French election 2024 live: exit poll shows shock win for left-green alliance as far right falls to third
French election 2024 live: exit poll shows shock win for left-green alliance as far right falls to third
This blog has now closed but you can read our full report on the French election results here
Thank you France
This is not over. We have to continue to fight. Not only against the far right but for the people, for social justice for everyone. I'm so proud of France today. I'm so relieved but this is not over, what's scares me now is that the country is deeply polarized. This was a wake up call for me. These last years of politics have made me apathetic. But what happened today gave me hope. I'm gonna do something, I don't known what yet but I will. I'll vote as I always did but I'll do more. I will fight.
"The good fight is the one you are losing" or no rest for the wicked as it where I guess
My hope is that Leftwing implements policies that undo large parts of the Money-is-King and Screw-You-Plebes Neoliberalism, thus removing at least part of the popular discontent and distrust (people feel poorer and yet the mainstream keeps telling them the Economy is Growing) that the Far-Right feeds on with their "the blame is those other people that are even worse of than you (not at all the super rich)" scapegoating.
Reduce the pain by making the State more supportive again and getting more "from those who can the most, to give to those who need the most" and you take the wind off the Far-Right's sails.
Thankfully some gerrymandered states are finally getting their maps in order. I really really hope we are in the timeline where Dems take the House, Senate, and Presidency.
Hoping the same for the United States.
A leftist hat trick would be amazing.
I see a lot of the nay sayers as a vocal minority. They yell the loudest, but only because the media gives them a platform to generate clicks. Just like how Republicans believe everyone in the nation, who doesn't worship satan, is pro-birth. Kansas, a deep red rural state proved otherwise with a vote to add abortion rights into their constitution a couple years ago, something their conservative supreme court just upheld.
Honestly, the recent ruling on the Kansas ballot initiative, which quite frankly surprised me to begin with, shows that in some places judges still do their job even when their personal beliefs may differ from the law they are entrusted with interpreting. Kansas voters, you showed us the way and stood out against the backdrop of "conservative status quo." Kansas showed, in the last two years, that when given a chance, even deep red states see the writing on the wall.
I have a feeling the outcome of this election is going to be a "silent storm" event and wake-up call to the GOP that they are out of touch with what the people really want. They've drank the loud-mouth's Kool-aid for far too long and won't believe it when it happens.
Think of it like the silent majority (maybe 80% of nationwide voters) is the massive tornado that took out the drive-in theater in the movie, Twister. In the movie, no one saw it until a random lightning strike shed light on the sheer girth of the monster bearing down on them. The GOP is the drive-in. The night of the election will be their lightning flash. We, the voters, will be the tornado.
Also, don’t get overly proud of this. The idiotic notion of “there are two extremes polarizing everyone,” where they put the left and the right on equal danger-footing, is all over this article. I mean, it’s a few quotes from a few people, but still. That kind of shit is poisonous. It not only likens what the left wants to what the fascists want, but it also shields the far right from the view that their opinions are as dangerous as they are. “We want everyone to be cared for and we think nationalism is wrong” is not the same as “nationalism.” Still a pretty scary article. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the RN didn’t take the election, but they are still a huge portion of that govt. and that is very fuckin scary.
If these numbers hold, it will come down to Macron’s faction to decide who to align with. And counting on neoliberals in that scenario is…scary.
This is The Guardian, a Liberal (not Left, Liberal) newspaper in Britain, a country whose only left of center (by European standards) party is the Green Party which has all of 4 seats out of 300 in Parliament now (and it used to be just 1, even though they had 1 million votes out of 40 million).
(Labour was once leftwing, before Blair's Third Way, and when recently it's members voted for it to go back to being Leftwing there was a massive smear campaign which included this very newspaper to bring down the leftie leader and put the neoliberals back in control of it).
From the point of view of the journalists, editors and board of The Guardian, even Social Democracy if "far left".
Britain is maybe the most "like America" (but not on the good things) country in Europe, with a very similar voting system (First Past The Post) and with and Overtoon Window far more shifted to the Right than almost any other country in Europe (basically the Tories are a posher version of Orban) and their Press is one of the least trusted in Europe, and that includes The Guardian.
Think of The Guardian as a British New York Times.
If you want to see coverage of the French elections that's not been twisted by a British hard-Neoliberal Private School Attending High Middle Class journalist in a newspaper that prides itself of being "opinion makers", try Le Monde.
I feel like "the right gets a big showing early on but ends up losing" is a regular feature of modern French elections. It seems like it's happened multiple times in my lifetime.
