Some interesting things so far:
- Belgian media claims Macron is in the lead according to polls; Belgian media doesn't have to follow French non-reporting rules
- turnout is expected to be around 80% - go France!
- French expats apparently physically vote at polling places too
Polls close in about an hour and a half
Okay, but who is second? I hate waiting...
MLP most likely. We'll know in a few hours.
Basar on
i live in a country with a batshit crazy president and no, english is not my first language
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
edited April 2017
That Daily Mail article claims Macron 24%, Le Pen 22%.
Edit: I just now realized the Mail is referencing exit polls. So we'll see how accurate that is.
The Daily Mail is full of shit and would be ecstatic to see fascists make any kind of progress in France or anywhere else. There are no official exit polls anyway, but there will be a (historically accurate) vote estimate published in a little while.
This wouldn't be the first time a Le Pen made it to the runoff.
In 2002 the top two from the first round were Chirac (19.88%) and Le Pen (current candidate Le Pen's father) (16.86%). The runoff went to Chirac (82.2% to 17.8%).
This wouldn't be the first time a Le Pen made it to the runoff.
In 2002 the top two from the first round were Chirac (19.88%) and Le Pen (current candidate Le Pen's father) (16.86%). The runoff went to Chirac (82.2% to 17.8%).
"Vote for the Crook, not the Fascist" holds up well.
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HedgethornAssociate Professor of Historical Hobby HorsesIn the Lions' DenRegistered Userregular
Lots of sources reporting Macron vs. Le Pen.
So how long until Wikileaks starts dumping a bunch of negative material on Macron? Or has that already started?
How does the French presidency actually work? I've assumed it's kind of like the US one, and was presumably the model for it - or is President just a fancier name for a French version of a Westminster style Prime Minister with some additional powers? Kind of hard to see how the two round voting would mesh with a representative house.
How does the French presidency actually work? I've assumed it's kind of like the US one, and was presumably the model for it - or is President just a fancier name for a Westminster style Prime Minister with some additional powers?
Take Westminster
Subtract Monarch
Add President
Add pretty strong national security/foreign policy powers, including a nuclear button Add other stuff
How does the French presidency actually work? I've assumed it's kind of like the US one, and was presumably the model for it - or is President just a fancier name for a Westminster style Prime Minister with some additional powers?
It's closer to the US (which predates France's current government, as it was created after WWII; France was still an absolute monarchy when the Constitution was penned.) than UK, as the president is actually an office directly elected by the people with powers beyond deciding who gets the chance to form the new government when the leading party fails to create a coalition.
And from my understanding, as a President Macron would kind of be a continuation of the current government's party - but perhaps replacing the current PM (seems a little difficult to find entry level, English language commentary on this so I'm very grateful to this thread)?
Knowing nothing, I kind of get the impression from my french colleagues and the BBC that Macron is expected to win, and to a certain extent this is a re-branding exercise and change in management for the French left-wing. Which makes sense for a party-less president, or are things looking like they might get a bit ugly with En Marche looking at getting ministers of it's own in the future leading to the socialists being less inclined to go along? Or is Hollande really that unpopular that they're happy to be the guys who worked with/helped/advised the inexperienced popular guy.
Got a fairly clear picture of what'll happen with Le Pen (somewhere between Trump's uselessness and the apocalypse), but what a Macron victory looks like is a little less clear.
Yeah, any news source that is acting like it's a shock that a piece of shit like La Pen made it to the second round, is a source that's not worth getting news from. Last I checked, this is following the typical norm. Really shitty alt right party gets the the second round of voting because of how fractured the vote is int he first round of French Presidential elections and then the "fuck the alt-right fascists shitheads" vote tends to coalescence around a better candidate in the later rounds.
Head to head polls had Macron over Le Pen almost 2 to 1 so I think it is pretty much a sure thing Macron is next President. This suggests that a lot of people who hate Hollande will hold their noses and vote for Macron.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
Melenchon was part of two-term president Francois Mitterand's administration back in the 80's and early 90's, so he actually has experience governing unlike Le Pen. Chavez/Castro/whoever else in Latin America admiration aside he would be assuredly better than some crass xenophobe from the party literally descended from Nazi France.
