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French Presidential Election 2022

droodzilla

droodzilla

pfm Member
Surprised there isn't already a thread about this as the first round of voting is on Sunday.

Macron is probably still favourite but his lead against Le Pen in the (likely) second round contast has shrunk to low single figures in the last few weeks:

https://twitter.com/leftiestats?lang=en

The striking thing is how many young people will vote for Le Pen. In the UK, young people still favour Labour by quite a margin.

So, who's gonna win? And, regardless of who wins, how do we stop the rise of the far-right in Europe?
 
Only real way to stop the rise of extreme politics IMO is to end or at least dial back global oligarchic misrule and venality.

Populism is fed by discontent - discontent is fed both by an international politics broken by grifting interests and by intentional or just de facto oligarch sympathisers fuelling discontent in order to drive profit.

Unless the oligarchic misrule is improved upon somehow, discontent won’t be ameliorated, and populism will continue to prosper. Expecting the pendulum to swing towards sanity without changing the reasons for discontent is just naive complacency.

I have no idea who’ll win in France, which just by itself is troubling - it should be obvious that Le Pen won’t. But will be watching with dread and interest.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Some discussion already in the Hungary thread: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/is-hungary-the-next-crisis.266574/

Agree the age demographic is pretty shocking. My guess is this may be an anti-establishment vote by a generation that feels they've been screwed over. Would be interesting to see the city/rural split too.
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Yes. it makes more sense if you look at first choices in the 18-24 group, where the socialist candidate leads the pack:

https://twitter.com/CerfiaFR/status/1511948133412093953

Jean-Luc #Mélenchon : 26%
Emmanuel #Macron : 20%
Marine #LePen : 18%
Éric #Zemmour : 13%
Yannick #Jadot : 10%
Valérie #Pécresse : 4%

Still not great though to see 31% of young people supporting far right or even further right candidates.
 
This is a sad situation.
I will vote Mélanchon.
But I feel that we will get another 5 years of Macron, sadly. Another five gloomy years.
Don’t forget that Macron represents the new right wing in France. A Tory in disguise.
 
chartz said:
This is a sad situation.
I will vote Mélanchon.
But I feel that we will get another 5 years of Macron, sadly. Another five gloomy years.
Don’t forget that Macron represents the new right wing in France. A Tory in disguise.
Click to expand...

Unless a re-elected Macron was to make some fundamental changes (unlikely if the Tory description is as accurate as it seems), that sounds almost like saying to Le Pen that she just has to wait another 5 years and then it’s her turn.
 
Dave***t said:
Only real way to stop the rise of extreme politics IMO is to end or at least dial back global oligarchic misrule and venality.

Populism is fed by discontent - discontent is fed both by an international politics broken by grifting interests and by intentional or just de facto oligarch sympathisers fuelling discontent in order to drive profit.

Unless the oligarchic misrule is improved upon somehow, discontent won’t be ameliorated, and populism will continue to prosper. Expecting the pendulum to swing towards sanity without changing the reasons for discontent is just naive complacency.

I have no idea who’ll win in France, which just by itself is troubling - it should be obvious that Le Pen won’t. But will be watching with dread and interest.
Click to expand...

I think it's all about the widening wealth gap, be it north-south, old-young, urban-rural. There are too many people who feel left behind. Until we address inequality the problem of extreme politics will only worsen (and unfortunately the extreme right will accelerate the inequality).
 
sean99 said:
I think it's all about the widening wealth gap, be it north-south, old-young, urban-rural. There are too many people who feel left behind. Until we address inequality the problem of extreme politics will only worsen (and unfortunately the extreme right will accelerate the inequality).
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Yep.
 
I wonder whether Boris would cosy up to her? I mean they're both fascists for a start, why only this week he took a card 'out of the Putin playbook' and sold off Channel 4, that's it now for free speech in this country, if people want the truth they're gonna have to buy a newspaper, or just go on the internet.
 
chartz said:
This is a sad situation.
I will vote Mélanchon.
But I feel that we will get another 5 years of Macron, sadly. Another five gloomy years.
Don’t forget that Macron represents the new right wing in France. A Tory in disguise.
Click to expand...
Yes, pretty much what I was getting at.

The best case, unless something radical changes, is another five years of stasis under Macron followed by Le Pen (or worse).

Compare the USA, which might easily fall to a far-right, anti-democratic Republican Party by then.

The UK is on the same trajectory - maybe five years behind.

Mainstream politicians need to grasp the scale of the challenge and address the real issues or we're all screwed.
 
I don’t understand anything like enough about French politics to pick the bones out of this one, but very disappointed and surprised to see such a high percentage of younger folk buy into fascism. By saying that I’ve seen it here too. EDL thugs have turned up en masse to the area I live in a couple of times, I’ve heard appalling racist abuse stirred up by Brexit etc on the trams etc. Fascism seems to be on the rise all over the world and I do not understand how that is even possible. Horrifying.
 
Indeed.
Youngsters aren’t interested in politics as much as we were, nor do they want to understand what’s at stake I find. Many won’t even bother to vote on Sunday.

I have no clear idea of what’s ahead but it isn’t bright for sure.
 
I rather hoped the events Putin is inflicting on Ukraine may have highlighted what fascism actually was and focused minds somewhat. Polls can be very wrong, I hope the French do the right thing on Sunday. Not entirely sure what that is, but it sure as hell isn’t voting for Le Pen.

PS I’m assuming this is some ‘second transferable vote’ system or similar?
 
droodzilla said:
And, regardless of who wins, how do we stop the rise of the far-right in Europe?
Click to expand...

Well the left is split between the 1870's, the 1930's, the immediate post war period and the 1960's. They're like furiously hungry cats in a bag. The right is split between feudalism, an imaginary past and the 1980's. While the centre is fixated on endlessly repeating the Noughties or simply content to idle away their time debating proper behaviour or imaginary school rules, polishing their Instagram and linkedin profiles and denouncing trolls and racist tweeters in the vain hope we'll imagine them to be vice free un-privileged meritocrats. Or somehow at all relevant.

Meanwhile the real world moves on apace and real people suffer the cumulative effects of decades of terrible government that swings between hopeless, bat-shit crazy, corrupt ideologues and myopic ill-informed self regarding managerialism. I suspect very few people actually vote with any real belief their chosen party is actually worthy of government.

If publics feel stress they always look for change. The right have learned to soft pedal their dated ideologies and scapegoat migrants and novel international conspiracies. The centre sticks to more of the same, scapegoats the super rich (fine by me), the white working classes (huge mistake), and the British Empire adding a good dash of climate angst, while the left are unelectable partly because they get a bad press across the media and partly because they expend all their energy arguing or pushing bogeymen the public have never really bought and are bored hearing about in language that is as dull and indigestible as it is dated.

I'm fairly sure a none of the above option would win every election in sight hands down.
 
Didn’t this happen in the run up to last time?
A strong showing for Le Pen in the first ballot then wiped out?
 
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