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Far Right get 20% of the vote in French Presidential Elections

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Our Lady of The Two Towers

19:51 / 21.04.02

With almost 50% of the votes counted (from an estimated 70% of the population) incumbant President Chirac has 19% of the votes, Lionel Jospin has 15% and Far Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has 17%, which means that Jospin has to go home with the blanket blank chequebook and pen.
Damn I wish June were still posting here.
So is this a triumph for fascism in France, a protest vote against the left-wing government or just a ghastly fuck-up? The news reports are saying that no-one expected Le Pen to get through to round two, but do people think that there is a genuine danger of him becoming France's President or that the result today was a protest vote that went further than people expected?

20:14 / 21.04.02

NPR did a report on this just a few days ago. Seems too many French voters are sort of scattering their votes amongst multiple cantidates, which makes things difficult for Chirac and easy on Le Pen.

21:07 / 21.04.02

Is Le pann standing on his own cos last i remember hearing was that he had been forced out by infighting within his own party...

Harold Washington died for you

01:26 / 22.04.02

Just a crazy, crazy era of extremes. Suicide bombers and left-wing philosophies in the poor countries popping up everywhere. The extant old guard governments are getting conservative as a reaction. I miss the '90s.

02:56 / 22.04.02

I think this means French citizens are no longer allowed to insult American voters.

06:44 / 22.04.02

sleaze - le penn *is* representing the national front. i've heard 10,000 people are on the streets of paris in protest at this. i always saw le penn as a bogeyman, in the background but with no expectation of anything other than the pissed off protest vote. this is worrying news indeed, although perhaps it will be a kick up the backside for the french electorate....

06:56 / 22.04.02

Christ, that's really frightening...

07:42 / 22.04.02

Obviously this is very worrying. There are some factors behind it though. First of all the left was very split between the communists, socialist and green candidates. This split the potential vote for Jospin and empowered a unified far right vote. I'm tempted to to say this this kind of fragmentation is the sign of a healthy, engaged democracy but look at the side effects.
Chirac and Jospin can also take a degree of responsibility. The both based their campaigns on combatting insecurity in France. Who is best placed to profit from rising feelings of insecurity? Oh look, here comes Msr Le Pen with his harsh but fair views on policing and immigration.

07:43 / 22.04.02

Ghastly fuck-up. Now that he's running against Chirac and Jospin is to quit politics, I bet Chirac will pick up the Jospin vote (they were practically the same politician anyway). The Guardian says:

The result does not mean there is any serious risk of Mr Le Pen becoming president of the republic. A snap opinion poll last night showed Mr Chirac would win the runoff with 78% of the vote against 22% for Mr Le Pen.

07:45 / 22.04.02

I've never really paid attention to French politics outside of the headlines, but it seems that it's very scary there every election time. It seems like it's always 'if the socialists don't get in, the national front bastards will'.

07:51 / 22.04.02

I'd be very surprised indeed if LePen took the presidency- as KKC observes, everyone remotely sane will line up behind Chirac. The problem is that still leaves 22% of the French electorate voting for a racist. Even if he loses, we won't hear the last of this... there will be plenty of people who will take LePen and his ideas far more seriously because of this. Hopefully some of them will have some constructive ideas about how to outmaneuvre him politically. But I fear that many will take this result as a justification and validation of racism in France. Which is pretty fucking chilling.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:05 / 22.04.02

Suicide bombers and left-wing philosophies in the poor countries popping up everywhere. - MM

Would it be too much to ask that you separate the two in your mind?

This is being widely reported as a protest vote with bigger teeth than anyone thought. The Socialists are, of course, advising their followers to vote for the Conservative candidate in order to be sure that Le Pen will not win.

What alarms me is not that Le Pen might win, but that so many people thought he was acceptable as a protest.

08:17 / 22.04.02

Why should we automatically consider it a protest vote?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:50 / 22.04.02

I think it's more a case of us hoping it's a protest vote than automatically considering it one.

Nick's "What alarms me is not that Le Pen might win, but that so many people thought he was acceptable as a protest" hits a much more unpleasant nail on the head.

08:59 / 22.04.02

Well to partly answer my own questions the total vote for extreme right wing parties was about 20%. For extreme left about 10%. So about a third of the electorate are voting for opposites of the necessarily balanced cohabitation. Is this a vote against the bi-polaristaion of the system?
If we do consider it a protest vote, a vote against rather than for something, don't we risk overlooking the underlying reasons? Isn't it possible that a large percentage of the those motivated enough to vote simply prefer the policies of the candidates they have chosen.
One interesting and inevitable outcome will be a landslide victory for Chirac even though he only polled a few more percentage points than Jospin and simply wouldn't have had that lead if the left had even a semblance of strategic unity. A failure of the french electoral system?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:57 / 22.04.02

We're calling it a protest vote because the majority of Frenchy pundits have done so. And establishing actual voter motivation is not easy - it's always going to come down to an interpretation.

