Quote:
Originally Posted by BABARtheELEPHANT
There is some overlap between Le Pen and Macron's voting pool. Think of the "**** everything PS / UMP" crowd that just wants to give the middle finger to the usual suspects but does not share any of the immigration hate from the Front National. Yeah, it's probably not as many people from the Fillon's clan that are possibly tempted to vote Macron but it's nothing to laugh at.
I just don't know if I can believe that these voters exist to any great extent. I accept that the characterisation seems like it makes sense, though, and one thing I definitely don't understand in French politics is the wider political background of where voters for each party come from, and so where they're likely to move.
My impression is that the majority of Macron's voters are traditional centrists, the right of the PS and those who think liberal business orientated economics are the way forward (whose constituencies overlap, certainly). And that Le Pen's support is mostly the traditional right vote, which is now orientated around the FN after her having reduced the stigma of supporting it. Put like that it seems two distinct communities (liberal economics isn't the FN's bag at all), but obv political coalitions are never this simple in reality.
I may just be importing prejudices from UK and US politics, though, and not appreciating the novelty of Le Pen's support this time round.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joejoe1337
I also think that it's slightly lazy reasoning to assume that everyone will gather around to stop Le Pen in the second round.
Whilst I agree this shouldn't be counted as automatic, it's not lazy thinking - it's based on exactly this happening every time recently that the FN does well in a first round. It happened in the regional elections in 2015 - although there were examples of PS in some regions flirting with refusing to play ball. You can see it in the election results here:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89...15#Second_tour
For the 'republican' left and right there's a decent correlation between share of vote and seats won, for the FN there's a discrepancy (many fewer seats). The voters for the left and right do seem to be able to effectively collaborate to some extent to maximise their effect. Also the non FN increased their votes by 25% in the second round, whilst the FN got out 13% more. The anti FN effect from 1st to 2nd round seems demonstratively real, but certainly not worth being complacent about.