I’m sorry but you really don’t understand French politics. 65% turnout is quite low.
To give you a bit of perspective: right before the polls, 82% of people stated they didn’t want Macron as their president (in other words, more or less the number of people who didn’t cast a vote for him in the first round).
Others have written it already, but it bears repeating : the number of voters is the lowest since 1969, and 12% of them chose to not choose anyone (extraordinarily high). Don’t let yourself be fooled by the displayed numbers: they only give % of valid votes. In other words, he won 58% to 30%. In 2002, despite everyone knowing Chirac was a crook (and quite a large number wanting him to go to prison), he won with more than 80% (taking valid votes into account, that’s over 75%).
In other words, this is anything BUT a landslide victory.
That’s true, but by the same logic, it’s also not as worrying a result given Le Pen % of the total electorate is also a lot smaller. She did better than her father (partly by distancing herself from much of her father’s rhetoric), but by nowhere near as much as many were fearing.
edit: just look at the result by department, le pen only managed to win 2, by small margins, many were predicting big wins in the south and east.
I think the most obvious example of sexism in this election was related to commentary about Macron’s wife (who’s about 20 years older than him). Obviously no-one would bat an eyelid if a male politician had a wife 20 years younger, but the double standard was clearly in evidence when it came to Macron.
A number of us, who seem to be European and thus maybe more familiar with European politics than the US media and possibly you, were trying to explain how we see the background to this election what the evidence on the ground looks like.
We might have been under the impression that just as we were willing to follow, listen and try to understand the current US trauma maybe US Americans might also be interested to listen and hear about what is going on on our little old continent.
But hey ho.
Nobody, absolutely nobody in Europe thinks that LePen lost because she is a woman as @caze has pointed out her male Father had less electoral success than Marine so the only available evidence would actually point to the exact opposite of your argument.
If you want to talk gendered, than maybe we can discuss the wide spread sexism in the French Socialist Party and why Francois Holland and not Ségolène Royal was the president during the past five years.
Because if the Left would be willing to deal with its blatant sexism we might not be here either in France or the UK, but that is a different story.
I wasn’t discussing total turnout, I was talking about the outcome for Macron from those who did vote (the figures are similar, which may have contributed to your misinterpretation of my comment).
In any democracy, a result of 65%+ of total valid votes is generally considered a landslide. The result stated is 65.5% valid and non-blank votes specifically for Macron (even many of them were in reality votes against the neo-fascists), so you’ll have to further clarify how you transform that figure into 58% (and demand corrections from the world’s major media outlets).
Total turnout is a separate issue, and if it was 65% it’s shamefully closer to what we see in the U.S.
I was on a plane from Morocco back to Paris when the result came in. The whole plane cheered when the pilot made the announcement. Good times.
When I first read this I missed “Jr” and I thought, that seems like a pretty sexist reduction of the difference between the two politicians, because Jean-Marie wouldn’t have gotten so much as 10% of the vote. But yeah ok, if she was a different gender things would probably have played differently. On the other hand maybe sexism would have made it harder for a Jean-Marie Jr to distance himself from the elder? I find it hard to say.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it too. The common trope for political cartoons is to dress her up like a Bavarian maid. If she were a he the Nazi imagery would probably be more overt. But if you’re reading Charlie Hebdo or Canard Enchainé, you probably weren’t gonna vote for either anyway.
My honest impression is that at least in France it isn’t, not as much as it is in the States. But that’s my own personal intuition and I don’t know how much I trust it either.
Sort of pretty much. Mélenchon stated very emphatically that he would not vote for Le Pen, and that none of his supporters should vote for Le Pen. It’s just that he also very emphatically refused to state that he was going to vote for Macron, while at the same time making it clear that’s what he was going to do. He literally just refused to say the words. Even when asked point blank, yes or no, are you voting for Macron or what, he would launch into a long prepared statement about how he was absolutely convinced that Le Pen must not be president and that as a democratic citizen he would do everything he could to ensure the right outcome.
And he didn’t exactly tell anyone to abstain, either. He held a poll asking his staff what they were going to do and released the results, more or less a three way split between voting blanche, abstaining, and voting Macron.
Maybe effectively, but please understand that the spike in uncounted votes was people who very much did not want Le Pen president, and who only did what they did based on the feeling that Macron was going to be president anyway. But youth unemployment is at 25%, the El Khomri law is still fresh in the memory and a lot of people didn’t want a pro-business candidate getting any ideas about how popular he was.
I agree with @nojaboja that it’s a risky game. You’d think after Trump and Brexit we’d all be a bit more aware of how such sentiments can be weaponised, although I have a feeling that the sort of political shenanigans that got Brexit and Trump past the post would be harder to pull off in France. There is an independent commission that reviews every opinion poll that is released during the elections, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that polls here have proven to be more accurate than those elsewhere. Ultimately, the sense of security held by those who didn’t vote was not false.
So maybe effectively, you could look at it that while Macron only beat Le Pen two to one, he had a few more begrudging votes up his sleeve.
Don’t get me wrong, I have pretty strong opinions myself, but I have to admit that such extreme labels can be hard to pin on her. The extremist part of her platform pretty much boils down to closing the borders to protect workers and that France is a secular country so she doesn’t agree with public displays of religiousness. It’s a soft touch, and she has done a lot to distance herself from - despite living literally right the fuck next door to - her father. Saying “we need to do something about the terrorists” does not necessarily get you labelled a fascist at the moment either. As far as the police state goes, Macron is proposing to add I forget how many thousands of new officers to the force, so if that was your single issue you probably voted for a fringe candidate like Poutou or Arthaud.
