French National Assembly Elections, 06/30-07/07

[wnwnwn]

What's the appeal of RN outside inmigration policy?
I hope the left moderates a bit on it while keeping the rest of their platform. Something like deporting criminals and reducing the negative impact of french companies in Africa.

Obviously the business class would be agaisnt that, but that would be the right thing to do.

[lfromnj]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/world/europe/french-election-antisemitism-jews.html

Others did not find this “normal.” In 2022, Mr. Klarsfeld co-signed an article in the Libération newspaper headlined “No to Le Pen, daughter of racism and antisemitism.” This is one measure of the distance traveled by the National Rally in two years, as the party stands on the brink of a possible victory that could hand it the prime minister’s position.

He still hasn’t endorsed RN but says they are the lesser evil in a second round without Macron.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Over 1 million proxy votes have been registered, already more than for 2022. Again, hard to know what to make of it exactly, but it means there are at least quite a few people taking it seriously.

I'll be casting two votes myself, as I'll be a proxy for my mom.

[Flyersfan232]

The left haven’t name a prime minister candidate yet?

[Hash]

The thing I'm most curious about is turnout. 64% would be the highest turnout since 2002, which would be a good sign for democracy if nothing else, but would also significantly lower the threshold for runoff qualification as noted. At that level, it would take about 20% of the valid votes to qualify, vs over 25% last time.

However, do French pollsters have a good track record with gauging turnout? In other countries it's notoriously the hardest thing to poll. Have pollsters tried to estimate turnout in legislative elections before, and how did that go?

I have the same doubts as you since I've always been under the impression that pollsters are quite bad at estimating turnout. However, Ifop's last rolling tracker for the EP elections estimated a 52.5% turnout (it was 51.5% in the end, but probably over 52.5% only in metro France). Their last poll for the 2022 legislative elections estimated 46% turnout, which was a bit less than the final number.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The thing I'm most curious about is turnout. 64% would be the highest turnout since 2002, which would be a good sign for democracy if nothing else, but would also significantly lower the threshold for runoff qualification as noted. At that level, it would take about 20% of the valid votes to qualify, vs over 25% last time.

However, do French pollsters have a good track record with gauging turnout? In other countries it's notoriously the hardest thing to poll. Have pollsters tried to estimate turnout in legislative elections before, and how did that go?

I have the same doubts as you since I've always been under the impression that pollsters are quite bad at estimating turnout. However, Ifop's last rolling tracker for the EP elections estimated a 52.5% turnout (it was 51.5% in the end, but probably over 52.5% only in metro France). Their last poll for the 2022 legislative elections estimated 46% turnout, which was a bit less than the final number.

Oh, thanks! That's really good to know.

This is undoubtedly a very dark time for France, but a genuinely high-turnout legislative election would be a silver lining no matter the outcome.

[Estrella]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/world/europe/french-election-antisemitism-jews.html

Others did not find this “normal.” In 2022, Mr. Klarsfeld co-signed an article in the Libération newspaper headlined “No to Le Pen, daughter of racism and antisemitism.” This is one measure of the distance traveled by the National Rally in two years, as the party stands on the brink of a possible victory that could hand it the prime minister’s position.

He still hasn’t endorsed RN but says they are the lesser evil in a second round without Macron.

Panzerdaddy when he finds out Jews are voting for his party:

[Antonio the Sixth]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/world/europe/french-election-antisemitism-jews.html

Others did not find this “normal.” In 2022, Mr. Klarsfeld co-signed an article in the Libération newspaper headlined “No to Le Pen, daughter of racism and antisemitism.” This is one measure of the distance traveled by the National Rally in two years, as the party stands on the brink of a possible victory that could hand it the prime minister’s position.

He still hasn’t endorsed RN but says they are the lesser evil in a second round without Macron.

Panzerdaddy when he finds out Jews are voting for his party:

Ah, a fellow De Funès enjoyer. Legends only.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Frankly at this point I would hold my nose and vote RN- the rape of that 12 year old Jewish girl was the last straw for me. Melenchon and Macron don't seem to care all that much. Le Pen doesn't either but she at least pretends to, which is better than nothing.

