Live Commentary
10:37am Tuesday The composition of the 182 NFP members are 74 from the far-left LFI, 59 from the centre-left Socialists, 28 Greens, nine Communists and 12 others. Adding Ensemble’s 168 to NFP, but subtracting LFI and the Communists gives 267 seats, still 22 short of a majority.
12pm It’s been a long stretch of following international elections for me, including the UK, French, Indian and European parliament elections. Unless Joe Biden withdraws from the US presidential contest, I will next post in early August.
10:57am Wikipedia’s figures are 180 of 577 seats for the NFP (up 49 since 2022), 159 Ensemble (down 86), 142 RN and allies (up 53), 39 Republicans (down 25), 27 other righties (up 17), 12 other lefties (down nine), six other centrists (up two) and nine regionalists (down one). Adding others, 192 NFP (up 40), 165 Ensemble (down 84), 142 RN (up 53) and 66 Republicans (down eight). A majority requires 289 seats, so parliament is well hung.
9:55am Official runoff round results have been released. Le Monde has the NFP on 182 of the 577 seats, Ensemble 168, RN 143, the Republicans 45, other righties 15, other lefties 13, other centrists six and regionalists four. Adding the others would give the NFP 195 seats, Ensemble 174, RN 143 and the Republicans 60. To pass legislation, Macron’s Ensemble will need either the NFP or RN to also be in favour. In the previous parliament, he had an option of cooperating with the Republicans.
8:42am With six seats left, 179 NFP, 165 Ensemble, 143 RN and 45 Republicans.
8:17am With 16 seats left, 177 NFP, 160 Ensemble, 141 RN and 45 Republicans.
7:48am As expected, the NFP and Ensemble are surging as the final seats are finalised. With 28 seats left, it’s 174 NFP, 153 Ensemble, 140 RN and 45 Republicans.
7:40am Large first round leads for RN candidates are being overturned in the runoffs. In Sarthe’s fourth, the NFP defeated the RN by 50.2-49.8. First round results were 39.3% RN, 25.94% NFP and 25.88% Ensemble. The Ensemble candidate withdrew.
7:28am With 42 seats left, the NFP has 165 seats, Ensemble 149, RN 140 and the Republicans 44.
7:09am With 78 seats remaining, Ensemble takes second spot from RN. Current totals are 146 NFP, 140 Ensemble, 137 RN and 40 Republicans.
7:05am Le Monde has maps of the results so far. With 95 seats still to be finalised, the NFP has won 140 seats, the RN 135, Ensemble 133, the conservative Republicans 38, other righties 15, other lefties ten, other centrists six and regionalists four. The remaining seats, mostly from cities, should heavily favour the NFP and Ensemble.
6:57am The Ifop projection of components of the NFP alliance has the far-left LFI with 82-86 seats, the Communists at 9-10, the centre-left Socialists at 62-67 and the Greens at 34-35. There are also 8=10 other lefties.
6:28am Monday A big shock, with current projections, which are partly based on votes counted so far, putting the left-wing NFP in first place, followed by Macron’s Ensemble, and the far-right RN in third. An Ipsos projection has the NFP at 171-187 seats, Ensemble at 152-163 and RN at 134-152. Ifop has NFP at 188-199, Ensemble 164-169 and RN 135-139.
6:30pm Wikipedia has the results of 14 seat runoffs, presumably from French territories outside France that voted Saturday. Regionalists won five of these seats, the NFP three, other lefties three, other righties two and other centrists one. Adding the 76 seats decided in the first round with vote majorities, the total out of 90 seats decided is 38 RN and allies, 35 NFP, five Republicans and other righties, five regionalists, three other lefties and three Ensemble and other centrists. So 487 seats remain to be decided.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.
The 577 French lower house seats are elected by a two-round single-member system. The runoffs are today, with polls outside the cities closing at 3am AEST Monday. All polls are closed by 4am AEST.
In final results of last Sunday’s first round, the far-right National Rally (RN) and allies won 33.2%, the left-wing alliance of four parties (NFP) 28.1%, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble 21.3% and the conservative Republicans and other right-wing candidates 10.2%.
Turnout was high at 66.7% of registered voters. This meant 76 seats were filled, where the winner had at least 50% of valid votes and at least 25% of registered votes. It also meant that many third candidates cleared the 12.5% of registered voters required to advance. On these results, 306 seats would go to three-way runoffs and five to four-way runoffs.
