Europe - The Official Thread

Well I am pretty much gutted Macron won the elections :indiff: The way this campaign has been run by the media is very biased. Also when Universities, Companies and Syndicats give advice on what to vote , it is hard to swallow when I think of democracy. The Republicans and socialist all hammered non-stop to vote for Macron and within the same phrase telling they are going to fight "Macron" and his program for the legislative elections. Pretty dumb to be honest.

The one who has won in my opininon is Dupont. He has shown a lot of courage and he pretty much stayed loyal to his program. Le Pen has inflicted a lot of damage on herself during the final debate which was a big letdown for me. I wished she had focussed on her program and not on attacking Macron non-stop. She simply failed to convince 👎 and she has made me doubt her for the future.

The problem I have with Macron is that he is a former banker, who comes out of nowhere and has the full support of all very ancient politics and big coorporations. I don't think that anything is going to change and that the "unrest" is going to grow the coming years. France is pretty much going to explode if it continues this way.

I am very curious to see how this all will work out over the coming years. As an "immigrant" here in France (came to France in 2013 so I did not have the right to vote) the choice of Macron works in my favour but I simply don't believe in his program and as a leader he completely fails to convince. He shows no emotion and has no passion for the french republic and seems to be an extreme pro-EU and pro-OpenMarket kind a guy.

Well in the end, democracy has spoken (kind of) and we need to go along with it. It is the way it is.
 
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@Milouse You probably know as well as me (maybe even better) that Nantes is pretty much a "socialist" town so this result doesn't surprise me. I would be even more lonely in Paris :lol:
 
Biggles
Well, just as everyone who voted for Trump was not sexist, racist, & xenophobic, not everyone who voted for Le Pen is a fascist.
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I didn't mention the voters, only the candidates...
Biggles
I think it did show that, when push comes to shove, a significant majority of the French people (what I'm reading is 66% to 34%) rejected nationalism in favour of an expansive, liberal, pro-European outlook.
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That's not how it works.

The French Presidential Election uses an Alternative Vote system. Voters pick a first choice and a second choice. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, all but the two candidates with the highest vote tally are eliminated and the second choice vote on ballots cast for the eliminated candidates is counted.

In the first round, 36m first choice votes for a candidate of 37m votes cast in total from a 47m population were made (77.8% turnout). The percentages were as follows:
Macron - 24.0%
Le Pen - 21.3%
Fillon - 20.0%
Melenchon - 19.6%
Others - 15.1%

With the turnout and null votes taken into account, that's:
Didn't vote - 22.2%
Macron - 18.2%
Le Pen - 16.1%
Fillon - 15.2%
Melenchon - 14.8%
Others - 11.4%
Blank/Null - 2.0%

At this point all first choice votes not cast for Macron or Le Pen are recounted for their second choice votes. Any second choice votes not for Macron or Le Pen are discarded. At the moment this totals 31m votes (5m picked neither Macron/Le Pen as first choice nor, with an alternative first choice, Macron/Le Pen as second choice) and the results at present are:
Macron - 66.1%
Le Pen - 33.9%

With the turnout and null votes taken into account that's:
Macron first or second - 43.6%
Didn't vote - 25.4%
Le Pen first or second - 22.4%
Blank/Null - 8.6%


That's not a majority of French people. It's a decent-sized plurality in the end, but ultimately if you had ten French people, slightly less than 2 of them would have picked Macron first for every slightly more than 1.5 of them that picked Le Pen first.

I don't think fascism has been quite as defeated as the usual crowd on Twitter would have everyone believe. It's certainly nothing compared to the UK local elections wiping out 99.3% of UKIP's eligible representation that night last week.
 
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doblocruiser
The problem I have with Macron is that he is a former banker
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Macron primarily studied Philosophy (Postgraduate Degree), then Political Sciences, then Administration. He's 39, never oriented himself to become a banker but was hire from a banker who crossed his path and saw a "brilliant man" in him. He worked as a banker for less than 3 years, won a lot of money, then quit to work in administration and politic. He left the big earning behind: he's an unusual political animal, but that doesn't fit well in the predefined slots that demagogues like Le Pen took years to shape...

Now i imagine you never heard of the widespread financial scam that Front National conducted a few years ago and that justice is working on.
 
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Famine
I don't think fascism has been quite as defeated as the usual crowd on Twitter would have everyone believe.
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Maybe, but maybe not.

