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#17 | Posted by donnerboy at 2024-07-08 11:23 AM
The polls all leaned toward a right wing landslide. Guess what? All the polls were wrong. Again.
Not really. The pre-election polls were actually quite correct, before the creation of New Popular Front (NPF/NFP), an alliance of far-left parties, Greens and organized labor (radical-left La France Insoumise, Communist Party, Socialist Party, Ecologists, Generation.s, Place Publique, and other left-wing parties) into one party bloc on June 10 2024, just weeks before first round of elections, specifically to outvote the Le Pen's National Rally.
According to those pre-first-round polls, NR was going to (and did) get the most seats they've ever taken and possibly beat the fractured center-left but not enough for majority, which proved entirely correct. IOW, there was never a chance for NR to actually govern. Bur the fear of NR "winning" pushed voters to abandon center (for now) and move to extremes, particularly extreme left - also not nearly enough to govern. Like many recent elections, it was not a vote "for" the left to govern, it was a "Non" vote against the far-right.
This was the estimated poll before the second round, and it was spot on:
French Left Win Big; Right Comes in Third
Also not really what happened. NR did come in third, but NPF didn't "win big" - the bloc and two major parties each got less than a third of National Assembly seats, far less than the majority required (289 seats) and none of them has any chance of forming a majority coalition, though NR can form a larger plurality coalition with center-right Republicans... which is unlikely.
It's a mess, but that's how some parliamentary systems work... or don't. Belgium was without elected government for almost 22 months in 2020, which beat their own record of almost 20 months in 2011.
Oh, Les Miserables!
People are simply "flipping" governments because they are unhappy with weakening economies, deficits, loss of purchasing power and still-stubborn inflation (even though inflation rates everywhere came down recently, with both government and consumer debt are sky-high) and they are giving "other guys" and their promised "new/old solutions" a chance - "hope and change / change and hope" at least until the next elections, if "things don't work out" or the business cycle doesn't cooperate.
That's exactly what happened in UK, just 2 years after Labour was wiped out in a "ruling party" system. UK's unemployment rate is highest in 2 years, though inflation came down significantly. Labour won huge seats majority... but with the lowest percentage ever, and on the "platform" of a promise they can't possibly deliver:
Britain's Labour pulled off a thumping election victory with just 34% of the national vote
* Labour won just 34% of the national vote, while Tories secured nearly 24%
* Smaller parties including the centrist Liberal Democrats, right-wing Reform U.K. and the Greens took nearly 43% of the popular vote but gained just less than 18% of the seats
Not exactly a major turn there either, just "flipping" currently least popular party.
Fortunately, ours is a system of "checks and balances" that allows for shared "constrained" federal government, though in recent decades Presidents and executive branch have been taking (or given, by courts and Congress, deliberately or through vague legislations) more and more power - "Stroke of the pen - law of the land."
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