(a) The left won more of the total vote than which last time? Than the last presidential election? Than the last legislatives? Here's how I tally the numbers: PS - 16%, LO & LCR - 10%, PCF - 4%: that's 30% for the traditional Left. Include Chevenement and the Greens (and I certainly would NOT include the former) and maybe you push the total up to 40% for the left. How do you get a majority out of that?
(b) Will the LO & LCR take off? Who knows? Remember the Green wave in the Euro elections a few years back? It went nowhere fast. This is a weak reed.
(c) It will energize the left to go out and vote for Chirac against LePen? And the right will be demoralized because their candidate is going to get a free ride to the Elysee Palace in the second round? Mon ami, it's PESSIMISM of the intellect, remember?
(d) The electoral system in France is the same at the Presidential and the district level. The spoiler problem never raised its head at the Presidential level before, either.
(e) Electoral reform? Back in 1986 the Dem candidate for governor in Illinois had to drop out of the race because he had been paired with a stealth LaRouchie via the primary. It's an obvious flaw in the system, and easy to correct - either you let people split their votes for Governor and LtGov in the general election, or you force Gov and LtGov to run as a ticket all the way through. You'd think the 1986 disaster would have led the good voters of Illinois to demand reform, non? Mais non! We've still got the same system.
But I do hope you're right! Honestly!
Michael McIntyre
>>> mpollak at panix.com 04/23/02 07:29 AM >>>
> Why do you think it likely that the Left will win in the June
> legislatie elections?
One, because they won more of the total vote. They only lost because they had more parties. Two, because these new left grouplets have shown they have more appeal than people thought and can become a new force. This is a sudden new energizing prospect in what was a boring election, a new option that wasn't previously on offer. Three, because the drive to defeat Le Pen will drive up turn-out and political involvement all across the left, while the mainstream right will be demoralized. The anti-le Pen forces already have 100s of thousands in the streets. The French right on the other hand has always fractured every time le Pen has done well. They always end up fighting and splitting over whether to coopt its voters or to draw a cordon sanitaire. The only reason they recoved at at all in the last few years was because the le Pen forces split. This will be a problem for them.
> Isn't it more likely that a demoralized left, wasting its energy on
> polemics against LO and LCR,
I don't think they will have such polemics because they are missing their underpining. The difference between the US and France is that in the US, the spoiler argument works on both the executive and parliamentary levels. But in France, it only happens at the executive level. If you vote for a third party for parliament, you don't hurt your second choice. You really do drag it farther to your wing.
The bottom line is that during this last cohabitation, its been the PM who mattered and the President who's been a pale shadow. And if it happens again, this will be even more true. So this mistake is fixable.
And if they're lucky, even more than fixable, since a second term of such cohabitation will throw the whole system into question. The whole reason for syncing the presidential and legislative elections in the first place was to fix the problem of cohabitation. After such a spectacular failure, I think they'll try something new. They've known for years that De Gaulle's systemwas really only meant for De Gaulle.
Lastly, I think it's clear this happened because of a surprising and one-time-only mistake. French people thought the threshold made it impossible for their system to screw up in an American way. Unfortunately, too many people taking that for granted screwed it up. So I think there will be a groundswell to fix it so it doesn't happen again. Because most people in the world think that when an election gives you the opposite of what you voted for, you should get it fixed.
Michael