Failure of the electoral system? I think not. The mood of the electorate has been amply expressed - they want Chirac marginally more than Jospin, and they're very pissed off. And of course, there is the possibility that a significant proportion of the French electorate are feeling pretty hostile to 'immigrants' etc..

In which case...what happens if a democratic movement legitimately (i.e. by the rules) constitutes itself along racist lines? Is it legitimate for a democracy to vote itself into intolerance?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:59 / 22.04.02

Wait, that's not right - Jospin's PM, isn't he? Off to sort out the details...

10:29 / 22.04.02

Why should the electorate be pissed off, though? What could they be protesting against? France is doing fairly well at the moment, unemployment is dropping and the 35 heures was a success. There doesn't seem to be any specific establishment policy to react against. At least not by voting for Le Front National.
I think the low turnout has a lot to do with the result. I don't believe that 20% of French nationals are in favour of National Front policies, but is clear that 20% of those that voted are. So we have to look for the reasons underpinning this gap. Low turnout could be explained by complacency and lack of motivation. The two main candidates had both been in power for the last 5 and 7 years so neither of them could realistically claim to shake things up if they won power. Why bother to vote if you are just going to get the same old thing? Whereas followers of the extreme right had every motivation to vote and to cause an upset.

ONLY NICE THINGS

10:59 / 22.04.02

Suicide bombers and left-wing philosophies in the poor countries popping up everywhere.

Yeah. Damn that pinko militant Islam.

You're a comedy suit, aren't you, MM?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

11:09 / 22.04.02

The turnout was low by French standards. But do the maths: if the turnout were only fifty percent (and it was considerably more) then that would still be ten percent of the total electorate for Le Pen. I fear you're grasping at straws.

The major issue was 'security' and rising crime (which Le Pen linked with immigration).

From MSNBC: "A former paratrooper who fought in Vietnam and Algeria, the silver-haired Le Pen strikes a chord among voters who fear that French identity is being displaced by waves of mainly Muslim immigrants from North Africa. Le Pen often compares immigration to an invasion."

It's become very popular to link political events with September 11th, but this one seems to have pretty strong ties. France's distrust of its immigrants from former North African colonies is strong, not least because the major source of terrorism in France for many years has come from that region - mostly Algeria, I think. The irrational linkage between terror and street crime is an easy one, and since Chirac's campaign was based on 'security' and Jospin's on his good but hardly emotionally stirring economic record, it's easy in retrospect to see how it happened.

Perhaps.

11:53 / 22.04.02

You forget there was 28% of abstention.

There was 16 candidates, it's a lot but
there was as many candidates in the left
than in the right.

It's not "Why bother to vote if you are
just going to get the same old thing?" but
Why bother to vote, we know already who will
get through to round two?
Media focused on only the two main candidates,
Jospin and Chirac.

Some left-wing candidates (Laguiller, Chevenement) made severe criticisms
of Jospin, saying there's no difference
with Chirac.

Le Pen was less agressive this year and
was complaining not having the 500 signatures of mayors
requested for candidature and presented himself
as a victim of a plot of Chirac.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

12:48 / 22.04.02

I had understood the figures we had were of the total electorate rather than of the vote, in which case abstentions make no difference.

19:04 / 22.04.02

Le Pen's Policies -

Jobs for the French

Giving priority to French nationals for jobs and developing continuous professional training.

Family preference

A "respect for life from its beginning to its end" [seen as reform of liberal abortion laws], benefits for French parents equal to the minimum wage, allowing adoption before birth and simplifying adoption procedures for young French orphans.

Stopping the flow of immigration

Establish French and European priority in housing, jobs and social support, immediately expelling all illegal immigrants, stop family regrouping and the automatic acquisition of French citizenship.

19:46 / 22.04.02

he has also described the holocaust as a 'detail of history'.

Harold Washington died for you

22:18 / 22.04.02

The Haus of Death. Death Bredon. sez
"Yeah. Damn that pinko militant Islam.

You're a comedy suit, aren't you, MM? "

Dunno. If you think I'm some Rush Limbaugh dittohead infiltrator I can see the humor. But in reality, no suits just me, I'm just a curious individual who dug "Invisibles" and stumbled upon this board.

The North Africans that Le Pen is focusing his anti-immigrant hatred upon are innocent. They see the G-8 and see a chance for a new and prosperous life. Not unlike the stream of Mexicans who are violating the southern border of the USA. Given a choice, the human instinct will always choose prosperity for their children...over Mirage bombing runs and DGSE intrigue.

That is, if they are not Algerian extremists intent on blowing up the Louvre or something. As I implied this is a decade of extremism, like the 60's with comupters. With (sp?) Joerg Heider from Austria and his ilk making front page headlines all over the world, the folk of the Southern Cross (actually any country below the Tropic of Cancer) have a good reason to be scared and defensive.