[lfromnj]

Not trying to defend Macron here (I'd vote for the Popular Front unless my constituency's candidate was from LFI) but it seems that the Macronistas are the only coalition that hasn't had some form of significant chaos.

Anyone with more knowledge of French politics know any more about the RE campaign?

How do you have an L avatar and somehow prefer both Le Pen and NFP within the last week over Macronism?

[Battista Minola 1616]

Not trying to defend Macron here (I'd vote for the Popular Front unless my constituency's candidate was from LFI) but it seems that the Macronistas are the only coalition that hasn't had some form of significant chaos.

Anyone with more knowledge of French politics know any more about the RE campaign?

How do you have an L avatar and somehow prefer both Le Pen and NFP within the last week over Macronism?

He is a teenager and he posts on this forum.

[Estrella]

Not to derail this but…

Panzerdaddy when he finds out Jews are voting for his party:

Ah, a fellow De Funès enjoyer. Legends only.

You’d be surprised how incredibly popular French and Italian comedies used to be in the old Czechoslovakia. They were at their biggest in the 70s and 80s, but even today they’re on TV all the time. When I was a kid, we had DVDs of pretty much every Louis de Funès movie, pretty much every Fantozzi movie, a couple others like La moutarde me monte au nez or On a retrouvé la septième compagnie, and my dad’s beloved Les Bidasses box set Allegedly Funès loved the Czech dubs of his movie so much he thought they were better than the original.

[DL]

A very plausible result in the assembly elections is that RN emerges as the largest party but falls short of a majority but RN plus whatever remnants there are of LR are just over the majority - what happens then?

[Antonio the Sixth]

Not to derail this but…

Panzerdaddy when he finds out Jews are voting for his party:

Ah, a fellow De Funès enjoyer. Legends only.

You’d be surprised how incredibly popular French and Italian comedies used to be in the old Czechoslovakia. They were at their biggest in the 70s and 80s, but even today they’re on TV all the time. When I was a kid, we had DVDs of pretty much every Louis de Funès movie, pretty much every Fantozzi movie, a couple others like La moutarde me monte au nez or On a retrouvé la septième compagnie, and my dad’s beloved Les Bidasses box set Allegedly Funès loved the Czech dubs of his movie so much he thought they were better than the original.

Oh, fascinating! I had no idea. It's always great to find out how far and wide these classics of my countries traveled, especially back in the days of the Iron Curtain. I should rewatch some of them, it's been way too long.

A very plausible result in the assembly elections is that RN emerges as the largest party but falls short of a majority but RN plus whatever remnants there are of LR are just over the majority - what happens then?

This has been asked a bunch of times already and the answer, unfortunately, is that nobody knows.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Frankly at this point I would hold my nose and vote RN- the rape of that 12 year old Jewish girl was the last straw for me. Melenchon and Macron don't seem to care all that much. Le Pen doesn't either but she at least pretends to, which is better than nothing.

To be fair...

France in general has a rape problem.

Ngl 20% of stories that make it into Belgium from France is rape-related.

Incl that 12 year old, though i wasn't aware she was Jewish. But it's not the first time, it won't be the last time either.

There is a reason Le Pen is doing well... in the polls.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

"Far-right" is the better translation for "extrême droite" I think. No one actually says "extreme right" in English.

In dutch we say extreemrechts too, and far right is the correct translation. There is no distinction between far and extreme here. Far doesn't have a good translation really.

Far-left = extrême gauche.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

I jus don't understand why (beyond wishful thinking) people think that people mad at Macron for being insufficiently left wing economically have shifted to voting for far right parties instead of voting or actual left parties, instead of simply genuinely believing far right narratives and policies.

And how much of Macrons unpopualrity stems from his actual policies, when most leaders of developed countries have comparable approval ratings.

Because the far right parties are just simply better on economic policies than neoliberal parties. If the choice is voting between neoliberal hacks like Thatcher or economic populist/economic nationalist candidates, people will prefer the second option. It's how the far right has been able to expand its presence in countries like Belgium, France & the Netherlands.

