Marine Le Pen's right-wing populists appear to have won barely more than 20% of the vote in France's election today. This was a dismal showing for a party that was finally expected to win after years of rebranding and makeovers. But voters weren't fooled: a strong turnout unexpectedly powered an alliance of the left to the biggest share of the vote. Going forward, parliament will almost certainly be controlled by some kind of coalition of the left and center.
Meanwhile, Britain's right wing got crushed in Thursday's election; the right-wing candidate for president lost in Iran; and last month the far-right party in Belgium failed to make its predicted gains, with the usual messy coalition of center-left and center-right remaining in control. In India, Narendra Modi's religious nationalists were shocked by the success of a secular leftist coalition; and in Mexico left populists cemented their control.
Can we please get a few stories now about how the left is ascendant around the world while the forces of right-wing nationalism are in disarray because they're still consistently unable to appeal to more than a small fraction of the electorate? Thanks, much appreciated.
I agree with you but I do think the right is becoming more radical and authoritarian.
Once the left and center parties get past their assertions of being unwilling to work with one another... until then there is the risk of another "Belgium" https://caw.ceu.edu/other-activities/academic-blog/politics/how-did-belgium-manage-to-survive-without-having-agovernment
The left and center have never said they won';t work with each other. Belgium had nothing to do with left and right. It had to do with flemish versus french. The flemish work hard, and don't want to share with the french who hate doing work.
Belgium never lacked a government. When will this never-ending myth be retired? What it had trouble with was forming a new government. That was politically problematic, to be sure. But it wasn't the same as not having an executive administration to run the country.
And that all won't mean shit if Trump is elected in the Fall, and the Republicans retain control of the House and regain control of the Senate.
And that all won't mean shit if Trump is elected in the Fall,
It'll mean some shit. Americans may think otherwise, but they don't rule the world, and if they abandon decency it hardly means other peoples are obliged to do so. And the retreat of the extreme right overseas is very definitely welcome news to the several million Yanks who possess more than one passport.
fewer allies for trump & project 2025 on the world stage is good. he'll still have Xi, modi, & putin, the three wiseacres of executive power, but after that, pickings are slim. viktor orban, sleepy recep tayyip erdogan, & sweet giorgia blackshirt aren't the a team of fascism.
I think this has as much to do with the overall odiousness and ugliness of today's right-wing politics as it does the electorate's general preference for more liberal policies. Far-right parties in Britain and Europe admire Trump and are fairly open about being paid stooges of Putin and that scares the crap out of a lot of European voters. (That said, I have been fairly surprised by Giorgia Meloni's rather robust support for Ukraine the past two years).
That said, I have been fairly surprised by Giorgia Meloni's rather robust support for Ukraine the past two years
For this alone I would consider her "right" rather than "extreme right." Or, maybe, "a righty with 9/10ths of a brain instead of 2/5ths of a brain." I mean, why on earth would any Westerner of any political stripe think it's in our interest to invite Russian gangsterism into the heart of Europe? Makes no sense even from simple rational self-interest.
she's probably feeling chuffed that putin rebuffed her request to reconsider genovese claims to treatyports in crimea.
LOL-- will no one speak up for the Venetians?
Turnout, I think. At least in France there's no other reason why the far-right RN would fall from 33% in the first round to just over 20% in the second. This means almost all irregular voters oppose the far right.
But "parliament will almost certainly be controlled by some kind of coalition of the left and center" is not certain at all, though it sounds logical. Macron's center is already saying it won't govern with Mélenchon's hard-left. But the Socialists will have trouble shedding him after their successful alliance, and also have not all that much to win from it: they'd lose a partner commanding 90+ seats to gain one commanding not many more than that.
Basically I see three options now, excluding a center-far right alliance which would be seen as treason by both sides:
1. No parliamentary majority, but a technocratic govt tolerated by center and left
2. National unity govt: the moderate right + the center + the Socialists and Greens
3. Center-left govt, including Mélenchon but headed by a Socialist or by Glucksmann, with significant concessions from both sides.