In today’s runoffs, first past the post will be used. To avoid splitting the anti-RN vote, there have been a large number of candidate withdrawals. Now there are only 89 three-way runoffs and two four-way runoffs remaining after the candidate registration deadline on Tuesday. Europe Elects said there are 154 NFP vs RN contests, 135 Ensemble vs RN, 50 Republicans vs RN, 83 are three or four-way runoffs involving NFP, RN and either Ensemble or the Republicans, and 37 seats don’t have RN candidates.
Polls released since Tuesday’s registration deadline give RN and allies 170-240 seats, the NFP 165-203 seats, Ensemble 95-160 and the Republicans 25-63. If today’s results reflect the polls, RN and allies will be far short of the 289 seats needed for a majority, and there’s some chance that the NFP wins more seats than RN. Polls conducted before the first round had RN much closer to a majority.
In an Ifop poll, centre-left and Ensemble candidates led RN by 53-47, while the far-left tied at 50-50 with RN and the Republicans led RN by 56-44. An OpinionWay poll had RN beating NFP by 53-47 but losing to Ensemble 52-48. In a three-way race, NFP had 36%, Ensemble 34% and RN 30%.
UK election most disproportionate in modern history
In Thursday’s UK election, Labour won 411 of the 650 seats, the Conservatives 121, the Liberal Democrats 72, the Scottish National Party nine, independents six, Reform five and the Greens four. Labour won 63.2% of seats on 33.7% of votes, the Conservatives 18.6% on 23.7%, the Lib Dems 11.1% on 12.2%, Reform 0.8% on 14.3% and the Greens 0.6% on 6.7%. Europe Elects said it was the most disproportional UK election in modern history. Large swings against Labour in their safe seats helped their vote efficiency, even though they lost a few seats to pro-Gaza independents.
In Scotland Labour won 37 of the 57 seats, to just nine for the SNP, on vote shares of 35.3% Labour and 30.0% SNP. In 2019, the SNP had won 48 of the 59 Scottish seats, to just one for Labour, on shares of 45.0% SNP and 18,6% Labour.
Other international electoral developments
More than seven months after the November 22 election, a new Dutch government was sworn in last Tuesday. The new government includes the far-right PVV (37 of the 150 seats), the conservative VVD (24 seats), the Christian democratic NSC (20 seats) and the agrarian right-wing BBB (seven seats). These four parties combined have 88 seats, well above the 76 needed for a majority. This is the first Dutch government to include the PVV and has been described as the most right-wing in recent history.
The Iranian presidential election was held in two rounds, on June 28 and Friday, to replace former right-wing president Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash. The reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian defeated the right-wing Saeed Jalili in the runoff by a 54.8-45.2 margin. In Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds the most power, and presidential candidates need to be vetted by the religious Guardian Council.
In early May the Solomon Islands parliament elected the China-friendly foreign minister, Jeremiah Manele, of the previous pro-China PM, Manasseh Sogavare, as the new PM. Sogavare had withdrawn from the contest to be PM and backed Manele, after he failed to win a majority in an April election.
What is Macron up to?
Canny political operator maybe saw the rise coming of the far right decided to get in early give the public a chance to see how the far right operate in the real world before they get bigger and people will come back to him.
Interesting system that the French have. It would address some of the worse aspects of First Past the Post in single-member electorate system.
I heard a report on the ABC News this afternoon about the French elections, in particular about the large number of tactical withdrawals of candidates. It makes a lot of sense to avoid splitting the non-RN vote, but it appears that many voters are bemused or upset by this development. Hopefully that still get out and vote for their second choice.
UK
Idk for certain but I imagine that the Conservative vote share in Harrow East (N-W London) of 53.3% must be their highest anywhere in the UK.
It wouldn’t have been anywhere near their highest in previous elections. It was only won back for Cons in 2010 when they returned to government, and was very narrow margins in next couple of elections (albeit no 3rd party ever gets anything significant in this seat so the Tory vote remained quite good in these 2-way battles).
The winning margin of 24.4% is not the highest winning margin of Cons, though it can’t be far off. I don’t know which seat is, but Rishi Sunak achieved 25.1% in Richmond & Northallerton so that’s a contender.
Remarkably, all the MRP polls showed Labour winning Harrow East – though some later ones showed it only narrowly so. I always suspected Bob Blackman would buck the trend again but never expected this quite spectacular result.
London
In the end, speculation of a Tory wipeout in London was wide of the mark. They retain 9 seats, a poor number out of 75 but actually less of a decline than in other regions of England and Wales. They also lost Hendon to Labour by just 15 votes! – the tightest result of the election – so it was nearly 10 London seats. If Matthew Offord hadn’t stood down at this election, no doubt they’d have taken Hendon.
And I certainly didn’t see Iain Duncan-Smith holding onto Chingford coming! Lucky survivor, though he probably is a decent constituency MP.