That said, there are legit reasons to cast a jaundiced eye towards him - not the least his current use of cult-of-personality politics to be within spitting distance of the first round - which I will cross post below:
If le pen doesn't make the runoff I'll sleep a lot easier
Worst-case scenario is Le Pen vs Mélenchon in the second round.
Mélenchon is a far-left fan of Chavez. His platform includes 100% tax on income above 400 kEuro, getting rid of the current French presidential system, wants out of NATO and reform the EU to "serve the people" (or failing that, a referendum on Frexit). Oh, and he also likes Russia.
Mélenchon vs Le Pen will give the voters two choices: Economic disaster or economic chaos.
Of course the employers's association would say that, though. They're the ones he wants to tax.
Half the sources I see when Googling list his top tax rate as 90% and the other half as 100%, do you why the discrepancy/which is correct? I do see that he wants to cap CEO income at 20 times workers' wages.
I don't know enough about French politics have an opinion on reforming the Presidential system to one where Parliament has more power, but I don't see giving the legislative more power in proportion to the executive as a self-evidently bad thing.
And I think some of his criticisms of the EU, particularly those relating to fiscal conservatism/austerity and a structure that reduces the power of democracy, hold some merit (I've felt this way since the Greek debt crisis), although not being in the EU I'm not gonna weigh in on whether those reasons justify leaving the organization.
Tangential: Melenchon is basically a far-left nationalist who gives credence to the idea of the horseshoe theory. He wants to renegotiate ties with, or straight up leave, the EU and NATO because the "West" is the root of all evil, but Putin's excursions into Ukraine and his steadfast abetting of Assad go unmentioned when he talks foreign policy. Moreover he apparently victim-blamed late opposition figure Boris Nemstov rather than, you know, criticize the fascist regime that allows such a murderous culture run unchecked.
Also very pro celebrating and exerting the force of the French state (police and military) despite what some folks may think of him at first glance RE being anti NATO (which to me just reads as anti-multilateralism). Also softly anti immigrant and refugee rather than viciously anti immigrant/refugee (he wants refugees to be going back to their war torn home countries rather than countries like France, well how does he propose that happen?!). Finally very uncritical of both France's colonialism, and the Fifth Republic's policy of secularism with regards to how it has disenfranchised non-catholic French. Oh also he wants to start a more parliamentary sixth republic through a sweeping referendum, but is running absent any party behind his program.
These are all points from left wing French writers' impressions of Melenchon who are basically tepidly pro-Melenchon only because Hamon's socialist campaign is now a lost cause and Macron is obviously too liberal (in the classical sense) for their tastes.
Like Kaputa I would likely have put my support behind Benoit Hamon, unfortunately he made the mistake of running with the party that has perhaps irreparably sunk through the joint efforts of Francois Hollande and Manuel Valls. Thus I'm nominally hopeful of a Macron victory instead. Regardless of who wins however we will have to see how June's legislative elections turn out (lol like international English-speaking media will bother covering that exhaustively).
Didn't he also once suggest, with a straight face, that the solution to France's unemployment problem was to shrink the French work week so businesses would have to hire more people to get the same amount of work done?
This doesn't actually seem like a bad stopgap between what we have now and Basic Income as a result of automation though? Wouldn't work great with businesses like manufacturing because it would make French goods less competitive outside of France unless other countries did the same thing; but plenty of businesses were profitable before advances in automation led to higher worker output and decreases in labor.
Its also not a bad nor uncommon policy. The work week has been shrunk many times in order to have roughly the same effects. Why the shit do you think we have "weekends"?
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Its also not a bad nor uncommon policy. The work week has been shrunk many times in order to have roughly the same effects. Why the shit do you think we have "weekends"?
It is also one of the reasons child labor laws came into existence.