A few months ago, the rise of populism and the far-right seemed far-fetched, but they gradually gained momentum. Following the Brexit referendum and Trump's win, the chances of other populist and far-right candidates was rated reasonably highly. But now Wilders and Le Pen have been defeated, and the four big elections - Brexit, America, the Netherlands and France - are over. Germany is next, but after that, the cycle begins again. How do the populists and the far right respond? How will the political landscape change between now and the next round of elections?
 
prisonermonkeys
Maybe, but maybe not.

A few months ago, the rise of populism and the far-right seemed far-fetched, but they gradually gained momentum. Following the Brexit referendum and Trump's win, the chances of other populist and far-right candidates was rated reasonably highly. But now Wilders and Le Pen have been defeated, and the four big elections - Brexit, America, the Netherlands and France - are over. Germany is next, but after that, the cycle begins again. How do the populists and the far right respond? How will the political landscape change between now and the next round of elections?
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Now that the problems of unemployment, globalism and immigration are done, gone, over and solved, we will be troubled no more by populism and nationalism. Or maybe that is just whistling past the graveyard?
 
@Milouse I know about the financial scam and I don't say that there is no blaim on the FN. Surely they have their issues, I don't deny that. It should be looked at critically as well but the same should be done for others. There seem to be many dirty games going on in this political landschape. The only thing that I blame the media for is the non-stop biased reporting on Le Pen and the FN. People hear the words racism, far right, xenophobe non stop being mentioned in one sentence while when we look at her program there really isn't anything to be found that points to that. Fillon and Dupont are racists as well? Hardly. Even if one doesn't agree with the ideas of the FN or Le Pen, the media should treat them equally. I found the interviews on France2 disguisting and very low. I am not racist nor xenophobe but there are many things wrong in this country and the only "policital will" I see is to put the head in the sand and assume there is nothing wrong. Le Pen, Dupont and even Fillon showed at least some courage to tackle problems first hand with Le Pen being the most direct but in my opinion the most straight and clear for what is accepted or not.

Macron is no messiah. He has an air of arrogance over him and he really doesn't show any love or affection for the country he is president of. From what I have seen from him I am far from convinced he can lead a country and take messurements that are needed.

Elections have been done and that is that. Now it is up to him to prove himself. Maybe he is going to surprise everyone but I am sceptic, very sceptic because his ideas don't reflect mine. If he achieves to get France in the right direction again then my praise will go towards him at the end of his period.
 
@Famine,
Your explanation is more complicated than needed (to the point that i'm not very sure you know how it works after reading several times some part of your post: "At this point all first choice votes not cast for Macron or Le Pen are recounted for their second choice votes. Any second choice votes not for Macron or Le Pen are discarded.")
Someone can vote Le Pen in first round, then not vote for her in the second round two weeks later (polls details shows that a few voters does that).

Voting consist of putting a paper with a single name in an enveloppe, in both first and second round:
7788243689_les-bulletins-de-vote-sont-disposes-dans-le-bureau-de-vote-de-saint-jean-le-vieux.jpg


Second round gave 66,1 % to Macron, with a 2.5% hidden reserve in Blank (estimated from blank voters that would have voted for him if polls shows a decent Le Pen probability to win), plus a few % in non voters (same reasons).
 
Dotini
Now that the problems of unemployment, globalism and immigration are done, gone, over and solved, we will be troubled no more by populism and nationalism.
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I didn't say that. I said that the populists and nationalists had been defeated, and that the political landscape can and will change. The populists and nationalists aren't the only ones who can address unemployment, globalisation and immigration, even if they would like us to believe that they are.
 
Hmm. The fact that it's a fresh run-off ballot (like FIFA or IOC does) instead of proper AV explains one of the statistical weirdnesses I spotted.
Milouse
Second round gave 66,1 % to Macron
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Not exactly, no. Second round gave 66.1% of valid votes cast to Macron.

At present (I'm not sure whether counting has finished as the numbers keep changing) valid votes were 88% (4 million were blank or null) and turnout was 74% (12 million non-voters), so at present the French people in the two-way run-off have voted:
Macron - 43.0%
No vote - 25.4%
Le Pen - 22.1%
Blank/null - 7.5%

This doesn't change the first round of voting, which still had slightly more then a sixth of all voters voting for Le Pen and slightly less than a fifth voting for Macron. 16.1% of all French voters wanted Le Pen, compared to 18.2% of all French voters who wanted Macron. Le Pen came first in 216 constituencies, compared to 240 for Macron.

That's the real story here. Fascism didn't get a kicking. Fascism held its own and in a free election nearly as many people voted for a fascist as they did for the winning candidate. The two-way run-off is almost incidental, but even then in a straight choice between this apparent centrist and a straight up fascist, a third of people chose not to make a vote for either and more than a fifth chose the fascist!