It doesn’t look like National Rally will get to a majority in the end. But that is going to leave a situation not dissimilar to what there was before; no party having control and the Left and the centre having to agree on a compromise government.
One thing that this election will caused is a massive wake up call to the Non-Far Right that there is a threat and there needs to be a solution found in the next 2 years or else they might not stop them next time.
UK
All in all, I’m quite proud of my prediction at a very hard election to predict with any degree of accuracy (I suppose they all are but this was definitely a ‘change’ election):
https://www.pollbludger.net/2024/07/04/uk-general-election-live/comment-page-1/#comments:~:text=Don%E2%80%99t%20know%20if,Green%204%20(7%25)
Over-estimated SNP vote share by 5-6% therefore their seat numbers. Underestimated the LD formidable local campaigning skills although was aware of them, still I did predict a massive increase of seats for them which came to pass. Over-estimated the Reform vote share but close on seats. Bang on vote share for PC and Greens, close on seats.
Very close on seats for Lab / Con. Even though I predicted lower vote share for Lab than the polls, I still overestimated it. The gap between Lab-Con was just 10% and Lab’s swing was ruthlessly efficient in terms of maximum seat gain and negative swings where they already held seats etc.
France
I’m now starting to get more worried that the tactical voting will over-reach itself, and the left-wing NFP gets the most seats – given that this includes the very extreme, pro-Russia, anti-Semitic, La Insoumise party as its largest entity in the group, this is a huge concern.
Businesses have also made clear all along that out of their Hobson’s choice at this election, the hard-left La Insoumise / Melenchon are definitely the worst for dooming the economy. They are actually regarded – rightly – in France as further to the left than the Communist Party, which is also part of the NFP grouping (a very much junior member).
Steve777,
I have enjoyed watching the French system since living and working there on and off form some decades.
OH’s mother was French, and now we split our time between south-west France and Australia, and so I am learning a lot more at first hand.
The time between the first election, where everyone stands, and the, second run-off poll (Adrian’s clear post has the criteria for candidates in the runoffs) is used to sort out new alliances and groupings to maximise votes for left / right centre blocks etc.
I am very impressed that this time, the left to centre left, who usually run some half-dozen candidates in the first round of votes, this time quickly got themselves organised into the LFP block, and only ran one candidate in each electoral district.
In our region (although I am in Australia at the moment), the 10th Circonscription of the Gironde, centred on Libourne), the LFP person was from Les Ecologistes (The Greens) .
The LFP, the Macron and the RN candidate all got through to the second round today, and so the LFP (Ecologiste), with the lowest vote, dropped out, so that it is a contest between RN and the Macron candidate.
As far as I can tell, the Macron candidates have done the same. If they came third , they dropped out to give the LFP candidate a clear run.
BS Fairman
As you probably know, this is a common situation in France. At least it is better than under the weak presidential system of the 3rd Republic, where when both WWI and WWII were declared, France did not have a functioning government – they were still trying to put something together.
On the other hand, De Gaulle went too far with the massive increase in presidential powers for the 5th Republic.
Yes, Les Républicains really need to get their act together. They have split for this election – with the Leader (according to the courts), Eric Ciotti, splitting the parting after forming an alliance with Marine Le Pen and RN.
UK – The combined Conservative Reform was larger than the Labour vote in 140 seats that Labour won and 26 Lib Dem seats they won. So even if every Reform voter had voted for the Conservatives instead, it still would have been a hung parliament with the Liberal Democrats in control and they were in no mood to back the Conservatives.
However, according to one poll however, only 36% of Reform voters would have voted conservative at this election if Reform had not run. Plus the other parties would have run differently t00.
BTSays: Labour screwed themselves in Chingford – their endorsed candidate Faiza Shaheen, who had run before, excelled in the vote and in building a local party organisation, was one of the left/Muslim MPs and candidates knifed for no reason in the early weeks of the election. She did not go quietly, and while it paled in contrast to the backlash of the failed political hit on Diane Abbott, was one of the few damaging moments of the campaign for Labor.
She ran as an independent and was only about 80 votes behind the endorsed candidate, thoroughly splitting the Labour vote.. If Labour hadn’t knifed her, she’d have won the seat by a mile.
The baseless purging of Shaheen and prominent gay MP and author of the UK conversion therapy bill Lloyd Russell-Moyle – neither of who were reasonably in any way controversial to anyone who wasn’t a hardcore Tory – was incredibly dirty politics and something that deserves to be a stain on Starmer’s reputation.
His election campaign coordinator unexpectedly losing his seat to a different independent was a nice bit of karma for once.
