French regional elections spell trouble for the socialists [Anti-immigration gets huge boost]

Hotair ^ | 12/06/2015 | Jazz Shaw

[SeekAndFind]

Marine Le Pen got a huge boost in France’s first round of regional elections this week, drawing upwards of 40% support in the northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie. Showing some unusual restraint after the initial results were reported, she said her party would treat the result with humility and a profound sense of responsibility. In the broader sense, her “far right” National Front party did far better across all 13 regions than in recent outings. (Mashable)

France’s far right National Front won more support than any other party in the first round of regional elections Sunday, according to polling agency projections, in a new boost for Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration strategy and a new blow to President Francois Hollande’s Socialists.

The projections put National Front candidates on top so far in six of France’s 13 newly drawn regions. But Sunday’s voting was only a first round, and some mainstream voters may steer away from far right candidates in the decisive Dec. 13 runoff…

Voters are choosing leadership councils for the regions, and had the choice of several parties in the first round. Polling agencies Ifop, OpinionWay and Ipsos projected that the National Front won between 27 and 30 percent support nationwide.

If we try to make this story strictly about Marine Le Pen and the personality politics which infect French elections the same way they do here in the United States we’re not really doing justice to these results. The National Front garnered roughly one third of the vote across the regions, but Sarkozy’s conservative Republicans party took another 27% at the same time. That puts the tally in at least the high fifties for the more nationalist oriented movements while Francois Hollande’s socialists (who currently control nearly everything) took barely a quarter. That’s a huge shift.

For those of us who aren’t quite so familiar with French politics, here’s a fairly good thumbnail description of the National Front:

The National Front is a socially conservative, and nationalist, right to far-right political party in France. Its major policies include economic protectionism, a zero tolerance approach to law and order issues, and anti-immigration. A eurosceptic party, the FN has opposed the European Union since its creation in 1993.

Le Pen speaks passionately about not only the threat posed by massive numbers of immigrants, among which are found terrorists, but of the need to preserve French culture which she feels may be on the verge of being subsumed by Muslim minorities. Her party has opposed the open border policies of the EU and calls for tougher, more military style capability for their police and intelligence agencies to deal with the existential threat. Does any of that sound familiar?

Here in the United States we’re not having any national elections at the moment, but Barack Obama’s approval ratings when it comes to handling ISIS and terrorism in general are in the tank. Americans are reacting to terrorist attacks on our own soil just as the French are after the horror show in Paris. At some point we have to begin asking ourselves how the Left managed to coopt the term “nationalism” and turn it into a dirty word. Frankly, we could all do with a bit more nationalism and significantly less multi-culturalism if we hope to keep our heads above water in the wars to come.

If you want to track this story in France, these were just the first round of elections. Each party gaining more than 10% of the vote in the 13 regions will go into a runoff election on December 13th.

[Krosan]

Sarkozy already told the Republicans not to make alliances with Socialists as he believes they’re going to win the whole thing anyway on Sunday.

[SunkenCiv]

I couldn’t find the previous pages I’d read. His wikipage has some info about his having brought about early elections by withdrawing his party’s support for the prev gov’t. They don’t seem to recruit candidates to run for office often enough for their own good.

> The Party for Freedom (Dutch: Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) is a right-wing populist[13] political party in the Netherlands. Founded in 2005 as the successor to Geert Wilders’ one-man party in the House of Representatives, it won nine seats in the 2006 general election, making it the fifth largest party in parliament. In the 2010 general election it won 24 seats, making it the third largest party. Since then, the PVV has agreed to support the minority government led by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, without having ministers in the cabinet. However the PVV withdrew its support in April 2012 due to differences over budget cuts.[14] It came third in the 2014 European Parliament election, winning 4 out of 26 seats.

(it appears to be third largest)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom

breakdown of parties in the Dutch parliament:

(heading “Summary of the 12 September 2012 Dutch House of Representatives election results”)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Representatives_(Netherlands)

[Krosan]

That is the same page I looked at. Doesn’t seem to be the third largest any more.

VVD - 40
PvdA - 36

SP - 15
CDA - 13
** PVV - 12 **
D66 - 12
...

[SunkenCiv]

PVV is *tied* at third at 15 seats, same as the Socialists.

[MSF BU]

Had the UK election results been calculated in the German fashion, UKIP would have 73 seats.

[SunkenCiv]

But they weren’t. “First across the finish line” in the UK elections pissed off Nigel F, I remember his quite even-keel statement after the results came out. I think this is it.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/08/ukip-frustrated-share-vote-fails-translate-seats

In countries with many more than two political parties different methods of dealing with plurality-without-majority have been devised. Some countries have multi-part ballots (all completed on the single election day) where first choices are followed by second choices, such that the runoffs don’t have to be held separately.

If seats were not geographically linked, and candidates were elected at-large based on a threshold level of votes (either outright numbers or more likely percentages) there would still be regions or cities or neighborhoods of large cities comprised of hard-core supporters, without there being that permanent incumbency.

The UK’s old practice was a traditional assignement by geographic polity, and that’s what led to “no taxation without representation” ‘round these parts.