Jump to content

French politics: houlala!


Rippounet

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

Le Pen is stepping down from leading the FN. I presume this is an attempt to make her seem more appealing to left-wing voters, but won't it also harm her image in the eyes of the supporters of the FN?

I actually had to google this to check it. British newspapers are making far more of this than French ones. Apparently the same tactic was suggested to Marine Le Pen's father in 2002 but he didn't go for it.
I don't think such a move will have an impact on anyone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This may be incredibly obvious, but does anyone have an impression of whether those ~60% / ~40% polls are generally taking likelihood of voting into account? A lot of articles seem to be talking about how Macron is poisonous to Melenchon voters because he basically represents what (in their view) has given them the populist surge in the first place. In other words, we could be talking about a lot of abstaining voters. How much do these landslide polls account for that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, denstorebog said:

This may be incredibly obvious, but does anyone have an impression of whether those ~60% / ~40% polls are generally taking likelihood of voting into account? A lot of articles seem to be talking about how Macron is poisonous to Melenchon voters because he basically represents what (in their view) has given them the populist surge in the first place. In other words, we could be talking about a lot of abstaining voters. How much do these landslide polls account for that?

The poll I've seen on The Guardian's website expects 50% of Mélenchon supporters to vote for Macron, 12% for Le Pen, and the rest (38%) to abstain. It also takes into account abstention for Fillon supporters (with a 40-30-30 divide, roughly).
The expected outcome is still 60-40 for Macron.

Edit: actually the latest poll is even better for Macron. 62-9-29 for Mélenchon supporters, and 48-33-19 for Fillon's.

So yes, I think the polls all take abstention into account. I believe if they didn't Macron's numbers would be even higher.
Of course, abstention could be underestimated, but between 30% and 40% for the people disappointed by the first round sounds about right to me. The National Front is still seen as a neo-fascist party by about 60% of the population (according to a poll I saw on Le Monde's website some weeks ago), so most people should rally behind Macron.
And even if abstention turns out to be higher, Macron should still win since he won the first round. For Le Pen to win she would have to attract more of the votes from Mélenchon and Fillon supporters than Macron, which seems incredibly unlikely. I just don't think people will prove that bitter.

That being said, I don't see 60-40 as a landslide. Let's bear in mind that Chirac got 82% of the votes when facing Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 with about 100% of the left-wing voting for him. Now that was a landslide.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: unless Macron massively screws up in the debates, or a major terrorist attack hits Europe in the next couple of weeks, he should win this easily. I guess there are other scenarios that could hurt him (if he was charged with embezzlement like Fillon), but it's all rather unlikely.
I don't want to be overconfident after Trump and Brexit, but I find it hard to see how on earth Le Pen can win this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

That being said, I don't see 60-40 as a landslide. Let's bear in mind that Chirac got 82% of the votes when facing Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 with about 100% of the left-wing voting for him. Now that was a landslide.

It's interesting how there are two narratives here. On the one hand, 60-40 is an unambiguously large victory the likes of which is rare in modern times... but on the other hand, FN has basically doubled their share of the vote over a period of 15 years. They only need another factor of 1.25 to win so if they can keep growing at the same rate, they should win the next election.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The FN has a pretty good chance to win the next time unless Macron does far better than expected (getting rid of 120k government jobs will probably not help) or the left get their shit together until then (if chanceless Hamon had told his voters to vote for Melenchon we would very probably have Macron vs. Mélenchon now).

But generally because Macron is basically perpetuating the status quo in most respects the tensions that strengthen the FN (and to some extent also the more leftist part of the left) will not go away but probably become worse. It also seems rather unlikely that a new German government will do something about trade imbalances etc., even if there should be a new chancellor (somewhat unlikely) the general policy will not change so much. (Because German politicians either do not or pretend not to understand that these imbalances are of course not about "punishing great German products" but something that must be adressed politically because the "normal" mechanism (currency exchange rate) to adjust such high imbalances cannot work because of the Euro zone.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Altherion said:

It's interesting how there are two narratives here. On the one hand, 60-40 is an unambiguously large victory the likes of which is rare in modern times... but on the other hand, FN has basically doubled their share of the vote over a period of 15 years. They only need another factor of 1.25 to win so if they can keep growing at the same rate, they should win the next election.