B. S. Fairman: I greatly doubt there will be any kind of solution found among the non-far right.
Macron’s response to the threat of National Rally has been to tack further and further right, which has tremendously strengthened the far-left. Half of his people think the far-left and far-right are as bad as one another, and they’re certainly not about to skew back towards the ideological centre to actually try to take votes off the far-left.
Agreed Rebecca, and the fact Macrons colleagues haven’t learned that means they can’t be relied on for the systemic changes need to begin the real fight of the far right
BTsays
Not True!
Neither La France Insourmise, or Jean-Luc Mélenchon support Putin or Russia in 2024. After the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, in 2022, Mélenchon clearly and unequivocally said that Putin alone was to blame for the war in Ukraine.
However, Marine Le Pen of the RN, for the Presidential Election of 2024 (10th April first round) had to pulp campaign material showing her with Putin, prepared before the invasion. She and the RN were also supported with a considerable loan from Russia / Putin for that election.
DandM is completely correct, and those tropes were trotted out by certain corners of the media in the run up to the election.
It’s telling how the left is accused of these things, while it is the right that undertakes them…
I see Ed Millibank is still in politics and Energy Secretary in current government.
According to France 24,
The number of voters who have turned put up until midday is 26.63% (compared to 18.99% in 2022).
This is the highest percentage turnout (of French eligible French voters, from poll opening until midday) since 1981 – the election that saw Mitterrand* elected after the long run of Gaullists in the 5th Republic.
Make of this early turnout what you will.
And say what you will of Mitterrand in hindsight but he finally got rid of the death penalty (in 1981!!!!). That none of the previous Gaullist’s bothered tells me a lot about how much they cared for human rights.
I mean the desire to keep french colonial territory post ww2 was another sign 😉
B. S. Fairman says:
Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 6:42 pm
UK – The combined Conservative Reform was larger than the Labour vote in 140 seats that Labour won and 26 Lib Dem seats they won. So even if every Reform voter had voted for the Conservatives instead, it still would have been a hung parliament with the Liberal Democrats in control and they were in no mood to back the Conservatives.
I never understand the sentiment expressed above, the other side of the argument is the Centre Left have a combine 520 seats to the Rights 130…. The greatest defeat of the Right in UK political history.
L’exit polls francaise have the left first, Ensemble a more-respectable-than-anticipated second and RN a surprise third. Much talk throughout the day of a surprisingly high turnout.
Jean-Luc Melenchon (hard-left leader in France)
Regardless of what he’s said “in 2024”, I’m afraid it is true that he is sympathetic to Russia. Furthermore, he has been consistently anti-Nato.
Taking the two together, he described that Russia should be respected by America not annexing Ukraine – his description of Ukraine joining NATO!
Just because he changed his rhetoric when Russia invaded Ukraine in order to save face (and future votes) does not mean he is one more whit to be trusted on foreign policy in general, and Russia in particular. His sympathies are deep-rooted and go back to the Soviet Union days.
The RN are not calling for the abolition of NATO – don’t get me wrong, they too have been far too close to Russia as well, especially Le Pen, even if their economic policies are not as damaging as Melenchon’s / La Insoumise’s.
Now exit polls are starting to realise my worse fears re hard left getting into power, Melenchon could be their PM candidate. Let’s hope the PM is chosen (and passed by the deputies) from Macron’s Ensemble party instead.
Looks very messy right now though.
Oh, and Melenchon was good buddies with Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan dictator (in all but name) and impoverisher of his country.
First the UK now France… rejection of hard right & in both cases voters show common sense & ability to vote tactically .. is this a result of democratizing social media & internet that enables them to get organized?
Voters also telling the economic establishment to get stuffed.
Now all that is required is for Biden to either retire of fall of his bike .
French elections: Former president François Hollande elected to Parliament
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/07/07/former-french-president-francois-hollande-elected-to-parliament_6676986_5.html
___________________________________________________
French elections: Marine Le Pen’s sister beaten .. Marie-Caroline Le Pen, the sister of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, was beaten by a left-wing candidate
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2024/07/07/french-elections-marine-le-pen-s-sister-beaten_6676998_5.html
Ongoing results:
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/07/07/2024-french-election-results-chart-and-map-of-second-round-winners_6676976_8.html
Looks like the global right are suffering some sort of performance disorder. Still don’t hold out any hope for the US
Taniel@Taniel
IPSOS, the pollster whose first exit poll is in the first post in this thread, just released an updated exit poll .. Ranges have gotten tighter, but the basic picture & order is the same
NPF: 171-187
Ensemble: 152-183
LR-DVD: 63-88
RN: 134-152
Left-green alliance at 188-199 seats: Ifop projection
Ifop published an updated projected seat breakdown by individual parties.
https://www.france24.com/en/live
I hope these projections are correct.