The background trend, unfortunately, is of the far right slowly but surely gaining votes. We pushed them back to third place today, but they still almost doubled the number of representatives they'll be sending to parliament (from 89 to the projected ~130 for today's elections).
- In 2002, Jacques Chirac won against the far right with 82% (to the far right's 18%).
- In 2017, Macron won against the far right with 66% (to the far right's 34%).
- In 2022, Macron won against the far right with 58% (to the far right's 41%).
IMO it's largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
IMO it's largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
A tale as old as time.
Thank you for giving more info, I appreciate it!
IMO it’s largely a consequence of the center-left and center-right (Hollande, Macron) completely abandoning the working class, and demonizing the left whilst cozying up to the far-right (mostly Macron, though Hollande definitely slid right over his term).
While i am no fan of Hollande and establishment socialism, I feel like he's really the butt of the joke here. Whatever we do, we always seem to punch left.
He was president for 5 years, yeah it was limp-dicked as fuck and it veered right in mid-course, but if you remember, he was basically elected on a platform of not being Sarkozy. The people were so KOed by his mandate that Hollande's whole angle was to be the "back to normal" president. And that's a promise he kind of kept, if you look at his time, sandwiched between two hyper-mediatic hard-right presidents, well yeah it felt like the kind of politics our parents talked about. Not great politics, just normal not-sadistic politics.
Not to make this about the US, but hopefully we see similar.
The far right is making a huge push around the world in recent years. Every time populations resist their influence is a giant win for humanity and the future.
I believe we have it in us but this Democratic Party is a finely oiled machine designed to blunt our progress, not lead it. Goddamn Biden said in the beginning that he wouldn’t seek reelection and he should have stuck to that. Now he’s in danger of actually losing to Shitstain L’Orange.
In their presidential elections at least it's pretty much by design. It happens because they have 2 rounds.
The first round the far-right option gets a relatively large amount of votes. Then the round after only 2 options remain, so anyone who doesn't want the far-right option just votes for the only other option. Not sure what happens in general elections, but presumably it's somewhat similar because there's still 2 rounds.
As far as election systems go it has quite a lot of obvious flaws, but it's perhaps not quite as bad as first past the post. At least it makes the tactical voting a bit more straightforward.
UK: done
France: done
US: please don't let us down.
When was the last time all 3 had general elections at the same time?
I know we're not on people's radar like the three you mentioned, but South Africa also had general elections this year.
The long reigning party lost their majority for the first time since 1994, so the coalition talks were a big deal for a few weeks.
That's exciting, thanks for bringing it up!
Oh right I remember that! Thanks for reminding!
Don't forget Mexico!
It's looking like both USA and Canada are gonna fuck it up, though.
Unfortunately true, but at least Poilievre is nowhere near as batshit crazy as the republicans are. Still fucking sucks that the cons are most likely going to win though. At best things will continue to get slowly worse like they already are, and at worst, things will degrade faster.
Either way the average Canadian isn't getting any help from whoever wins the next election.
As an European, I'm just happy that the cultural influence of the US has faded so much in the last couple of decades that even with massive amounts of American billionaire money trying to pump-up the Far-Right in Europe, it's still but a pale shade of what's going on in the US and, as we see, even that far-right wave seems to already be breaking: notice how already in the European Elections the Left grew in various Scandinavian countries (in my experience Northern European Countries, especially the Nordic ones, tend to be ahead of the rest of Europe in social and political terms).
There is hope on the horizon for Europe.
I am, however sad for Americans with leftwing principles, since even with a Biden victory the US will continue to be an ever more dystopic late-stage ultra-Neoliberal experiment bound for a Fascist takeover sooner or later (if not Trump now, some other Fascist will sooner or later ride the wave of misery - that the Democrates too, as hard Neoliberals, gleefully keep feeding - into the Presidence and ever more authoritarianism)
My vote will be going to the lesser of the two evils but (a) between my state's Gerrymandering and the composition and voting habits of my district it won't matter and (b) until the US electoral system is meaningfully reformed (first-past-the-post, two-party system and how it affects voting in many states, Gerrymandering, lack of ranked choice, outright voter suppression, etc.), the US will continue to slide further right anyway
Iran too?
Yeah!!
Sorry bud. Biden is in the middle of shitting the bed. If we get can get a different candidate in without much issue then we'll have a chance again.
Alright! Now if France and Britain’s new left-of-center leadership can just… PLEASE not fuck it up… there may actually hope for the rest of the planet.