23:05 / 22.04.02

Vibes of Nixon. Vote me in and I'll keep those dirty, leftist hippies and undeserving brats from taking what's rightfully yours. Pose as a centrist and then bean 'em with a hammer when they're distracted. :

:

02:39 / 23.04.02

the left is crap. It has great ideas and generally about as much finese as Anna Nicole Smith. Lionel Jospin ran a lacklustre campaign, ditto as the Prime Minister, the establishment, and then wonders why he didn't win: because he didn't do what Le Pen did. He wasn't the solution, he was the problem. Blame what you like, but sooner or later we'll all have to put it where it belongs - with Lionel Jospin.

03:23 / 23.04.02

mikebro: Are you saying the French voters were justified in voting for Le Pen??? Just because the candidates on the left ran a poor election doesn't mean you should try and elect a racist to show them who's boss.

gozer the destructor

09:13 / 23.04.02

I dont think thats the problem, spoke to a friend of mine yesterday whose from marsielle (sp?) and she reckons its just the fact that the lefty's haven't voted rather than voting for a nazi...it's just increased his chances of getting because chirac and jospin ran shit campaigns...but the good news is that maybe all those splintered left-wing parties will get their act together and form some kind of coalition, what do you think?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:33 / 23.04.02

Uniting in the face of a common enemy's sometimes the only way people'll ever agree. More often than not it doesn't happen that way, though. But I think this has rattled a lot of people, and it seems like there is some agreement actually taking place, which will hopefully outlast the whole fucked-up situation.

09:34 / 23.04.02

Well - I'm not sure how this will affect the French parliament, which is run on proportional representation, so the FN would have some representation there anyway. But this is the presidential election, and now that the only candidates are Le Pen and Chirac (a moderate conservative) there isn't really a place for a left-wing vote - the only thing they can do is vote for Chirac as he is preferable to Le Pen.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:27 / 23.04.02

Well, quite - Chirac is going to be utterly compromised as President because he didn't win in a run-off against a credible candidate. This is why some more excitable sections of the French press seem to feel that a Sixth Republic is needed.

16:58 / 23.04.02

Originally posted by Nick, Slightly edited by me:

This is being widely reported as a protest vote with bigger teeth than anyone thought. The Socialists are, of course, advising their followers to vote for the Conservative candidate in order to be sure that [the far Right] will not win.

Of course, this has already happened here; last week, in fact.

As has already been noted, Cirac has got this one in the bag. I'm hoping this was a combined case of apathy - let's not forget this is the lowest turnout in France for 44 years - and a stupid, completely fucking misguided form of 'protest' by French voters.

The non-stop demonstrations which seem to have been going on since the result was announced seem to point towards the population being shocked by what has happened.

Of course, this could be a case of marching to protest about the stable door not being locked after the horse has already bolted, but I would be very surprised if Chirac doesn't get back in.

What is a problem here is that this vote, no matter why people decided to back Le Pen, has now given him a veneer of respectability which as a grubby little far right fuckwit he should not enjoy.

He is now able to point to this election with a smug grin whenever he is questioned on his whether or not he is a 'proper' candidate.

Merde, basically...

21:57 / 23.04.02

One good thing about the French: Their 'lowest turnout in 44 years'? 75%! Wow. That's actually impressive, and helps the credibility of the government. I hate it when a majority government claims to speak for the people and all the rest when they only had 42% of the vote and only 45% of the population actually voted.

22:49 / 23.04.02

(slim said this)
mikebro: Are you saying the French voters were justified in voting for Le Pen??? Just because the candidates on the left ran a poor election doesn't mean you should try and elect a racist to show them who's boss.

(and I say)
No, that's not what I'm saying. That Jospin got dicked at the election is nobody else's fault. Blame other candidates if you like, but factional splits can be beaten. It's ludicrous to say that Jospin could not have pulled the extra 1.5% he'd have needed to go through to the run off, if he'd acted less like a corpse.
Of course, voter dissatisfaction is another thing to think about, and again Jospin gets taken out for it, because they're dissatisfied with that which he is in charge of - the government.
The corollary of what you're saying though, is 'no matter how bad the left are, you let them in', and that's just as bad as voting in Le Pen to solve the problem. But, if you give Le Pen credit for one thing, it's that he had the smarts to present himself as the solution to a problem, and nobody actually stood up and said "bollocks to you, you are not."
In a big way, this has left everything up in the air, and nobody knows what to think. Le Pen is very much a protest vote, and he's pretty unlikely to score another 34% of the vote to get the top job. The Socialists have had a big poke in the eye, and now they have to clean up their act, and the Communist candidate scored 4%, which means that the Socialists' other coalition partner gets to feel it too. Basically what this means is: politics in France has to change, which is the surest sign that it won't, and that means the FN could be pretty sweet indeed.

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