And from my understanding, as a President Macron would kind of be a continuation of the current government's party - but perhaps replacing the current PM (seems a little difficult to find entry level, English language commentary on this so I'm very grateful to this thread)?
Knowing nothing, I kind of get the impression from my french colleagues and the BBC that Macron is expected to win, and to a certain extent this is a re-branding exercise and change in management for the French left-wing. Which makes sense for a party-less president, or are things looking like they might get a bit ugly with En Marche looking at getting ministers of it's own in the future leading to the socialists being less inclined to go along? Or is Hollande really that unpopular that they're happy to be the guys who worked with/helped/advised the inexperienced popular guy.
Got a fairly clear picture of what'll happen with Le Pen (somewhere between Trump's uselessness and the apocalypse), but what a Macron victory looks like is a little less clear.
This is probably the most in-depth profile of Macron I have come across - likely translated from an original French source - as most English-language sources I have found don't really talk about Macron beyond the skin-deep characteristics of his campaign. Also since this is from an unapologetic left-wing source bear in mind that it discusses Macron's campaign in a skeptical/critical approach, albeit one that's not ridiculously inflammatory like some I have come across calling him "centre-right."
Basically Macron comes from a literal liberal elite background, albeit one that is in favor of an inclusive (social-justice tinged) society, who is in favor of market-based reforms without necessarily steamrolling over and gutting everything in the public sector and welfare state like Francois Fillon was campaigning on. Also the only candidate I've seen, aside from the now assuredly done-for Hamon, to actually address coming to terms with France's colonial history and present Islamophobia. He's a social liberal or left-liberal in a country whose political economy has numerous capitalist-skeptic or outright anti-capitalist schools of thought.
The author argues that his campaign is the beginning of a movement to re-align, if not outright consolidate, centre-right and centre-left camps into a big tent ensemble not unlike what you see in the US with the Democratic Party in order to face off an increasingly hyper-reactionary right wing and unapologetically marxist left wing. En Marche is planning to run its own candidates for the June elections, but it won't be surprising if a sizeable number of current moderate Socialists and Les Republicans (centre-right) also expressed legislative support for a Macron presidency. Manuel Valls, Francois Fillon, and historical centrist presidential candidate Francis Bayou have all endorsed Macron, and now Hamon (the defeated Socialist candidate) has also declared strategic support for Macron in the run-off.
That last bit is significant as Hamon tried to court Melenchon's support & apparatus throughout the campaign for the first round and failed (because egotistical cult-of-personality politics is bad when everyone else does it but not when true Scotsmen leftists do it), so he and any remaining Socialists who don't openly declare support for the Macron/En Marche program could potentially seek to act as a confidence-and-supply check in the legislature rather than an outright militant opposition. Meanwhile conservative/centre-right folks will likely gravitate towards the xenophobic/nationalist FN of Le Pen.
TLDR: The Socialist and Republican parties that have traditionally represented France are fraying, if not outright collapsing, in the wake of the Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies, and Macron's En Marche is an attempt to one part re-brand, one part consolidate, the moderate/centrist elements of both traditional parties in a way for them to likely more effectively square off against the growing clout (and possibly representation) of far right and far left camps.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Msnbc is saying it will be Le Pen and Macron in the runoff in two weeks.
I am still holding my breath, but I let a little out.
Melanchon is refusing to endose Macron and says people need to look at their own "conscience."
so melanchon is French Ted cruZ? Not to be confused with Chicago Ted Cruz, Tom rickets
Pretty much. Big messiah complex in there. The main difference is the utopia that The Chosen One (tm) will create, Melenchon wants a Communist utopia, Cruz wants an evangelical one. Needless to say, mental inestability is not an endearing quality on a leader.
Well it's a good first step that France didn't put two lunatics into the runoff. Hopefully France can do better than Britain and America did in dealing with this nationalism movement. I like what I'm hearing about Macron, but I really hope they don't see a large polling lead and just sit on their laurels.