Britain left of centre ? . . . these are blairites, "labour" in name only , they literally propped up the second homes buy to let market through the 2000s. and they'd gladly privatise every public service we have left if they can. I've already heard shit like "individualised healthcare" being mentioned in their "think tanks".
They're probably not worse than the tories, and they probably will fuck it up less, that's about all you can hope for them.
They aren't going to tackle anything fundamental like bank regulation, promoting domestic investment, industrial strategy or developing public services.
I hope France gets a lot better.
Yeah, by European standards, I don't think New Labour are even just Center-Right: they have far too much love for "businesses", privatisation and deregulation to be an inch left of the traditional Right - in many ways they're pretty much were the Tories were back in Thatcher's day.
This was not a vote for leadership. It was a vote for one of our houses. Unless the president decides to play nice (spoiler: he won't), we won't have a prime minister from any left party, causing things to be difficult for the right but not impossible, as there are provision to force some laws to pass for the prime minister, and outright impossible for the left to do anything because they're unlikely to get support from a right-oriented prime minister, and are unlikely to get an actual majority vote on anything.
Basically, unless something really unexpected happens, this will result in a stalemate for a while. Which is, admittedly, the lesser of two evils, but kinda sucks anyway.
Well done france
That might look like good news, but it's just delaying the problem. Far right has only gained votes for the last 20 years, and it's only through jolts like the first round of these elections that other candidates unify to not let them pass. Nothing is done to address the underlying problems that make people vote for these fuckers, so it's only a matter of time before they end up accessing power.
The far-right in Europe, with money from both Russia and American billionaires, has been ridding the wave of insatisfaction that's the side effect of the very problems created by Neoliberalism (which is now in its natural end stage were wealth is far more concentrated than ever since the early XX century and social mobility is pretty much non-existent, hence why most people feel poorer and hopeless) which itself was created with billionaire money pumped into Think Tanks and buying politicians mainly in America in the late 70s, early 80s.
As I see it, the best way for the Left to disarm the the Far-Right is to undo most of Neoliberalism - go back to higher levels of State support and State control of strategical assets, free Education, Progressive taxation with excessive wealth heavilly taxed, and so on - thus removing the very cause of the popular insatisfaction that the Far-Right feeds on using a litany of "blame everybody but the rich" excuses.
At least some of this actually seems to be what the NFP has announced it will do.
Now, Macron (and his party) being hard core neoliberals will fight this tooth and nail, as will the EU because most of the governments there are neoliberals and things like the ECB as as pure neoliberal as it gets, so for starters, they will most definitelly try to help the ultra-rich in France more evade tax even more than now.
The other problem is that part of the NFP is the old centrist "left" party (the Socialist Party, which has nothing at all to do with Socialism) who were part and parcel of the Neoliberalization of French politics (a typical corrupt as hell mainstream "centrist" European party of the last 2 decades) and eventually suffered massivelly at the polls for it. That said, the fear of being made even more irrelevant will probably put a break on their corrupt neoliberal tendencies.
The good news is that, if the French Left manages to overcome the forces in France that will be arrayed against any undoing of Neoliberalism, that country is big enough to pretty much ignore EU pressure.
Here's to hoping that "Left/Green" can tackle some of those issues.
Wasn't the right poised to take it all in a landslide only just... checks notes - yesterday?
Yes they were, and both the NFP and the Macronists collaborated to drop their own candidates strategically to beat the NR. Had either one of them not done that, the NR would have won. Had both of them not done that the NR would have had a majority.
i mean, they got the most votes. the only reason they didn’t win is cause all the other parties are forming a coalition. they got 1/3 of the vote
Start listening to the working class and the far right won't even be a fart in the night
Far Right Night Fart?
The centrists worked together with the left to beat the far right. Absolute mad-lads.
Take note, America.
Tell that to our centrists. They hate our left more than our right.
Unfortunately our media are studiously not taking note.
Prior to these results, a few weeks back, NPR was trying to make it seem like the far-right and the "far left" were working together. It was the most bizarre, disjointed reporting I've heard in a while. They want people here to believe the center/left is extreme and uncompromising.
Centrists don't like the far right for some reason.
In Belgium, even the right don't like the far right. And would rather work together with the left. Lol
Might be that WW2 still lingers in their mind.
In America the centrists would rather have Trump than work together with the left. Though it's hard to call the Democratic party centrists anymore they are just slightly less right wing than Republicans.
Belgium being so quirky is why I love it so much.
Thank you, UK.
Thank you, France.
Hat trick, USA?
Putin getting nervous.