If it was a decision purely on economic issues, obv i'd prefer Le Pen over Macron. The last thing i'd would want to have is an OSR-type ruling a country.

And how much of Macrons unpopualrity stems from his actual policies, when most leaders of developed countries have comparable approval ratings.

Because most countries are now like this, neoliberal establishment vs far right-populist challengers, France being in particularly similar to USA, but with a less controversial far right figurehead and a whole different background/tradition ("the leftists/labour etc").

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

Not trying to defend Macron here (I'd vote for the Popular Front unless my constituency's candidate was from LFI) but it seems that the Macronistas are the only coalition that hasn't had some form of significant chaos.

Anyone with more knowledge of French politics know any more about the RE campaign?

How do you have an L avatar and somehow prefer both Le Pen and NFP within the last week over Macronism?

Because I've shifted politically over the four years I've been here? And I forgot my Atlas login so I can't change my political compass scores?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Not trying to defend Macron here (I'd vote for the Popular Front unless my constituency's candidate was from LFI) but it seems that the Macronistas are the only coalition that hasn't had some form of significant chaos.

Anyone with more knowledge of French politics know any more about the RE campaign?

How do you have an L avatar and somehow prefer both Le Pen and NFP within the last week over Macronism?

At the end of the day the vast majority people will put their personal interests over ideology . You could say that’s libertarian in a way

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Not trying to defend Macron here (I'd vote for the Popular Front unless my constituency's candidate was from LFI) but it seems that the Macronistas are the only coalition that hasn't had some form of significant chaos.

Anyone with more knowledge of French politics know any more about the RE campaign?

How do you have an L avatar and somehow prefer both Le Pen and NFP within the last week over Macronism?

At the end of the day the vast majority people will put their personal interests over ideology . You could say that’s libertarian in a way

US libertarianism is unique and completely different from European libertarianism.

You don't know why he has the L avatar.

His views overall seem to align with center left mainstream liberal views. (from a US perspective)

[Agafin]

Over 1 million proxy votes have been registered, already more than for 2022. Again, hard to know what to make of it exactly, but it means there are at least quite a few people taking it seriously.

I'll be casting two votes myself, as I'll be a proxy for my mom.

Proxy voting seems like the easiest thing in the world to abuse.  Even though you are her son, would your mom really trust you to cast an RN ballot for her if she knows you hate that party? Would you be fine with it? I wonder why there's no postal voting.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Over 1 million proxy votes have been registered, already more than for 2022. Again, hard to know what to make of it exactly, but it means there are at least quite a few people taking it seriously.

I'll be casting two votes myself, as I'll be a proxy for my mom.

Proxy voting seems like the easiest thing in the world to abuse.  Even though you are her son, would your mom really trust you to cast an RN ballot for her if she knows you hate that party? Would you be fine with it? I wonder why there's no postal voting.

lmao, imagine thinking my mom would ever want to vote for RN

Like. I imagine most people would choose a proxy who shares their values, or whom they do trust enough. If they don't, it's an irresponsible choice on their part, but I don't think that's an abuse per se. Ultimately you're responsible for where you place your trust.

[Sir John Johns]

https://twitter.com/PaulLarrouturou/status/1803851311861108864

Édouard Philippe saying that Macron ‘has killed the presidential majority’ and that it’s time to ‘move on’ and ‘create a new parliamentary majority working on a different basis that the previous one’. He is breaking with Macron and already planning his 2027 presidential bid.

Shortly thereafter, Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, criticized in strong terms in a TV interview the inner circle of Macron.

The parquet floors of ministries and palaces of the Republic are full of woodlice. There always have been woodlice, it is part of the French political life… They are in the parquet floors, in the parquet grooves. It is very hard to get rid of them. The best is to not listening to them and remaining at your place whether one is president, prime minister, minister and taking decisions in full knowledge.

