The Leftwing Coalition of Communists, Socialists, and Islamists Wins the Most Seats in the French Parliament, with the National Rally Coming In Third

I very erroneously told you that France's runoff system works like other runoff systems -- top two vote-getters proceed to the second round.

That's not how it works. The first round only eliminates the worst-performing candidates. Anyone who gets 12.5% of the vote advances to the next round.

This means that in many precincts, there might be three or even four candidates in the runoff.

That looked good for National Rally, who has a plurality of support but not majority support in many jurisdictions. The split vote of anti-NR forces would work to NR's advantage.

However, before the vote, the France's leftwing and Macron's allegedly "centrist" party began making deals, arranging for candidates to withdraw from the race. In one jurisdiction, the leftwing coalition called "New Popular Front" would drop out, thus leaving the candidate from Macron's party, Ensemble!, as the only opponent to the NR candidate. In other jurisdictions, the Ensemble! candidate would drop out, leaving the National Popular Front candidate alone to face National Rally.

The net result is that while National Rally gained a lot of seats, they didn't gain anything close to a majority. In fact, they came out the third-biggest party, after the communist/socialist alliance of New Popular Front and the "centrist" Ensemble!

And now the alleged "technocrat moderate centrist" Macron is forming a coalition with the leftwing extremists he pretended to oppose.

Just great news for the French.

On Sunday night, joy: French voters had, once again, kept the far right out of power.

On Monday morning, uncertainty: A hung parliament, shaky alliances and the threat of turbulent years ahead.

President Emmanuel Macron called France's snap parliamentary election to "clarify" the political situation. But after the shock second-round results, the waters are more muddied than they have been in decades.

While a surge in support for the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition foiled Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) party, French politics is now more disordered than it was before the vote.

Note that Le Pen's party won a plurality of the vote -- more votes than any other party.

However, thanks to deal-making and tactical voting, her party won only the third-most seats.

Note that the formerly dominant "center-right" party, which had previously been the largest right-leaning party, only got 5% of the vote.

May the British Tories go the same way.

After the National Rally "won" the first round of voting, the left rioted.

Now, after National Rally is blocked from winning the Assembly, do the "far right extremists" now riot?

Nope! The non-extremist alliance of communists and Islamists rioted again!

They riot when they lose, they riot when they win.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 01:20 PM

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