Le Pen hans't really gained that much from the last presidential election, her result just counts more because the big parties have collapsed, particularly the socialists. The real winner is Melenchon. 

Anyway, there's not just the presidential election, there's also parliamentary elections coming. Macron will probably win the presidency, but can he form a coalition in parliament? I guess the two round majority vote system makes these harder to predict than the presidential election.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

He doesn't really have a base. His support is everyone in the country who doesn't want a crypto-fascist as president. His main challenge was getting through the first round without that energised base. Le Pen has a highly energised base of 20-25%, but that's also pretty much her ceiling. The second round will be a massacre.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm well aware that her base is small, but you can be certain >95% of them will make it to the polls. You also have to factor in that there might be a larger than expected number of people who will vote for Le Pen despite telling pollsters that they won't. One of the interesting things in the most recent U.S. election is that Clinton polled on average +8 when talking to a person while Trump was +3 when talking to a robo pollster. Furthermore, I keep hearing French analysts say that turnout in the second round might be down a bit and that French voters are saying they won't vote anti-Le Pen just because the elites are telling them to do so. If all of these things occur, plus something harder to predict like a major terrorist attack, it's not unthinkable for her to win. It's not likely, but a Le Pen victory should not be dismissed out of hand. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Tywin et al. Complacency is of course the wrong position to take, but I'm not massively worried right now. Macron is ahead by a 20 point margin in the polls right now. That's quite the head start; the polling errors for Trump's election and for Brexit were in the order of 1 to 3 percentage points. The only comparable event to a 20 point miss would be Sanders' primary result in Michigan - and primaries are much harder to poll than actual elections.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm well aware that her base is small, but you can be certain >95% of them will make it to the polls. You also have to factor in that there might be a larger than expected number of people who will vote for Le Pen despite telling pollsters that they won't.

But if they were going to do that, why didn't they do it in the first round? Remember, we already had an election with a secret ballot and Le Pen got almost exactly the number of votes pollsters predicted she would get (actually a bit less, but by less than 1%). There is no hidden reserve for Le Pen; she either has to win over people who voted for Mélenchon and Fillon or convince the abstainers to come out an vote for her. The polls say that she is unlikely to do either one in numbers large enough to make a difference.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm well aware that her base is small, but you can be certain >95% of them will make it to the polls. You also have to factor in that there might be a larger than expected number of people who will vote for Le Pen despite telling pollsters that they won't. One of the interesting things in the most recent U.S. election is that Clinton polled on average +8 when talking to a person while Trump was +3 when talking to a robo pollster. Furthermore, I keep hearing French analysts say that turnout in the second round might be down a bit and that French voters are saying they won't vote anti-Le Pen just because the elites are telling them to do so. If all of these things occur, plus something harder to predict like a major terrorist attack, it's not unthinkable for her to win. It's not likely, but a Le Pen victory should not be dismissed out of hand. 

I don't think anyone is dismissing the possibility of a Le Pen victory out of hand, but the obstacles she faces are formidable.
- Yes, 95% of Le Pen supporters will make it to the polls. But so will the people who voted Macron in the first round. The fact remains that she now needs to convince more people than Macron, which should prove extremely difficult.
- People are far less ashamed of saying they vote for Le Pen than they used to be. And pollsters have tried to take that into account anyway, based on past mistakes.
- Polls predicting a 60-40 win for Macron take into account the fact that many people will abstain in the second round.

That being said, Le Pen is certainly trying her best to convince Mélenchon voters to switch to her. She may end up doing better than the 12% or 9% predicted on that front. Mélenchon and his supporters have a history of opposing the National Front though, so it's doubtful they would massively turn to Le Pen, but she may manage to convince most of them to abstain and thus make the race a much closer thing.

