Whats going on In France...?

Mayflower

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 6:11 am

French presidential and legislative elections are based on a two-round system.

In essence, the first two candidates that come on top in the first round automatically make it to the second round. Moreover, candidates who secure at least 12.5% of the votes also make it through.

In the first round, the far right RN party (of Marine Le Pen) came out as the big winner (33.1% of the votes), followed by a left wing coalition (28%) and the party of Macron only in third place (20%).

In a majority of electoral districts ("circonscriptions"), the RN came out in first place. In over two hundred districts, more than 2 candidates met the 12.5% threshold – known as "triangulaires". This meant that in those cases, there was a large chance that the center right and left votes would be divided and the far right RN would come in first. To avoid this, Macron's party and the left wing coalition decided to withdraw their candidates in electoral districts where they came in third place, thus uniting their votes and making it considerably more difficult for the RN candidate to come in first.

So, even though the RN received the most votes, they were 'only' able to win 143 seats, in third place after the left wing coalition (182 seats) and Macron's party (168 seats).

The problem is that one of the parties in the left wing coalition is a far left extremist party (LFI) led by a horrible anti-semite Mélenchon. His party has failed to unequivocally condemn the October 7th attacks and has been protesting against 'genocide' and 'Israeli war crimes and occupation'.
Since Mélenchon is such an extremist and will probably not be willing to compromise on anything, he will most likely not have any power in the next government. But the fact that the other left wing parties accepted to form a coalition with him and that Macron's party decided to withdraw their candidates to favor this coalition (and sabotage the RN's rise to power), is hurtful to the French Jews to say the least.

Comptroller

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 6:26 am

amother OP wrote:

Elections, politics??

Iv read the news but I really cant understand whats going on.

Would anyone be able to summarise it really briefly whats going on and if theyr pro gaza and against jews?

Thanks so much!

The French election system is to some extend similar to the british one: the country is divided in circumscriptions and each circumscription elects one MP.

However, there is an important difference, there are two turns: If no candidate reaches the absolute majority at the first turn, a second turn will take place a week later, where the weakest candidates are eliminated, and a relative majority will be sufficient to be elected.

At the first turn on June, 30, the extreme right under Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella got the relative majority in many districts. If this was UK, they would have more than an absolute majority in Parlament.

But this is France, not UK, so at the second turn, all the other parties cooperated so as to avoid that extreme right candidates are elected: They withdrew their "3rd candidates". So in a district, where RN (extreme right) was first with a relative majority at the first term, left was second, Macron's party was third, Macron's party would withdraw their candidate and tell their voters to vote for the left, and vice-versa.

And it worked. After the second turn, Le Pen's party was only third, the left was first, and macron's party second.

Of course, this will annoy all those who do not like the left, especially those parts that are very vocally pro-Palestinian.

On the other hand, it proved that the extreme right can be stopped, which was very uncertain.

Now they will have to make a government with the left and Macron's party. Macron is still president and has many prerogatives (a bit like in the USA), but he also needs a majority in parliament to pass new laws...

So everybody is waiting... and expecting that arguments will start soon.

↑ Reality ↓

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 7:20 am

Mayflower wrote:

Thank you so much for taking the time to post such a clear explanation!

↑ Reality

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 7:21 am

Comptroller wrote:

Is France an outlier that the majority of Pro-Palestinian voters are right wing? Because in the US and UK, it is the left that are the majority of their supporters.

↑ zohar

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 8:28 am

Comptroller wrote:

Firstly, Le Pen's party isn't "far right" and it isn't extremest. It's kind of centrist fiscally, but very anti the current immigration which is severely affecting France's demographics and is flooding the country with Muslim young men who are not assimilating and are creating severe issues on a social and economic level and extreme issues with antisemitism.

This isn't just something like the Democrats winning over the Republicans in the US. What happened is that a the centrist party (Macron) and their constituents decided to join forces with actual extremest (full on communists and pro Hamas) parties rather than let the right get a majority. That's why it's quite chilling for Jews. There isn't really an equivalent in the US. Maybe you can imagine a scenario that there is a party that is made up of the pro Hamas college protesters and communists and Antifa, maybe also radical BLM, Black Hebrew Israelites etc. And in Senate and House elections, the results in many districts come out something like this -
Republicans 45%
Democrats 35%
Pro Hamas Commi party (PHC) 15%
Other small parties make up the remaining 5%

Now let's say there the system is that if no candidate reaches 50%, there is a runoff between the top two candidates, which in this case would mean the Republicans and Democrats would face off. Internal polling indicates that the Democrat would lose to the Republican (PHC voters only but for their own) So instead of running and likely losing to a normal run of the mill Republican, the Democrat candidate drops out and now the race is between the Republican candidate and the virulently antisemitic PHC candidate and the Democrats encourage their voters to vote for the latter and they do!! That's what's chilling "normal" Democrats voting for pro Hamas crazies.

amother

Clematis

Tue, Jul 09 2024, 8:34 am

zohar wrote:

As I understand it Marine Le Pens party is antisemitic too.