When the parliamentary elections happen (is it next month?), the fact that with free choice the French people will choose a fascist about as often as any other candidate and Le Pen taking only a tenth fewer constituencies than Macron for the presidential election may startle people who think fascism was given a beating...


Edit: At the 2015 UK General Election, UKIP scored 12.7% of the popular vote, which adjusts to 8.3% once turnout and invalid votes are taken into account. At the 2017 UK Local Elections, UKIP scored approximately 5% of the popular vote, which equates to around 1.7% once turnout and invalid votes are taken into account. This makes fascist candidates 10 times more popular in France than in the UK in a free vote - and yet France gave them a kicking and we're under their thrall.
Milouse
with a 2.5% hidden reserve in Blank (estimated from blank voters that would have voted for him if polls shows a decent Le Pen probability to win), plus a few % in non voters (same reasons).
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Are you suggesting that you can count votes not cast as votes that might have been cast? Only you can't - they weren't cast, so they can't be counted as if they were simply because that's how people voted according to polls.

I specifically spoiled my ballot at every general election I've voted in. You can't count my spoiled ballot as a vote for my local winning MP because that's how local people voted so it would have been how I voted if I had. Nor can you count it for the winning national party because that's how people voted nationally so it would have been how I voted if I had. It's not a vote for anyone.
 
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Milouse
Voting consist of putting a paper with a single name in an enveloppe, in both first and second round:
7788243689_les-bulletins-de-vote-sont-disposes-dans-le-bureau-de-vote-de-saint-jean-le-vieux.jpg
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I was curious about this, did every voter get given all the pieces of paper at the front desk then put the candidate they wanted in the envelope in a booth and discard the rest... or were the piles left in the booth and you took the one you wanted? Because if those piles were in any way visible you could see which one was 'going down' and it could possibly influence your choice.

Also I was curious as to how France managed to announce the winner so rapidly after the close of voting. Do you do electronic counting or something? In the UK it takes us the whole damn night and usually half of the next day to reach a result!
 
Robin
Also I was curious as to how France managed to announce the winner so rapidly after the close of voting.
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Good old manual labor. At least here in the local town. There are about 60.000 voting bureaus if I am correct and all are managed by local authorities and volunteers.

or were the piles left in the booth and you took the one you wanted?
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When you enter the voting bureau you show your identity card and "carte électorale". Then you take an envelope and the names that are presented generally. You go into the votingcabin where you put one name in the enveloppe. The rest you leave behind. Go back to box where your vote will be verified with you signing to have voted confirmed by local authority.
 
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doblocruiser
I am not racist nor xenophobe but
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...it doesn't stop you to consider voting for racist and xenophobes like if they were the only ones to have alternative stance over economic and social matters.

Robin
I was curious about this, did every voter get given all the pieces of paper at the front desk then put the candidate they wanted in the envelope in a booth and discard the rest... or were the piles left in the booth and you took the one you wanted? Because if those piles were in any way visible you could see which one was 'going down' and it could possibly influence your choice.
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A voters is supposed to take one of each ballot then go to the booth and put the one he want.
Voters also received ballots (1 ballot = 1 candidate) at home by mail, so that even if someone take only one ballot on the voting desk, you can't be sure it's the one he'll use.

Robin
Also I was curious as to how France managed to announce the winner so rapidly after the close of voting. Do you do electronic counting or something? In the UK it takes us the whole damn night and usually half of the next day to reach a result!
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Most of voting places closes 1 hour before the big cities. The first allowed published results at 8pm are a combination of polls made during the day at the exit of voting places (what we read in non french media hours before the 8pm result), and projections made from the first results (unlike what i saw in UK for Brexit and US, theses results are corrected to try to match the final result).
 
@Famine, you're making circonvolutions to try to make a point.
In the example below, you would conclude that voters prefers green, i would conclude that they prefer blue:
upload_2017-5-8_13-31-46.png


Le Pen is strong and almost alone in far right, while other candidates does overlap a lot. We don't need to deeply analyse this as we have the second round to have our answer: the forces able to counter fascism are still stronger than the ones able to give them power.