There’s a guy who lives down the road from me, who has written on his tent “I’m not an immigrant, so I don’t get a home.” I have to admit I don’t typically think of the homeless as motivated voters, but the guy has been running a website for ten years. I can’t say I’ve spoken with him but for the sake of argument I’d be willing to suggest that he might have thought about voting for Le Pen. Across the river they’ve set up a kind of emergency processing centre for immigrants, which I think got covered on BB in terms of some rather brutal treatment by police of people sleeping under a bridge nearby. The centre itself is undeniably a good thing, but it does make me sad to think that if you turn up there with French papers, you’ll be turned away.
I’m not trying to defend the sentiment. I hang out sometimes with a holocaust survivor, and even if I hadn’t made my mind up already I’d defer to her. It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Once you decide that some group of people is a problem, every solution will fail and eventually you’ll end up at the final one. But that’s the long view. A guy like Jimmy Barthel (did you see his website though?) probably isn’t thinking that far ahead, he just wants some priority treatment.
I mean, you did ask. Why? That’s why.
I feel like there’s not a single candidate that would have strongly disagreed with this statement. Their own assessments would have varied in strength of language but the status quo doesn’t have many backers, as evidenced by Hollande’s heir Hamon crashing out like he did. Speaking from my own experience at least, cutting back on the bureaucratic maze a little bit wouldn’t hurt in terms of allowing France to better accommodate and integrate newcomers. And that’s as an EU citizen, others can wait years just for the right to work.
So if Macron wants to do reform then maybe it’s worth a go. If nothing else the gulf in clarity of vision between him and Le Pen was striking in the debates, it was fun to watch him run her in circles on her own horribly vague policies. He sounds competent, and these days that’s a fucking good start. It’s starting to look like Central Europe might end up the last bastion of sanity in an increasingly unstable world, so maybe France could do worse than to spend five years getting its affairs in order.
There’s a pretty interesting graphic showing the results by region here:
As an American travelling here I’m finding all the parallels to the American situation interesting. The northeast, which went heavily to Pen, is (as it was explained to me) where the old industry was concentrated, and is now depressed, like the American rust belt. Also, Paris went 90% to Macron. Makes me think that as in America the divide is largely country (Trump) versus city (Clinton), with a bit of a swing in formerly industrialized areas (Trump).
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
You’d think they would have learned from Jewish history of the last 70-80 years right where they live.
I’m sorry, but you completely rejected it out of hand because of your (entirely justified) dislike of Le Pen. I don’t like her or think she was fit to be France’s president, but gender isn’t ever something you can just lay aside because of our personal distaste. Margaret Thatcher also had some rather gendered criticism thrown at her (from her opponents in the party and from her opponents in other parties). Doesn’t make her breaking of unions or her belligerence in the Falklands any more palatable.
As you note with Royal, sexism was indeed at work with regards to her run for the presidency as the Socialist party platform. But it can’t possible be part of the discussion with Le Pen… Yes, the left is sexist. Pretty much anywhere men dwell you’ll get a fair amount of misogyny. It’s an unfortunate side effect of centuries of gendered, sexist, thinking about women’s roles in the world.
And yes, I’m aware that Europe is not “like America.” Very much so. But America is a creole culture which draws on Europe as one of our constituent cultures. As much as we diverge, culturally speaking, we share some similarities, thanks in part of the role of the enlightenment in shaping both European and American political systems.
The thing is, we don’t KNOW that either way, but I’d very much like to think that we can have this discussion with it being immediately rejected out of hand because of Le Pen’s politics.
I don’t know… maybe if guy had brought it up, there wouldn’t have been this knee jerk reaction that I received.
No. It was meant to silence me and any attempt to maybe try and understand women and our role in society. I find this to be happening more and more here. It shows how much me and other women who are outspoken are valued by some members here.
You have made a suggestion that sexism played a role, that a male leader of the FN would have fared better, and that is certainly possible, but it’s not something you’ve provided any evidence for, and to be honest I think it’s more likely (given what’s already been said in this thread), that if anything her gender was more of a help than a hinderance in this election. This isn’t evidence of a lack of sexism in French (or European) society as whole, and I haven’t seen anybody suggesting so, given all the other examples of sexism people (including myself) have previously mentioned, simply that in this instance it probably wasn’t a major factor. If a guy had brought your suggestion up he would be just as required to provide some evidence for his assertion.
More like I was wondering IF it played a role and I was looking for people who had kept a closer eye on the election, maybe lived in or near France, etc, and could provide some evidence one way or another.
Which if that’s how you see things, that’s fine. But I got dogpiled before WE COULD EVEN HAVE THAT CONVERSATION. I was basically told I was ignorant and didn’t know what I was talking about. I didn’t even get to the point of making assertions before you all shut me down. Because these sorts of conversations always make some people deeply uncomfortable.
I think you’re being overly defensive here, if you were just wondering IF it played a role, and then people answered you that they thought it didn’t (along with various reasons why), I wouldn’t call it dogpiling just because there was a consensus. Answering your question isn’t shutting you down. Maybe I’m misreading the tone of people’s replies to you, or maybe you are, but I certainly don’t see anyone being uncomfortable with the suggestion, especially considering everyone was eager to point out other examples of where it had been happening.
The issue isn’t the 24 year age gap, but a teacher having a relationship with their minor student. Had Macron been a woman married to a registered sex offender, that might have been problematic.
Meanwhile, as an American I don’t think we are in a position to accuse Europeans of sexism in elections like this, given their excellent track record here compared to ours.
