|
Post by bjd on Feb 21, 2022 8:42:36 GMT
So do I. I was just thinking about that the other day. If nobody could hide behind the anonymity of social media, there wouldn't be all those death threats, insults and vicious hateful ideas aimed at anyone the author disagrees with. Mob scenes are already bad enough, but keyboard or cellphone warriors are the worst. It takes more courage and intelligence to discuss face to face than to "like" stupid opinions spouted by morons.
I do find it scary that France has moved to the right to the extent that there are two and a half far right candidates (Pecresse is obviously trying to grab some voters to boost her score) and essentially nobody on the left except a few people polling in low single digits. I feel that voting Green would be throwing my vote away.
Fumobici -- I think a lot of Canadians are also surprised at the nutcases in the truck convoys. One woman I saw interviewed on the street in Ottawa said she felt it wasn't Canada. "I feel like we are in the States."
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Feb 21, 2022 18:56:56 GMT
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Mar 7, 2022 11:13:09 GMT
Macron goes above 30pc of vote intentions, whilst the big contestants are around 15 pc, their position being unclear on Ukraine or too clear on migrants, which for Zemmour includes refugees... and Oecresse steadily loses a few pc per day.
Which would nean that 75pc of the French are now on the right.
On the left Melenchon gets above 10pc, not bad for a man who spent all his life working all the ropes of politics and declaring himself antisystem, and having do e nothing.
The rest of the left simply doesn't blip on the radar anymore. Ecolo has 5pc, Hidalgo 2pc, Aubey and Taubira are not mentioned anymore.
But we all know pronostics are not actual votes.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 7, 2022 12:24:45 GMT
The election authorities announced today that 12 candidates have been qualified for the election.
The list was published in random order.
Nathalie Arthaud (LO), Fabien Roussel (PCF), Emmanuel Macron (LREM), Jean Lassalle (Résistons!), Marine Le Pen (RN), Eric Zemmour (Reconquête!), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Anne Hidalgo (PS), Yannick Jadot (écologiste), Valérie Pécresse (LR), Philippe Poutou (NPA) and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (DLF).
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 20, 2022 18:33:58 GMT
The only analysis that I will provide at the moment for the latest presidential poll is that a time of crisis tends to help the incumbent.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Mar 20, 2022 19:01:56 GMT
Given the competition, it's not surprising that Macron is in front. Pecresse seems to have lost steam when she moved to the right, the two far right are beyond the pale, especially Zemmour, and the left has completely fallen apart.
It's sad the the Green candidate is not doing well, given how important a subject climate change is.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Mar 21, 2022 9:43:23 GMT
I fully agree with you Bjd. Except for the Greens, at least if the french greens are ayatollahs like the belgian ones. Read about Tinne (vandersraeTen ?) Green belgian minister and her obsession to stop nuclear. Then read about the greens manage Bruxelles city. If hhey ever get reelected, there us a lit i don't understand.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Mar 26, 2022 19:35:03 GMT
Just two weeks until the first round of the presidential election. One of the best things this time is that the campaign has been mostly unnoticed because of Covid and Ukraine. I have made a point of avoiding the (rare) debates and such, so I am not even exhausted by it all this time. Everything will be more intense for the second round, but the choice will be completely clear then.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 6, 2022 5:36:27 GMT
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Apr 6, 2022 6:21:31 GMT
That visual lays it out nicely to make the field of candidates easier to understand.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 6, 2022 6:56:16 GMT
I keep reading that Marine le Pen is rising in popularity and closing in on Macron. I keep hoping for a reaction of the public like in 2002 when there was a huge turnout to keep her father out of the presidency after he unexpectedly made it into the second round. But with three candidates on the far right, and one spouting the same stuff to get votes, it seems as though the country has really moved to the right in the past 20 years.
Macron's biggest problem seems to be all those people intending not to vote for whatever reason: apathy, dislike of Macron, their favoured candidate not making it, the complete hopelessness of any potential winner on the left...
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Apr 6, 2022 7:59:34 GMT
Chirac won with a good 80pc against Le Pen, who at the time was depicted as a Nazi.
Now Marine did a good job of making one feel at ease to say they vote for Nazi ideas.
So the pills give a 53 - 47 victory of Macron in second turn. Like Hilary against Trump...