But that's for another day! I live in France and have French children, and the sense of relief is just incredible. No one dared dream of such a result. The mother of my kids said she didn't want to see the results, so sure was she the far right would win. Two Arab woman friends were jumping up and down. They were terrified of what the far right might do to them. This is a great day here. Party time.
"Turnout, I think. At least in France there's no other reason why the far-right RN would fall from 33% in the first round to just over 20% in the second." turnout was identical in the two rounds. And when kevin says 20% of the vote, he means 20% of the seats. I don't think we have any information of the popular vote yet.
True. My bad. I googled "participation 1er tour" and didn't notice the data was from 2017. So then the explanation is tactical voting, I guess, plus the fact that the old tactic of the center and left "front républicain" to avoid vote-splitting worked remarkably well.
In countries without proportional representation, like France and the US, votes for third parties can screw things up. But France due to its two-round system can whittle the number of parties down, and if the remaining parties also conclude mutual desistment deals, in the end the voter has a stark choice, this or that. Kudos to those French who couldn't vote for their preferred candidate and cast a ballot against the RN anyway. I know quite a few who hate the Socialists but in the end voted for them. I suppose ranked-choice voting would produce a similar result.
The right wing got 37% of the vote in round 2, according to Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_French_legislative_election
To be fair, if Khameini had really wanted Pezeshkian to lose or not be in the election at all, that's what would have happened. It's still an authoritarian theocracy.
Absolutely, & Pezeshkian followed his win by visiting the grave of of Khameini. his minority ethnicity will keep him from being too daring.
Talking with a friend in Tehran via Viber today, we still refrained from discussing the election, in case someone nearby might overhear. The regime doesn't acknowledge dual citizenship, so I still worry that others may notice conversations in English.
It's fair to point out that the notion that right wing authoritarians were sweepingthe world is overblown but what Rick Jones said above (or below) . I'm glad that Britain ousted the Tories and Marine Le Pen and the right lost in France. but the rally big election, the one that matters the most, is the one we're holding here on Novmber 5th.
“Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
It is entirely possible that TFG wins in November and after voters get a real good look at the results, there is a huge swing the other direction.
Wait, we deported 20 million illegals and nothing changed? In fact, prices continued to go up?
Worse things are going to happen to non-immigrant Americans than inflation. Think about what will happen if mass protests like the George Floyd protests happen under Trump II? Mass murder.
If 20 million are deported ,prices will explode, not just keep going up.
Wait, we deported 20 million illegals and nothing changed?
Not going to happen. It's logistically infeasible. Wanting to do something doesn't make that something plausible.
not able to handle that volume of deportation?
well, there's always summary execution of (suspected) undocumented people by militia groups deputized as paramilitaries. our own contras!
It's about 50-50, imho. On the one hand it could well be just like the wall or infrastructure week last time around. On the other, kicking it off could be the "ban all Muslims" of the (God forbid) second term, bringing the country to a complete standstill as local law enforcement departments everywhere are turned loose and commandeer all available transport, etc.
It would be just like trump and a lot of his "Heritage" Foundation co-plotters to want to create maximum chaos everywhere, and supposedly the dirty work of actually rounding people up is to be fobbed off to locals and staties, leaving the feds with Stephen Miller's wet dream of running the internment camps.
for the benefit of the incel irregulars staffing those camps, there will have to be allowances for rape.
just think: srebanica comes to america.
The deportation of 20 Million illegal is just a fig-leaf for creating a Trump-loyal militia that he can use to suppress the rest of the population.
Conservative politicians have no shame about taking bribes and surrendering to Russia while bragging about their patriotism because, you know, they got paid for it, so they're getting away with it, so they're winning. And everyone wants them to be winning.
They're doing it for us! We're being taken care of!
The takeaway for me is that nothing is inevitable.
We can lose the battle for democracy. but we can also win.
"Marine Le Pen's right-wing populists appear to have won barely more than 20% of the vote in France's election today."