Crossing my fingers and will be contributing to this hat trick come November
Let's hope for a good election in Germany next year 🙏
America is trying to do the opposite by getting MORE candidates in to split the vote more on the lib/dem side, because to many people in Media are invested in the ratings from the next Trump shitshow.
Also extremely rare Iran W
We are hoping to defeat the conservatives AND idiot single-issue liberals(to end genocide they are going to support both continued and more aggressive genocide AND turn the US to the path of joining the WW3 axis powers...). It's an uphill battle.
Eat shit fascists
Lol, from the AP.
Some big-name stores in Paris are protecting their windows in case of unrest as results come out, but that’s a pretty common precaution.
They party like it's 1799, guys.
Today, in my heart I am French.
thats a pleasant surprise and all but the nazis will be back.
electoralism wont fix this and we better be prepared for the next time they have any opportunity. another pink wave won't resolve our problems now for the same reasons it didnt before.
nazis need to be dealt with asap, or else, and the best way is for leftists to actually organize.
I want my scalps. And all y’all will git me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis.
France’s national assembly has 577 seats, with 289 seats needed for an absolute majority.
Here is the first projected seat distribution, from Ipsos. It shows the left in the lead, in a major shift compared to opinion polls during the campaign.
Left-green New Popular Front: 172-192 seats
**Emmanuel Macron’s allies: **150-170 seats
**Far right National Rally and allies: **132-152 seats
Beat turn out projections and upended polling results.
Vive La France!
This is why it's so, so, so important for us to vote this November in the US! I'm proud of you, France!
It looks like the Far Right did worryingly well.
Hey hey - tomorrow. Right now we’re gonna fucking LOVE this.
The French show us the correct path.
I feel like the real lesson is being missed here:
Do not mess with Mbappé.
Facts. He's a national hero over there.
are you guys finally dusting off the guillotines?
Good job France!
Joe Biden, take note of how rigged the polks and press are and keep going.
This isn't the example you want. Candidates from two other parties stepped aside to change the election math. This isn't the polls being wrong, it's people who care about the country listening to the polls and doing what they have to do in order to stop the bad guys. The analogy here would be Biden withdrawing.
Alright if there was a further left party that would take over for Joe Biden that would absolutely be the move.
The issue with Joe Biden dropping out is there's no one really to replace him other than Kamala. Conservatives don't want her because they're racists, leftists don't want her because she's a fucking cop.
It's funny because that required that all parties left of the far right work together and remove candidates so the vote wouldn't get split in order for the results to be closer to what the population actually wanted, shows just how broken democracy is...
feature not a bug
Yes, FPTP is a shit system, even with the multi round elections. If they had ranked choice / IRV it wouldn't have needed these games to work properly.
This. Democracy isn't broken, FPTP is. Although, as the other comment says, this shows it still being functional in that party alignment substitutes for ranked choice by making it so that candidates the third party can tolerate get endorsed by a retiring third candidate. Less "broken", more "convoluted and ambiguous requiring custom to take over for the design flaws".
A positive outcome few expected.
I know there's still a long way to go but maybe the future won't be as completely horrofying as I thought. Fuck the facists and fuck the nazis, well done France!
Hell yeah
Lavrov already calls this a treachery, so I guess it's absolutely a good thing.
Dodged a bullet
Unfortunately, it doesn't mean Macron will name a leftist prime minister. He already asked his center-right prime minister to remain in office for a while. But the message from the population is clear.
The current pm stays in order to run the country before the transition happens. He has to pick a candidate that the left party will present.
Actually he doesn't. That's what he should and kind of said he'll do, but he can shape the cabinet the way he wants. But he's no Trump so I dont think he will outrageously abuse this powers. I would'nt be surprised tho if decides to name a prime minister from his own party and offer some "key" ministy to the left, claiming the country is too divided to be managed by what he calls extreme parties. Or put in place some kind of technical government. Anyway you can't really trust him.
If the Canadian left could do this the Conservatives would never win an election ever again
I can also dream, but we have to be prepared for a Poilievre majority and a very decent chance of Trump in the white house at the same time. I worry that a lot of things that would be unthinkable in Canada 10 years ago will enter mainstream political conversation.
I'm not familiar with France's parties. Are these real Greens, or Greenpeace or crypto-Russian greens?
Part real Greens, part Greenpeace, part Green-washing.
Oh thank goodness. Worst fear allayed, now on to the next one.
How is it that a French political party can get 15% fewer votes than a rival party, and end up with 8 more seats in Parliament than that rival party?
Vote distribution
Win seats by a small margin, lose seats by a wide margin
You new to politics?