Famine
Are you suggesting that you can count votes not cast as votes that might have been cast? Only you can't - they weren't cast, so they can't be counted as if they were simply because that's how people voted according to polls.
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No, i'm not suggesting that, i'm taking into account the public stance of some first round voters that said there is no equal sign between Le Pen and Macron but that they wouldn't put Macron ballot in order to have him make the smaller winning score in order to prepare the battle for the parliamentary election. By "some" first round voters, i mostly count Melenchon's voters (+19% in 1st round) that made a public vote about that between two rounds:
- 35,12% called for Blank or Null.
- 29,05% called for Abstention.
- 34,83% called for using a Macron ballot.
We indeed see them in final results number compared to other elections (abstention and blank/null).

Famine
I specifically spoiled my ballot at every general election I've voted in. You can't count my spoiled ballot as a vote for my local winning MP because that's how local people voted so it would have been how I voted if I had. Nor can you count it for the winning national party because that's how people voted nationally so it would have been how I voted if I had. It's not a vote for anyone.
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That's explain why you absolutely want to reinstate null and blank and gone-fishing-that-day voters in the result. :D
I totally disagree with that because i don't think politic starts the day of the vote. If people doesn't accept to not have a candidate that fits exactly their opinion, maybe they could either be one in the first place, or try harder to accept that there is a necessary consensus in a democracy. But that would require a dedicated thread for discussion.
 
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Milouse
In the example below, you would conclude that
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Do not believe for a second that you may speak for me.

In your example, more people preferred green as a first choice than blue when given all the options. Do you disagree?
In your example, more people preferred blue as a first choice than green when given an either/or option between blue and green. Do you disagree?
Milouse
you're making circonvolutions to try to make a point.
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Not at all.

One cannot say that 66% of people voted for Macron and 34% voted for Le Pen, because they didn't.
Milouse
That's explain why you absolutely want to reinstate null and blank and gone-fishing-that-day voters in the result. :D
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Simple. They are voters and they make up the electorate.

If you're going to say how voters voted, you need to say how they all voted. All votes, cast and not cast, are important. You must count them and not, as you tried, arbitrarily reassign them according to trends.

If you want to focus on the fact that, of the valid votes cast, two-thirds opted to vote for someone other than the fascist in an either/or choice, go ahead and do so. To ignore the facts that out of all people eligible to vote, less than a fifth chose that guy while a sixth chose the fascist (a two point gap), the fascist finished first in 37% of constituencies (a four point gap) and in a single generation the fascist has doubled the support her father got, with the parliamentary election to come, would be dangerously naive.

From what you said earlier, you're not ignoring these facts:
Milouse
i remember being frightened to know than 10% of people i cross* in the street were voting for his father, 25 years ago, see where we are now...
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So I'm not sure why you're objecting to the fact I'm pointing out that 16.5% of the entire French electorate picked the fascist as a first choice.


In a free election, ten times as much of the French electorate chose a fascist as in the UK local elections last week. That should worry people about the rise of fascism in France. Instead they are today celebrating the kicking that they think the fascists got.
 
Famine
Do not believe for a second that you may speak for me.

In your example, more people preferred green as a first choice than blue when given all the options. Do you disagree?
In your example, more people preferred blue as a first choice than green when given an either/or option between blue and green. Do you disagree?

Not at all.

One cannot say that 66% of people voted for Macron and 34% voted for Le Pen, because they didn't.

Simple. They are voters and they make up the electorate.

If you're going to say how voters voted, you need to say how they all voted. All votes, cast and not cast, are important. You must count them and not, as you tried, arbitrarily reassign them according to trends.

If you want to focus on the fact that, of the valid votes cast, two-thirds opted to vote for someone other than the fascist in an either/or choice, go ahead and do so. To ignore the facts that out of all people eligible to vote, less than a fifth chose that guy while a sixth chose the fascist (a two point gap), the fascist finished first in 37% of constituencies (a four point gap) and in a single generation the fascist has doubled the support her father got, with the parliamentary election to come, would be dangerously naive.

From what you said earlier, you're not ignoring these facts:

So I'm not sure why you're objecting to the fact I'm pointing out that 16.5% of the entire French electorate picked the fascist as a first choice.


In a free election, ten times as much of the French electorate chose a fascist as in the UK local elections last week. That should worry people about the rise of fascism in France. Instead they are today celebrating the kicking that they think the fascists got.
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I think you're flogging a dead horse here. It seems to me fairly clear that there is a substantial block of French voters (22.1%) who enthusiastically embrace Le Pen, a percentage of whom could probably be described accurately as being "fascists". This is not a small number, but it's distinctly a minority. The question from here would be: does that number grow or diminish in the future?

I'm guessing that within France, the more startling fact is that an "independent" won the first round of voting, which put him in a position to overwhelmingly win the second round. This would be a bit like Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic primary & then sweeping the election against Trump (although, obviously Macron is more of a centrist than Sanders).
 