Can anyone make any sense of the Le Monde map of which party has won which seats? Other than RN sweeping the Mediterranean coast and the far north, and the Left alliance winning in large cities, the map looks chaotic, almost random. Are there any demographic or geographic factors which explain what’s happened?
France no longer resembles a divided but tolerant family. It is catastrophically fractured — Andrew Hussey
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/07/france-elections-far-right
There is a corner of northern France close to Rouen I know reasonably well, having friends there and having visted several times
The wonderfully named ‘Saint-Pierre-des-Fleurs-par-Amfreville-La-Campagne’ 🙂
I’m happy to see the Left Alliance won there
My friends also have a little place in the 2nd arrondissement in Paris, still awaiting the result there
What great news to see while gardening 🙂
Macron’s Ensemble have won Paris’ 2nd arrondissement
Melenchon is going to be a pain for the French left until he retires or dies, given his propensity for weird George Galloway-like views that go beyond traditional left stuff and align with the RN on a few issues.
I don’t envy the rest of the alliance in working out what the heck to do now.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240707-france-votes-in-second-round-of-legislative-election-macron-national-rally-far-right
Live TV coverage of the election in English can be seen here..
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2024/07/07/2024-french-election-results-chart-and-map-of-second-round-winners_6676976_8.html
Actual results:
NFP: 177
Macron coalition: 165
RN: 141
Who will become PM of France?
RN up to 143 seats with 6 left to declare
With 3 seats to declare, LFP alliance + Left Independents =194(181+13)
Macron alliance: 165
RN:143
If Left is invited by Macron to provide PM, will it be Melechon or Hollande?
Does anyone know where to get popular vote totals?
Newcastlw Moderate says:
Monday, July 8, 2024 at 7:26 am
“Can anyone make any sense of the Le Monde map of which party has won which seats? Other than RN sweeping the Mediterranean coast and the far north, and the Left alliance winning in large cities, the map looks chaotic, almost random…”
I can see a pattern. The right (Republicans and RN) dominant in the east with moderates (Macron) and left wing parties dominant in the west.
RN won no seats in Brittany or Normandy for example.
Melenchon is not going to be the PM. The Left will put someone else up or they will accept someone from the centre with a load of concessions.
I said the French people would come together when there was a clear and present danger and I was right.
The New Popular Front is mostly described as Far Left but that is only LFI component. The Ecologists and the Socialist parts are not. The system required them to run together or else they risked a situation where none of their candidates would get up. A bit of consolidation of parties would make sense.
In an age of an existential global climate disaster the centrists and the far right are as much use as tits on a bull. The progressives may be far from perfect but until we come up with a feasible alternative system they’re about as good as we’ve got.
Did the ABC reporter in France deliberately dress similar to Le Pen? Or was it done by accident?
Pied pipersays:
Sunday, July 7, 2024 at 5:32 pm
What is Macron up to?
Canny political operator maybe saw the rise coming of the far right decided to get in early give the public a chance to see how the far right operate in the real world before they get bigger and people will come back to him.
================================================
After reading this thread. It seems Macron was far smarter than many of his critics. He has got a parliament he can work with. Who knows what he would have got if he waited the full term before calling this election?
Newcastle Moderate
French electoral maps usually look like this. The local government ones have many far smaller districts, and then it becomes easier to pick it out the patter: Districts that are mostly rural will go solidly RN, while just about any town of more that a few thousand inhabitants will go left of some sort.
This trend seems to be holding for the Dordogne Valley, but you need to add the RN together with the republicans to see the picture. The urban districts are then either LFI or Macron, which should also be considered as a block. The somewhat random split between the latter is because whoever came third of LFI or Macron withdrew from the race, stopping three cornered contests that may have slowed RN to win.
So in my 10th district of Gironde (centred on Libourne), the Greens candidate withdrew because he came third, behind the Macron candidate who came second. Even though the RN candidate came first in the first round, the Macron person won the second round.
Popular votes are available at the Wikipedia page linked to above. They’re not very useful as the parties competing for individual seats vary in the runoffs, depending on who made it to the runoffs and withdrawals. For what it’s worth, RN and allies won 37.1% in the runoffs, the NFP 25.8% and Ensemble 24.5%.
Rebecca,
There has been discussion around this since the LFI were hastily formed after the election was called.
The block has been pretty clear that Melanchon will not be PM. They were also a bit wary of having Melanchon inside the tent, but given the centre-left PS, and Les ecologistes (The Greens) are also part of the LFI coalition, hopefully Melanchon will be just one voice.