But strangely FN never get big wins in legislatives or 'communales'.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Apr 6, 2022 8:01:40 GMT
I meet a lot if people in SE France who are very decomplexed and tell me they will vote le pen.. 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤬🤬🤬🤬🖕🖕🖕🖕
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 6, 2022 9:00:25 GMT
I meet a lot if people in SE France who are very decomplexed and tell me they will vote le pen.. 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮🤬🤬🤬🤬🖕🖕🖕🖕 That's one reason a lot of people I have met don't like the PACA area.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2022 3:11:17 GMT
The final polls are the thing of which election surprises are made. (The poll at #784 updates automatically.)
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 9, 2022 6:24:38 GMT
Polling and campaigning have stopped but I am getting more and more worried about Le Pen's popularity. She has toned down her right-wing discourse and moderated her image thanks to Zemmour, but basically she is still the same: a right-wing, wealthy populist whose party has been incompetent in running any municipalities they have ever managed to capture in elections.
And if Melanchon and others on the left tell their supporters to sit out the second round, then she has a bigger pool of potential support against Macron. Assuming, of course, that the 2nd round is Macron vs Le Pen.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Apr 9, 2022 15:02:30 GMT
Do French people follow the right-wingers because of their rhetoric, or does France have the same kind of relentlessly conservative propaganda news outlets similar to Fox news in the US? I guess that's an &/or question, but you all will get my drift. I fall into despair at the outright lies promoted and believed in the US, partly because of the incessant stream of lies spewing from the bad elements in mainstream tv. Of course I follow this thread because the outcome of the French election is globally important. But there is always the frustration of knowing I have insufficient background to truly understand the issues in France, not to mention that what I get fed from the "good" mainstream US press can't tell the whole picture and certainly slants it to an obnoxious degree. Today's NYTimes, for instance, has an article on Mexico's president, presented in its usual slanted, prissy, disapproving style when writing about him. It also has an article about Macron's boosting of the French economy by promoting start-ups, particularly in the tech sector. The article does not adhere to good pure journalism, as it is full of loaded words and sly semi-putdowns. Nevertheless, I read it out of a desire to learn. ‘La French Tech’ Arrives Under Macron, but Proves No Panacea
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 9, 2022 15:43:22 GMT
Obviously volumes could (and will) be written about French politics, but I will try to give the most simplistic vision of the current situation: for the most part, the educated middle and upper classes feel that things are going in the right direction while the lower classes living from paycheck to paycheck feel that they are being totally left behind and ignored. This is in great part Macron's fault, because even if he has been trying to improve things for everybody (not everybody will agree), he mostly only talks to people at his own level and often has had a poor choice of words for less favoured classes.
This is pure gold for the fake news specialists, and even when there are statistics absolutely proving that personal taxes have gone down and that the standard of living has improved, it is not believed. The right wing additionally claims that "unbridled" immigration is having a horrible effect on social programmes, not to mention the crime rate. The fact that immigrants contribute far more to the economy than the costs engendered and that the vast majority of criminals remain French is totally disbelieved by too many people. And that's before the Islamic factor gets mixed in.
Macron is an excellent communicator -- especially internationally -- but not so good domestically due to the yellow vest movement or even Ukraine, which prevented him from campaigning normally. (Brexit and Trump also kept him busy.)
In the two weeks before the final round of the election, I expect that he will go into high gear and will likely pull through.
If that does not happen, France will not morally collapse. For one thing, the right wing (even the far right wing) is not nearly as conservative as in many countries. Abortion rights, women's rights, gay rights, ecology, things like that, are not threatened by anyone. The right wing is concentrated on immigration and no-good do-nothing citizens sucking up the taxpayers' money, or so they would have us believe.
And on top of that, it is almost impossible that any of them would not find themselves in a minority government after the legislative elections in June. That could also happen to Macron.
So whatever happens, it should be interesting.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Apr 9, 2022 19:31:11 GMT
I globally concurr to what Kerouac says. Not (only) because i like him, but it confirms my perceptions.
In SE, and even among friends from work, a lot of people are fed up with 'normal' politicians. The usual blablah : they don't change anything, they cost money etc, time for a change. When you say 'yes, but change for imcompetent racist far right bastards', some people keep andwering 'let us give them a chance and we will see'. I then either change subject or say 'like Hitler in 33'...
