The French Electorate

For someone interested political ideology, watching elections in countries that have a proportional representation system is a lot more interesting than watching the dreary American back-and-forth support for the duopoly Reps and Dems.

France started voting for president yesterday. First-round results are available today. It was interesting to see how the electorate there splits almost evenly three ways: 31% among the several left-wing parties, 33% among the several right-wing parties, 36% among the several centrist parties.

The way elections work in France is that the two highest vote-getters in the first round face off in a second, deciding round. The incumbent centrist, Macron, will probably be re-elected on April 24. Most of the left and all of the center will vote for him, so he’ll get around 60%. Challenger Le Pen is likely to get only 40% (she’ll get most of the right-wing votes and a certain percentage of additional anti-Macron votes).

The Green Party polls about 5% in France. Yesterday some of the Green vote went to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who ran as a hybrid Red-Green candidate (eco-socialist). He and the Greens together got almost 27%, which is pretty encouraging.