Hey France, we helped rescue you during WWII, if you help rescue the world from the nationalist movement I'll consider us square and never bring it up again!
Nate Silver is fine when he's not trying to be a pundit. People shit on him in 2016 because he gave Trump such a high chance of winning, because what are the chances the results will end up on the far edge of the margin of error?
Nate Silver is fine when he's not trying to be a pundit. People shit on him in 2016 because he gave Trump such a high chance of winning, because what are the chances the results will end up on the far edge of the margin of error?
He gave Trump a much higher chance of winning the election than just about any other major pundit. He had Trump at something like a 33% chance, which I think is a pretty fair reflection of how things turned out.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Nate Silver is fine when he's not trying to be a pundit. People shit on him in 2016 because he gave Trump such a high chance of winning, because what are the chances the results will end up on the far edge of the margin of error?
If you listened to his reasoning for giving Trump a higher chance of winning it was in no way punditry/political bullshit. He actually pointed out quite a lot that there was high uncertainty with the polls, and in places like Michigan that people assumed Clinton would win there weren't enough polls to begin with to actually be certain she would win.
People shit on Nate Silver because people are dumb. His logic was sound all the way through.
On Nate Silver, deal is, people really, really, really didn't want to hear that Trump had a real chance, so he caved to pressure and adjusted his message accordingly.
And then, welp, it happened and he was left holding the bag, just like everybody else.
Melanchon is refusing to endose Macron and says people need to look at their own "conscience."
So he's continuing to follow Jill Stein. Cool.
I guess the old "if the fascist wins then everybody will vote for us the next time around after they realize how terrible they are while they will just win next time anyway if the centrist candidate wins" idea is pretty universal.
Melanchon is refusing to endose Macron and says people need to look at their own "conscience."
So he's continuing to follow Jill Stein. Cool.
I guess the old "if the fascist wins then everybody will vote for us the next time around after they realize how terrible they are while they will just win next time anyway if the centrist candidate wins" idea is pretty universal.
After Hitler, our turn.
They never change.
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
Posts
MLP most likely. We'll know in a few hours.
Edit: I just now realized the Mail is referencing exit polls. So we'll see how accurate that is.
In 2002 the top two from the first round were Chirac (19.88%) and Le Pen (current candidate Le Pen's father) (16.86%). The runoff went to Chirac (82.2% to 17.8%).
"Vote for the Crook, not the Fascist" holds up well.
So how long until Wikileaks starts dumping a bunch of negative material on Macron? Or has that already started?
Take Westminster
Subtract Monarch
Add President
Add pretty strong national security/foreign policy powers, including a nuclear button
Add other stuff
It's closer to the US (which predates France's current government, as it was created after WWII; France was still an absolute monarchy when the Constitution was penned.) than UK, as the president is actually an office directly elected by the people with powers beyond deciding who gets the chance to form the new government when the leading party fails to create a coalition.
EDIT: RMS has the whole better deal.
Knowing nothing, I kind of get the impression from my french colleagues and the BBC that Macron is expected to win, and to a certain extent this is a re-branding exercise and change in management for the French left-wing. Which makes sense for a party-less president, or are things looking like they might get a bit ugly with En Marche looking at getting ministers of it's own in the future leading to the socialists being less inclined to go along? Or is Hollande really that unpopular that they're happy to be the guys who worked with/helped/advised the inexperienced popular guy.
Got a fairly clear picture of what'll happen with Le Pen (somewhere between Trump's uselessness and the apocalypse), but what a Macron victory looks like is a little less clear.
Well round 2 is in 2 weeks so... if they're going to do that they don't have much time
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
But if two countries know the danger of fascist leaders
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
This doesn't actually seem like a bad stopgap between what we have now and Basic Income as a result of automation though? Wouldn't work great with businesses like manufacturing because it would make French goods less competitive outside of France unless other countries did the same thing; but plenty of businesses were profitable before advances in automation led to higher worker output and decreases in labor.
