• Flying SquidM
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    1565 months ago

    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.

      • Flying SquidM
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        5 months ago

        I definitely wouldn’t extrapolate anything about the rest of the world from this. I just remember “Le Pen is going to be the next president of France” being said more than once in my lifetime.

        • NegativeNull
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          545 months ago

          Conservatives just lost the UK in a big way. France on course to do the same (not to the same extent). Tons of money (and Russian manipulation) are pushing hard for far-right politics, but they keep losing. Remember, abortion has won every time it’s on the ballot since Roe was overturned. I’m still cautiously optimistic about the US’s chances

          • Billiam
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            315 months ago

            While I agree with you in general, it’s the electoral college that’s a uniquely American fuckery I worry about. France and the UK don’t have to worry about the majority vote being the losers.

            • @[email protected]
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              215 months ago

              There are so many levels of fuckery in the American system. It goes all the way up to just asking the supreme court (who you appointed) to please let you win.

          • Flying SquidM
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            225 months ago

            You are more optimistic than I am, but I hope you’re right. At this point, my hope is that at least Democrats will retain the congressional power to do something about a Trump regime I am seeing as an increasing inevitability.

            • NegativeNull
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              155 months ago

              Don’t get me wrong, I’m still terrified, but I think the chances are better than the media is portraying currently.

              • froggers
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                165 months ago

                Don’t forget that the media’s main goal is profit. How can they make sure to make more and more profit? By constantly showing you stuff that keeps you in fear and in turn makes you want to know everything that’s happening. The only way to know the current events? Watch our media segments, read our newspaper, read our website etc. (also see 24/7 news cycle)

        • mad_asshatter
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          85 months ago

          “The French are socialist cowards who don’t know shit but actually get off their asses to protest…”

          – 'Muricans

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      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).

      • froggers
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        365 months ago

        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.

      • Zos_Kia
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        55 months ago

        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.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        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.

    • @[email protected]
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      35 months ago

      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.