left wing activist base - for instance Clémentine Autain or Danielle Obono or Aurélie Trouvé from Attac who supported the campaign and who do all tend to be fairly autonomous performers.

But, well, how the left will or won't recompose itself over the coming years is the great mystery. And failing having a crystal ball it seems extremely hard to be able to predict how things will go. Certainly, a lot of pro-Mélenchon activists are now calling for a "we've built the base, now lets turn the party in to an actual democratic organistion with a proper involved activist base" as well as calling for a rapprochement with the (especially Sandrine Rousseau side of) EELV. That has a lot of appeal for a lot of people, and instinctively seems like the most promising long term. But whether it is possible or not hangs on a lot of factors. And Mélenchon the man is obviously quite a bit - but not the only - obstacle here.

Speaking of Mélenchon activists. These guys, who are probably the most popular pro-Mélenchon internet/influencer types (think Owen Jones except funny; one of them has actually been cited serveral times in this thread already) came out explicitely calling to vote Macron in the second round today. Point being, despite the angry phi-emoji twitter crowd's excesses, there has been a move towards a very grudging acceptance of the idea of voting Macron in the next round by those sorts of people since the end of last week.

[Biden 2024]

I was under the impression Ruffin had the largest (by far) profile of any LFI figure sans JLM and Manon Aubry?

[PSOL]

Quattennes is pretty cute, so I could be amenable in backing him if he gets the leadership role over Ruffin

What are the general profiles of him and the other contenders aside from Ruffin?

[Person Man]

^^Good to see Macron's new campaign strategy immediately paying dividends.

Makes sense. He is where Obama was 6 days out in 2008 and he launched an informercial and that was about it.

[Vosem]

The strongest left-wing party at the most recent European Parliament elections was the Green Party, and the strongest left-wing party in local and regional government remains the Socialists. It really doesn't seem clear that FI is the strongest left-wing choice in the absence of Melénchon himself as a candidate. (Even in this election, in August/September/October 2021 the polling average had Melénchon leading Jadot, at the closest approach, by only ~1%, at least per Wikipedia's regression.)

If the left doesn't grow then I think something like FI will probably lead it, but in the event of even a small back-migration of Macron supporters back to left-wing parties it seems like the Greens would have a decent chance of becoming the largest left-wing party.

[PSOL]

Now Euro elections do cause weird results given the people turning out differ and are usually lower than in national elections, but in a country as centralized as France I don’t think local elections have the same weight to them. EU elections, I am assuming with good reason, that many with support for melenchon do not even turn out for hatred and displeasure of the EU.

That Melenchon’s “base”, about 15-17% of the electorate, is larger than the rest of the French Left combined and is more “loyal” ratio wise then any other candidate speaks to how efficiently organized they actually are.

The French EELV, quite frankly, cannot see any more room to grow with the existence of Macron. There is both not enough of well-off bohemians in France to grow in power relative to countries like Germany or Austria and a relative failure in integrating the immigrant elites to grow, which is less on Macron. I suspect the few lefty holdouts that bring us people like Sandrine to exit shortly and head for better pastures, like Macron for the most part.

The LFI is here to stay, and given where they are in power or have leverage they don’t currently act like PS/Mitterrand 2.0 for the sake of continuing on in gaining power, they are the dominant faction—end of story.

[Oryxslayer]

The strongest left-wing party at the most recent European Parliament elections was the Green Party, and the strongest left-wing party in local and regional government remains the Socialists. It really doesn't seem clear that FI is the strongest left-wing choice in the absence of Melénchon himself as a candidate. (Even in this election, in August/September/October 2021 the polling average had Melénchon leading Jadot, at the closest approach, by only ~1%, at least per Wikipedia's regression.)

If the left doesn't grow then I think something like FI will probably lead it, but in the event of even a small back-migration of Macron supporters back to left-wing parties it seems like the Greens would have a decent chance of becoming the largest left-wing party.

This gets at what I am trying to convey, but maybe it was poorly worded.

Essentially the largest pool of voters who align with the left - as shown by the failure to participate and rapid ascent of Melenchon during the campaign - are those who are not tied to a candidate, but want to win. A 'floating pool' of voters. Whoever is polling well at the moment will attract this group. Obviously the locals are a poor indicator now because of the missing presence or diminished role of personalities, but they still show the desire of victory. What is essentially missing right now is the presence of a personality rather than a party - cause that is what Presidential politics is now - that appeals to all. Melencon has started of with a comparatively large 10 to 12% that stayed with him during the off-seasons, which is why the majority of the 'floating pool' goes to him when the campaign gets going, and especially in the final days of this campaign. But not all are happy with this dominant personality, which is why the left fragments got non-zero numbers of votes, why Left strongholds like S-S-D had poor turnout, and why in the end Le Pen advanced. It is also why a good chunk of the 'floaters' went Macron in 2017, back when there were more visibly positive policies to point to.

The 'floating' nature of these voters means that the left could either do comparatively good or horribly in the legislatives, depending upon how well they congregate behind the best candidate locally. The legacy position of PS is why they and the Communists still hold all left power locally, and not the personality party of LFI. They attract the attached floaters by their better position. They also gave the Greens their EU seats: many of the same areas won by Melenchon were the best areas for the EELV in 2019. Therefore, it is in the best interests of the Left as a whole to minimize the amount of effort needed to determine which candidate is best positioned locally to advance to round 2, perhaps by having as few lists as possible. The more candidates, the more likely the vote with fragment beyond viability.

This is also why the future is uncertain. Some personality will rise to fill the vacuum - personalities eagerly fill such spaces - we just don't yet know from where or how. They may come from LFI, EELV, or no national party. They may pull in all the 'floaters,' or leave some unsatisfied. We do not have a crystal ball and cannot see what will come.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Macron --> Le Pen and Le Pen --> Macron voters are just fascinating to me. 

My guess is they are anti EU but also very anti Russia as well so in 2017 when the election was more about the future of the EU they voted Le Pen but this time voted Macron due  to Russia