The unnamed targets of Le Maire are Pierre Charron and Bruno Roger-Petit, two presidential advisers who reportedly encouraged Macron to dissolve the National Assembly. Charron is a former Sarkozyist senator for Paris currently acting as an unofficial presidential adviser. He is mostly known in the press for engaging in gossip and is a worthy representative of the Parisian Right, a permanent laughing stock of French politics since the Tiberi era which is dedicating more time for petty feuds and personal rivalries (case in point: in the 2023 senatorial election, the official LR list in Paris faced two dissident lists, one led by Charron who didn’t get reelected) than trying to constitute an effective challenge to the PS dominance in the capital. Roger-Petit is a second-tier and fairly mediocre journalist who started as a PS supporter but became later a Macron sycophant and was rewarded with a job of ‘presidential adviser for remembrance’. He is said to be very close to Brigitte Macron and to have inspired the reactionary turn of the Macron presidency, enjoying ties with far-right circles, notably Pascal Praud, the star columnist on Bolloré’s CNews TV station who, according to Le Monde, was informed by Roger-Petit about the dissolution even before the prime minister.

The roles of Charron and Roger-Petit may be exaggerated (firstly by Charron and Roger-Petit themselves) but the fact such political mediocrities have integrated the presidential inner circle and could influence political decisions is already very telling and strongly reminiscent of the Ancien Régime monarchy when politics were partly decided by courtiers and royal mistresses.

Anyway, there is a lot of resentment against Macron among the ranks of Renew parliamentarians, unhappy about the unannounced and clearly unprepared dissolution and about the disconnection and authoritarianism of the president who has snubbed the parliament all along his tenure in office. In the case of a (likely) electoral defeat, the leadership of Macron (barred from running in 2027) over what remains of Renew will be strongly challenged by Philippe, Le Maire, Attal, Bayrou and maybe Darmanin (who is apparently uninterested into remaining interior minister after the legislative elections). More internal squabbling in sight.

This hasn’t been yet mentioned but the candidate fielded by the NFP in the Conflans-Sainte-Honorine constituency (on the PP quota) is Aurélien Rousseau, a former chief of staff for Élisabeth Borne and one of the architects of the pensions reform. Subsequently the health minister, Rousseau resigned from that office in December 2023 to protest the immigration bill. His defection is yet another sign of discontent with the leadership and political orientation taken by Macron.


As for the campaign itself, Macron has decided to double down on his Boomer anti-youth populism, promising a revaluation of pensions (when pensions are already constituting one of the largest government expenditure and as pensioners have been entirely spared by the pension reform which is only penalizing younger generations), even harsher penalties for unemployed workers (the third reform of unemployment insurance in four years), prohibition of cell phones for children under 11 and social networks for teenagers under 15 (good luck trying to implement these ones considering they can’t even regulated mainstream TV/radio channels), compulsory school uniform by 2026, the generalization and mandatory character of the expensive and useless ‘national universal service’ (a cheap civic service for youth that has already faced various scandals of harassment, racism and physical harm against its first volunteers) and the promise of ‘excellence for everybody at school’ when the education system has suffered from repeated budget cuts and chronic understaffing and has been disorganized by a series of hasty and ill-prepared reforms. As mentioned, the simplification of administrative procedures for change of gender self-identification, which was part of Macron’s 2022 platform, is now derided as an abomination because throwing under the bus minorities for short-term political gains is apparently the new cool in French politics.

That’s pretty much for the platform as the main strategy is to contrast the supposed budgetary seriousness and competence of the current government with the economic incompetence and inexperience of the RN and the unrealistic and arch-expansive platform of the NFP. A risky choice when the 2023 budget deficit has been estimated at 5.6% against the 4.9% initially predicted by Le Maire and when the debt of France has been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s at the beginning of the month. But, even more, the government can boasted about its economic successes as much as it wants, on the ground the average voter is still experiencing increases in the prices of basic necessities, the closure of public services, the deterioration of education and hospitals systems, the excessive delays to get an appointment with specialists and the unfortunate financial consequences of stricter roadworthiness tests and ill-conducted energy renovation programs for households.

[Agafin]

It's hard to understand what Macron's plan was by dissolving the National Assembly when he did.

[jaichind]

Odoxa