This is incorrect, they won around 23% of the *seats*, but they probably still represent around 29% of the voters (33% with their allies). The widespread tactical voting strategy that the French left has been forced to adopt for many years worked a little bit better than expected. However, the likelihood of Le Pen's party reaching more than 50% was greatly overblown by everybody: mathematically they would need the traditional right and center right to support them, very unlikely.
It is nonetheless very concerning that the ideas they promote have become widespread in France, thanks in no small part to a growing media network.
Yes, the people claiming there was a possibility of NR getting the most votes in the 2nd round was espouses only by imbeciles or professional liars. it was never an actual possibility. No one has that party as their 2nd choice.
I just had a conversation with a relative about the rise of the right across the world and how that meant Biden is doomed (and the debate sealed it) and how I'm in denial for thinking that Trump is not predestined to win.
I was willing to cede the right's rise to power in France and now I'm willing to admit I was wrong about that. I'll say this much: I don't have firsthand knowledge of French politics and I was relying on experts.
The experts on France and the experts on the US know the same thing: a lot about the past and nothing about what's going to happen in the next election.
History surprises. The consensus of experts here predicting doom via a Trump victory may be due for a surprise too.
Turnout is key, as is attention. With this in mind, I've come full circle on what Biden should do. He should bow out of the race, mission accomplished as a successful president, and Democrats should run a reality show to see who the candidate will be.
Why?
Trump has been actively campaigning for several months, his support has mostly already solidified and topped out. If Biden stays in, this would likely reduce enthusiasm and turnout. But, if the Democrats open this up again, the news media will eat it up as summer is usually terrible for business.
All eyes will be on the Democrats, and the prospective candidates. Have several debates, invite Trump to join too lol (he won't). Hoover up all that attention and head into the fall with real momentum, the money will come back in even if everything to date needs to be refunded.
Any of that money now will go to heavy commercials, but these commercials repeat with a damaged Biden, and the bang for that buck doesn't match a summer long Democratic contest to see who will run against Trump, which will dominate attention spans.
Just do it!
Right-wing Law and Justice lost in Poland to a center-left coalition, also.
Center left and left wing parties are surging across Europe. But will it just lead to a great backlash for the Nationalist Right forces?
The New York Times fills us in.
the real winner of the french parliamentary election?
florida governor ron de santis.
I'd be happy if we could just get the media to stop calling people who consistently don't get the majority of the vote "populists".
Hear, hear!
Can we please get a few stories now about how the left is ascendant around the world while the forces of right-wing nationalism are in disarray because they're still consistently unable to appeal to more than a small fraction of the electorate?
Hahahahaha. Stop, please! Yer killin' me!
We cannot and will not see stories like this -- or at most we'll see one very occasionally, buried on page 12 -- because it is not in the economic or career interests of major media corporations and their "journalists" to do so.
Such stories result in a flood of hatred from right-wingers (which even if they are not subscribers is not appreciated at all by advertisers), at most a satisfied nod from sane people, an appreciable amount of peer-to-peer scorn within the profession because (like Trump's criminality and psychopathy) that's not news, and (I expect) a certain amount of cold-shouldering of senior editors and publishers from their social circles, who tend Republican-to-Fascist.
Conversely, stories bashing the Left (the radical, riotous, hippie-infested sociamalist Left) are greeted with great acclaim from all parts of the Right and mostly sighs and shrugs from non-Rightists, and are considered within the profession a mark of Seriousness and Objectivity.
There's no mileage in criticizing the Right, and nothing but in criticizing the Left. And here we are.
The real winner of the French elections may be Donald Trump. Here's why...
The New York Times
The ascedance and popularity of the far right in France was always a creation of the lazy media. looking for clicks, recycling their Trump copy.
Macron however is very, very unpopular.
As you have pointed out for a long, long time, the policies of the left (if not the far-left) are more popular. The right knows this, and feels it needs to dress up its ideas in fashionable clothing to advance them: "Think of the children!"