Famine
Do not believe for a second that you may speak for me.
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My affirmation about your supposed conclusion was rhetorical and opposite to what i actually expected from you, this in order to point you to an error in your logic.

Famine
In your example, more people preferred green as a first choice than blue when given all the options. Do you disagree?
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No: 49% chose blue in the first round vs 25% green. Voters had a choice between several tints of blue but only one tint of green, and you ignore that key difference. So any conclusion you're making from reading results of the two most voted tints is irrelevant, so is for Le Pen and Macron first round result.

Famine
One cannot say that 66% of people voted for Macron and 34% voted for Le Pen, because they didn't.
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You indeed can't unless you're using a more specific term than "people". Like "votes expressed" ("suffrages exprimés").

Famine
If you're going to say how voters voted, you need to say how they all voted. All votes, cast and not cast, are important. You must count them and not, as you tried, arbitrarily reassign them according to trends.
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That's is NOT a trend nor a polling, it's an estimation based on an actual vote set by France Insoumise formation, which has been confirmed in election by comparison with previous elections. And i even didn't sum them up and gave a resulting number, so i didn't try to skew anything, just wanted to inform non specialist of french politic that there was a small reserve for votes in favor of Macron.

doblocruiser
I could ask you the same thing can't I. We simply disagree, me because of Macron's program. You, I am not sure.
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What mostly differs from Le Pen and Melenchon programs are xenophobic bits. And yet a lot of "i'm not racist, proof is i have a black friend" voters choose Le Pen. I wonder why.
 
Biggles
I think you're flogging a dead horse here.
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The problem is that fascism is a horse that's very much alive and kicking. The French voting results are fairly stark evidence of it, but it rather seems like everyone thinks that because Le Pen finished second to (by a long way from) Macron, it's a spent force - instead of paying attention to the fact she got enough votes to make it through to the run-off thanks to 16.5% of all French voters picking her, and secured nearly 11 million votes.

Let's compare that to the 'huge victory' for UKIP when they got less than 4 million votes in the last general election, equivalent to 8.3% of the electorate. This was slashed to less than 2% at the recent local elections - but people are celebrating France's vote against fascism when ten times as many people are voting for it?
Biggles
It seems to me fairly clear that there is a substantial block of French voters (22.1%) who enthusiastically embrace Le Pen, a percentage of whom could probably be described accurately as being "fascists".
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Again, you're talking about voters rather than candidates for some reason. I'm talking about the candidates
Biggles
This is not a small number, but it's distinctly a minority.
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All of these numbers are a minority. There's no majority anywhere here.
Milouse
My affirmation about your supposed conclusion was rhetorical and opposite to what i actually expected from you, this in order to point you to an error in your logic.
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Whatever your intent, you speak for you and not for others. And you did not point out any errors.
Milouse
No: 49% chose blue in the first round vs 25% green. Voters had a choice between several tints of blue but only one tint of green, and you ignore that key difference.
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What? :lol:

What a load of rubbish. You may as well say that since you can make green from blue and yellow, all the blue and yellow votes are really green ones.

The largest single bloc of votes in your example, when voting is free, was for green. After all other candidates were eliminated and the two largest single blocs of votes remained, the largest was for blue.
Milouse
So any conclusion you're making from reading results of the two most voted tints is irrelevant, so is for Le Pen and Macron first round result.
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Are you attempting to suggest that some of the candidates were in fact the same as Macron, so a vote for them was really for Macron? The questions there are fairly obvious - were there no differences in the platforms and if not, why were they even there, diluting the vote?

It's also great news for UKIP. Rather than polling just 1.6% of the vote, they're actually over 66%, because they're purple so they must be the same as red plus blue...
Milouse
You indeed can't unless you're using a more specific term than "people". Like "votes expressed" ("suffrages exprimés").
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Well at least now you're getting the hang of why I keep mentioning the turnout...
Milouse
That's is NOT a trend nor a polling, it's an estimation based on an actual vote set by France Insoumise formation, which has been confirmed in election by comparison with previous elections. And i even didn't sum them up and gave a resulting number, so i didn't try to skew anything, just wanted to inform non specialist of french politic that there was a small reserve for votes in favor of Macron.
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Nevertheless, these votes were not cast and cannot be counted as if they were! If they were really votes for Macron, they'd have been actually case for Macron.


I still don't quite follow how you can recognise that Le Pen has significantly increased the voting share but argue against the fact that first-round polling data shows exactly that.
 
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