1000 people vote in 10 districts. Their choices are a Hard-Right party, a Centrist Party, and a Left coalition, representing the Left-Centre, Left, and Hard Left. PS: This is what the French had going on.
Let's say 373 people wanted the Hard Right party, 269 people wanted the Left-Wing Coalition, 223 wanted the centre, 51 picked a minor libertarian party, 50 picked from a slew of minor parties not on the Right, and 35 picked from other Right-Wing parties.
In a proportional representation system, you'd expect 37.3% of the representatives be from the Hard-Right party, 26.9% from the Left-Wing Coalition, 22.3% from the Centrist party, plus about 14% being from minor parties. But France uses a First Past the Post system and so does our hypothetical nation. So here we go:
Riding 1: 95 people voted Hard Right. 3 vote Centre, and one each vote other Right and Libertarian. Hard Right wins this riding. Riding 2: 90 vote Hard Right, 5 vote Centre, 2 vote Other Right, 1 votes other Non-Right, and two vote Libertarian. Right wins this riding. Riding 3: 85 vote Hard Right, 10 vote Centre, 1 votes Left, 3 vote Other Right, and one votes Libertarian. Winner is Hard Right. Riding 4: 15 vote Hard Right, 65 vote Centre, 10 vote Left, while 2 vote Other Right, 5 vote Other Non-Right, and 3 vote Libertarian. Centre wins. Riding 5: 12 vote Hard Right, 60 vote Centre, 12 vote Left, while 4, 8, and 4 vote for minor parties. Centre wins. Riding 6: 20 each vote Hard Right and Centre, while 3, 4, and 2 vote third parties. Left gets 51 votes and wins the riding. Riding 7: 22 vote Hard Right and 11 vote Centre. 2, 9, and 4 vote Third Party, and Left wins the riding with 52 votes. Riding 8: 15 vote Hard Right and 21 vote Centre. 3, 5, and 5 vote Third Party, and Left wins again, this time with 51 votes. Riding 9: 10 vote Hard Right and 14 vote Centre, while an amazing 8, 10, and 8 votes being sent to the Third Parties. However, Left once again takes the riding with 50 votes. Riding 10: 9 people vote Hard Right, while 14 vote Centre. Another 21 vote Libertarian, with 7 voting minor right-wing third parties, and 7 voting for non-right-wing minor parties. Despite these 50 people likely having more in common with each other than with the Hard Right or the Left, because they couldn't agree on one candidate to vote for, their votes get split, allowing the Left to win the riding with 42 votes.
End result: 3 Right, 2 Moderate, and a whopping 5 Left. It didn't go this badly for the non-Left parties in France, but it illustrates how a party with a lower vote share can get more representation in a First Past the Post system. It illustrates why Gerrymandering is bad. If those voters in the first three districts are packed there because some partisan power broker got into the redistricting process, they've basically been defanged by political shenanigans. Doubly so if the left-wing coalition managed to spread all their voters out so that they had a solid lock on 5 of the districts.
This is a fundamental problem with FPTP, so that's why many of us advocate for RCV or Proportional systems.
I know how gerrymandering works in USA's system - the last two far-right Presidents were elected despite the center-right candidate getting more votes. But the margins were tighter in those contests - a few percentage points not double digits. I'm curious about the peculiarities of the French system that lead to such an apparently wide gap between votes versus representation.
if you think that's bad/weird
https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2024/uk/results
Labour
total votes 9,686,329
share 33.7%
412 seats
Conservative
total seats 121 total votes 6,827,311 share 23.7%
What happens when you frighten French with Marine.
Now the left needs to get serious about immigration issues, RN has been gaining and only gaining, we are just delaying the win of far right, so many issues with left, they need to do right things.
And Macron started he won't accept a coalition that includes France Unbowed. Something something antisemitism.
Something something antisemitism.
What is this claim based on? Got an example?
I'm not French, but it seems to be because they're anti-zionist with a Muslim immigrant constituency and the center and the right like to use that as a political lever. That's why I said "something something." I have yet to see anything with substance but I obviously can't go digging either.
An example I saw was the party leader was accused of being antisemitic because he said the finance minister was in the pocket of international banking. He later clarified he had no idea the guy was even Jewish, just that he was a centrist finance minister that he thought was in the pocket of international banking.
Then when the media reports on this as antisemitism and they complain that the media is biased against them they're supposedly using the trope that the Jews control the media. In actuality it's the capitalists that control the media and they're more than happy to do a hit job on the left.
Hardly a shock.
Fuck yeah frogs. Well done.
B-B-But POLLS!!!!
What a joke....