I think these are the real stakes of the second round. Le Pen winning is highly unlikely, however you look at it. But many people are throwing a lot of criticism at Macron right now, and this may hurt his numbers. I could see him winning with a much smaller margin than is predicted.
The alt-right is heavily mobilized on the internet at least, and I'm starting to see Mélenchon supporters picking up stuff that obviously originates from them. An article on their antics:
http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2017/04/25/sur-internet-l-extreme-droite-anglophone-tente-peniblement-de-s-organiser-pour-nuire-a-macron_5117362_4408996.html

Generally speaking, I think the danger of complacency doesn't lie with us, the observers (and voters) but with Macron himself. He has a nice headstart, but he needs to show that he can defend a project rather than merely criticize Le Pen for hers. Right now, I don't think he's doing too well. He should be focusing on explaining why his program is the right choice instead of relying on the anti-fascist sentiment. While the anti-fascist sentiment may prove enough for him to win, it it will also robb him of his legitimacy as president. Of course, asking the man to act presidential may be too much, since he was never the people's candidate in the first place and he has little actual experience of politics.

It's hard to believe the French will obediently vote for the candidate supported by the media and the elite... Except that's what many of them did for the first round already.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even Breitbart doesn't believe:

Quote

 

As in 2002, voters probably will come together in sufficient numbers to keep a Le Pen from power. After election setbacks for right-wing populists in the Netherlands and Austria, a Le Pen defeat will signal a halting – at least for now – of the populist wave that crashed over the EU with Britain’s Brexit vote last year to leave the bloc and, across the Atlantic, helped put Donald Trump in the White House.

But polls suggest Le Pen won’t suffer a beating as severe as that endured by her father. At 48, she still has time and, with each passing vote, perhaps a little bit more of France on her side.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

How many French people really want to leave the EU? I would think a lot fewer than the number of Britons who really wanted to leave.

It's a tricky question. I'll daresay few people really want to leave, but many feel the EU is responsible for some of France's woes.

Imho Mélenchon's stance on the subject was actually more in line with the dominant feelings: stay within the EU, but make specific demands to help the French economy and welfare state (using the threat of a referendum as leverage). That's what people who are angry at the EU really want: Hollande had promised a negotiation that never happened so many left-wing voters still want someone to give it a try.
Problem is, Macron is too neo-liberal to do anything like that, and Le Pen seems too extreme (and too unreliable). Thus people who want to see the EU become less neo-liberal have no candidate to defend that position. Which is why many will abstain, since they want neither neo-liberalism nor nationalism.

I dunno how objective I am though. I see first hand what effects the EU treaties are having on higher education. I despise nationalism and xenophobia so I will cast my vote for Macron to prevent Le Pen from reaching power. But if the next five years see things take a turn for the worse (for example, if the next government starts raising tuition fees) I'll probably abstain next time.
Slowly but surely, this is how Le Pen is gaining ground. I don't see her winning this time, but unless Macron -and to some extent, the EU- start actually addressing some of the problems that have led to the rise of populism, it will prevail.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Doesn't Brexit weaken the neo-liberalism of the EU a tad? Surely the UK was one of the most neo-liberal members, i.e. had pretty much the weakest welfare states. So with it gone is there a better chance for moving away from neo-liberalism?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, theguyfromtheVale said:

@Tywin et al. Complacency is of course the wrong position to take, but I'm not massively worried right now. Macron is ahead by a 20 point margin in the polls right now. That's quite the head start; the polling errors for Trump's election and for Brexit were in the order of 1 to 3 percentage points. The only comparable event to a 20 point miss would be Sanders' primary result in Michigan - and primaries are much harder to poll than actual elections.

I don't recall Trump/Clinton being tight on the eve of the November election.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't recall Trump/Clinton being tight on the eve of the November election.

They were, according to Wikipedia. Given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of two points, the polls were actually spot on. Where the pollsters were wrong was their prediction of the electoral college, but that's really hard to get right, because you'd need reliable polls in all states separately.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, Loge said:

They were, according to Wikipedia. Given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of two points, the polls were actually spot on. Where the pollsters were wrong was their prediction of the electoral college, but that's really hard to get right, because you'd need reliable polls in all states separately.

I watch the state polls more than the popular vote polls.  Those were way off in the key States that Trump won.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I watch the state polls more than the popular vote polls.  Those were way off in the key States that Trump won.  

I don't see huge discrepancies there either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statewide_opinion_polling_for_the_United_States_presidential_election,_2016

You have to keep in mind that the margin of error is usually larger than for the national popular vote and that some polls were already a bit dated on election day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...