It is also one of the reasons child labor laws came into existence.
When are official returns officially in?
@Tastyfish
This is probably the most in-depth profile of Macron I have come across - likely translated from an original French source - as most English-language sources I have found don't really talk about Macron beyond the skin-deep characteristics of his campaign. Also since this is from an unapologetic left-wing source bear in mind that it discusses Macron's campaign in a skeptical/critical approach, albeit one that's not ridiculously inflammatory like some I have come across calling him "centre-right."
Basically Macron comes from a literal liberal elite background, albeit one that is in favor of an inclusive (social-justice tinged) society, who is in favor of market-based reforms without necessarily steamrolling over and gutting everything in the public sector and welfare state like Francois Fillon was campaigning on. Also the only candidate I've seen, aside from the now assuredly done-for Hamon, to actually address coming to terms with France's colonial history and present Islamophobia. He's a social liberal or left-liberal in a country whose political economy has numerous capitalist-skeptic or outright anti-capitalist schools of thought.
The author argues that his campaign is the beginning of a movement to re-align, if not outright consolidate, centre-right and centre-left camps into a big tent ensemble not unlike what you see in the US with the Democratic Party in order to face off an increasingly hyper-reactionary right wing and unapologetically marxist left wing. En Marche is planning to run its own candidates for the June elections, but it won't be surprising if a sizeable number of current moderate Socialists and Les Republicans (centre-right) also expressed legislative support for a Macron presidency. Manuel Valls, Francois Fillon, and historical centrist presidential candidate Francis Bayou have all endorsed Macron, and now Hamon (the defeated Socialist candidate) has also declared strategic support for Macron in the run-off.
That last bit is significant as Hamon tried to court Melenchon's support & apparatus throughout the campaign for the first round and failed (because egotistical cult-of-personality politics is bad when everyone else does it but not when true Scotsmen leftists do it), so he and any remaining Socialists who don't openly declare support for the Macron/En Marche program could potentially seek to act as a confidence-and-supply check in the legislature rather than an outright militant opposition. Meanwhile conservative/centre-right folks will likely gravitate towards the xenophobic/nationalist FN of Le Pen.
TLDR: The Socialist and Republican parties that have traditionally represented France are fraying, if not outright collapsing, in the wake of the Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies, and Macron's En Marche is an attempt to one part re-brand, one part consolidate, the moderate/centrist elements of both traditional parties in a way for them to likely more effectively square off against the growing clout (and possibly representation) of far right and far left camps.
I am still holding my breath, but I let a little out.
so melanchon is French Ted cruZ? Not to be confused with Chicago Ted Cruz, Tom rickets
So he's continuing to follow Jill Stein. Cool.
Pretty much. Big messiah complex in there. The main difference is the utopia that The Chosen One (tm) will create, Melenchon wants a Communist utopia, Cruz wants an evangelical one. Needless to say, mental inestability is not an endearing quality on a leader.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
They'll do a referendum of France Insoumise on the second round. Meanwhile, the French Communist Party came out against Le Pen.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Hey France, we helped rescue you during WWII, if you help rescue the world from the nationalist movement I'll consider us square and never bring it up again!
He gave Trump a much higher chance of winning the election than just about any other major pundit. He had Trump at something like a 33% chance, which I think is a pretty fair reflection of how things turned out.
If you listened to his reasoning for giving Trump a higher chance of winning it was in no way punditry/political bullshit. He actually pointed out quite a lot that there was high uncertainty with the polls, and in places like Michigan that people assumed Clinton would win there weren't enough polls to begin with to actually be certain she would win.
People shit on Nate Silver because people are dumb. His logic was sound all the way through.
It shouldn't take two weeks to blog some bullshit.
And then, welp, it happened and he was left holding the bag, just like everybody else.
I guess the old "if the fascist wins then everybody will vote for us the next time around after they realize how terrible they are while they will just win next time anyway if the centrist candidate wins" idea is pretty universal.
After Hitler, our turn.
They never change.