Anybody here explain how the current convoluted French political system works? The article I read just as the votes were finished being counted said that the most conservative party had the most overall votes by far....over 10million of the ~25 million total votes cast among the 3 main parties. Since then, I have seen where that same conservative (Right) party had been "completely shut out of their government (parliament?) What kind of crazy system do they have wherein the party with the most voter support gets completely shut out of power? Same article said the Lefties were trying to permanently ban conservative leader Marine Le Pen too? I bet
@LouderVol knows how it works. He is a history/govt buff and usually knows these things.
first off, I generally don't fully understand how European elections fully work. and I have to think about it terms of the American system I do know. but basically it seems like Macron went double or nothing, and was able to thread the needle to make it work for him in the end.
also their parties are a lot less "loyal" to the party, and more loyal to their own individual beliefs, which I appreciate.
and with the parliamentary governments you get an ever shifting landscape of alliances, that each come with a different name, and I generally don't care enough to try and really track all of it down. the french have two legislative branches like we do. but not every seat in the two branches works like the rest, there are several strange layers of elections that work differently even in the same overall election.
so all that being said, my
understanding is:
There was a normal legislative election going on, the first round vote is a pure popular vote across the whole country. from that popular vote seats are assigned randomly based on the percentages each party got. and the current president's, Macrons, party was getting slaughtered, by Le Pens party in their "senate" race. senate races in france only half of the senate is up for election, but the whole other house is up for election each time. instead of losing those seats, Macron dumps the ENTIRE senate, forcing the "snap elections" for EVERYONE.
this has been done before in french politics, and without shady consequences, so it isn't some pure power grab/dictatorial thing.
so they essentially redo the first election, just with every seat on the ballot. with EVERYONE on the ballot, there were a lot of seats that were firmly Macrons, that were now open for voting. and their system SEEMS (I don't fully understand it) to work on some weird system of popular vote active gerrymandering. There are more Senate (almost 4x) members than voting districts. so with these very popular pro-Macron candidates now being in the elections Macron FLOODED the popular vote with his candidates. and the senate seems to work off of not the individual districts, but the overall popular vote, except for some seats. like I said its weird, there are also several Democrat Super-Delegate-esque seats where they don't have to do what their popular vote tells them to do in a separate smaller election even though its done the same time and considered part of the same election.
This lead to the first round of the snap election with the pro-Pen groups still having a pretty sizable lead, but not enough (50%+1) to seal the elections for most seats, forcing run offs. again pretty typical.
Now, for some reason, between the first round and the runoff round a bunch of the Pro-Pen candidates either dropped out, or switched sides. so did some of Macrons, but it was a LOT more from the Pen side. we are talking several hundred candidates out of the total several thousand. I think this is because between the two elections there are a lot of alliances that form, and it sounds like a good number of the pro-Pen candidates weren't happy with the alliances Pen made, or else liked the new Macron alliance better than they liked him before.
now apparently the runoff voting works differently than the first round where its the overall popular vote. the runoff goes back to the individual districts, at least for some/most of them. Like I said, layers and layers. and those individual districts often have Electoral College type systems, who are voted separately. because of the defections, an Macron alliance with the 3rd strongest party, and the super delegate system, Macron's party ends up winning most of the total seats back. I don't think it was a pure shut out by any means. but it kept the power in his hands.
as I understand it, the snap election does not provide a set/specific benefit to any one side, and this could have totally blown up in Macron's face. but I think Macron was able to use the original election he was losing badly, as a scare tactic to get a lot the different parties to line up and back him, when they hadn't before. So my understanding is that Macron ended up with more seats in the parliament to support them, but his hold on those seats is now a lot weaker than it was before. Some of what I have read suggests this has made the next election a lot more difficult for himself the next time.
this is just my understanding. I would bet I got something wrong. but this is as close as my American mind gets to their explanations.
www.politico.eu