There is always some lying in politics, on all sides. But the scale of the right suggests to me that they don't think they can win on the merits, and need to fan fears and hatred instead.
I realize that's small comfort for 2016, but it's still operative.
Look at Trump trying to soft pedal his elimination of abortion rights.
Bravo pour les Français. Peut-être que la France, l'Ukraine et l'Europe seront sauvées du monstre maléfique qu'est Poutine.
Hey, I like poutine!
Putin, not so much.
What does curds and barbeques sauce on french fries have to do with anything.
Barbecue? Sacre bleu! Always brown sauce along the St Lawrence-- a beef gravy, sometimes made with chicken too.
Poutine is how a friend and I always referred to the execrable Putin. Both jocular and also fitting, since "poutine" in Quebec slang meant something like "hot mess" and was applied to the dish when it was developed.
In the UK there was no swing to the left, the Labour party got 1.5% more of the vote than last time, and 2/3 of that gain came from the implosion of the Scottish National Party.
The right was split by Nigel Farage taking 2/5 of the right wing vote, leaving the Conservatives with 3/5.
As a result of our first past the post voting system the Labour Party got a majority of 87 with a 33.7% of the vote, whereas last time they were 122 below a majority with 32.2% of the vote.
As an aside, the Liberals got less votes than Nigel Farrage's Reform Party, but got 72 seats, to Reform's 5.
The delights of first past the post. Go figure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/results
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results
It’s not only, or even FPTP, it’s having 650 seats, or like 1 per 100k vs the us 1 per 1 million plus the senate. With enough districts gerrymandering them is harder. In any system the parties know what is needed and campaign accordingly.
In Europe it’s also true that the right wing parties are only ever a minority, but in the US it’s covered as if it’s like 51% to win. In France today Le Pen got 20% of the overall vote, 80-% are not the n favor of the right
Also I think having so many parties with overlapping core positions and voting bases is a big factor.
They should move to rank voting.
And so should the US, I think. France with its two-round system reduces the risk that vote splitting will lead to freak results, but even there as we just saw alliances and mutual desistment agreements may also be needed. And in one-round systems third parties can deny victory to the person who would have won in ranked-choice voting (Al Gore, Hillary Clinton), or, as in the UK, a minority of votes can lead to a blowout majority of seats.
I'm a convert to ranked-choice elections. It's the best way to allow voters to be both principled (first choice) and tactical (second choice).
the problem I have with that is i think a lot of jill stein voters would have had trump as their second choice, on the notion of his pacifism & overarching willingness to reject the forever war & drone addiction of the military-industrial complex.
most nader voters might have ranked gore over bush, but not before putting john hagelin & pat buchanan over gore.
"And so should the US, I think."
+1000000000 (for moving to rank voting).
One of the right's assets has long been its refusal to engage with reality. This enables them to be relentlessly positive even when reality should have them on their knees. The appalling Nigel Farage, for example, having seen his party win a whole 5 seats in the UK elections, acted as if he'd won a major victory and announced he was coming after Labour (411 seats).
The left, on the other hand, tends to pessimism no matter how well it does.
In general I'd agree about left vs right. Farage really did have something to celebrate, though-- his party screwed the pooch, true, but he finally won an actual seat in Parliament and it only took him 8 tries to do it.
& like sarah palin as governor of alaska, he'll get bored of it in 18 to 24 months. constituent services aren't nearly as fun as jetting to moscow to pickup suitcases full of cash (funnily, euros, most likely) & saying nasty things about immigrants.
Did you see how many votes Reform got?
They had piss-poor electoral planning (partly because they only had a few weeks to get mobilized).
If they did as good a job as Labour did in terms of vote distribution etc., the results would have been utterly different.
They have plenty to celebrate, even if this time around their obvious strength didn;t translate into house seats.
This is America! We don't care what those communists in other countries are doing.
Also: joke: In Britain, they have two parties. Labor, or as we call them in America, Socialists. And Tories. Or, as we call them in America, Socialists.
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