On top of that a LOT of people don't like Macron. He is seen by people as a homosexual (with a liaison with the guy whose name us a bit like Nabilla and was convicted of playing cop), child looking, etc. Plus his debuts when he was omnipresent and nicknamed 'Jupiter'. Plus he comes from finance - and that stinks when you are broke... Plus he wears suits.
When you look at candidates, Zemmour, Melenchon, Le Pen are populists and make together half of the voting intentions.
Not unlike US with Trump, so i can't really boast that we are smarter in Europe. Our only chance is that we are not binary so we have a lot of candidates and it dilutes stupidity.
Let us hope the leftists vote massively for Macron in second turn, albeit he is not really leftist, not even centrist. But imo we need economists, not socialists anymore. All the social fights have been fought.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Apr 9, 2022 23:29:05 GMT
That is an excellent and very understandable overview of France's current political climate and helps a great deal in following this election and attendant stories.
The comment about Mondale mostly talking to people on his own level & not having a good choice of words for people lower down the economic ladder confused me a little. Is that in the sense that he talks over their heads?
Much about him reminds me of Walter Mondale, whose desire to completely and clearly answer newspersons' questions meant that he often had people staring at him blankly. "Give us a meaningless soundbite, Walter, not the boring facts!"
Sad to hear that there is the usual pandering to disgruntlement & ignorance by right-wingers with their own agendas. Good to hear, though, that France is not on track to be full-bore Gideon, as is happening in the US.
I like Whatagain's comment that: "Our only chance is that we are not binary so we have a lot of candidates and it dilutes stupidity."
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 10, 2022 7:51:34 GMT
We went to vote this morning at 8:30. So much for abstention! There were already lots of people -- unless of course they were planning to take advantage of the nice weather and go to the beach later on.
One of the reasons I liked Macron 5 years ago is that he sounded smart when he talked about the various issues. It seems that is a drawback in popular politics and the general public prefers "meaningless soundbites".
I was also wondering yesterday why anybody should pay attention to somebody like Christiane Taubira -- a former Socialist Minister of Justice, who was a candidate for this election for a short while -- saying that she would vote for Melanchon. So what? Who cares who she votes for? Voting for Melanchon only dilutes votes that would block the far right. All these candidates who don't make it into the second round feel they have to tell their voters who to support (or not) in the second round really bothers me. Especially people like Melanchon who tells his fans to abstain. Then what? We end up with Le Pen.
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Apr 10, 2022 9:48:59 GMT
I find that graph in post 784 is interesting to occasionally check to see how it fluctuates.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2022 10:15:33 GMT
Well, it won't move anymore.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2022 10:36:35 GMT
Here is the very last disturbing compilation of polls which I had to clip and scan because the newspaper site was behing a paywall.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 10, 2022 11:04:51 GMT
How far the Socialist Party has fallen! I wonder if any candidate other than Anne Hidalgo would have done better.
|
|
|
Post by biddy on Apr 10, 2022 14:03:26 GMT
Believe me we are all watching to see the v results today.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2022 17:33:44 GMT
The Belgian and Swiss news sites are announcing a tie. (They of course do not have the same restrictions as the French sites.)
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Apr 10, 2022 18:10:52 GMT
Macron:28.1% Le Pen:23.3%
Terrible showing for the Socialists with 2.1% and HIdalgo has called on her supporters to vote Macron next time. At least Zemmour got only 7% but I guess his voters will go to Le Pen in round 2. The Greens got only 4.4%. Melanchon got 20%.
|
|
|
Post by kerouac2 on Apr 10, 2022 20:40:55 GMT
Rendezvous in 2 weeks.
|
|
|
Post by whatagain on Apr 10, 2022 21:34:27 GMT
In 2017 52% of those who voted Melenchon on first round voted Macron on second, whereas only 7% voted Le Pen, the rest abstaining.
So it would mean Macron = 28 + 10 (Mel) + 2 +1 Le Pen = 23 + 1.5 (Mel) + 7 (Zemmour) + 1
I cannot imagine the other leftists voting Le Pen, so let us take 2% for Macron, 0 for Le Pen and Pecresse 2.5% for Macron, 1% for Le Pen.
The rest abstains. Means : 41 vs 33. On 74 so Macron gets 60% of the votes on second turn.
|
|