Everything
you need to know about the elections in France
Marine
Le Pen tries to hold onto her dominant position in Sunday’s second
round of voting.
By PIERRE BRIANÇON
AND KATE DAY 12/12/15, 4:04 PM CET
The French go to the
polls again Sunday in the second round of regional elections, after
the far-right National Front won the first round December 6. Here is
everything you need to know:
What are the French
voting for on December 13?
Sunday will be the
second round of regional elections where voters will have to choose
councils in 13 regions of Metropolitan France (12 on the mainland
plus Corsica) as well as in overseas territories. That will determine
which of the three major parties — the far-right Front National,
mainstream conservative party Les Républicains, or the Socialist
Party of French president François Hollande — will run each of the
regions.
In the last regional
vote, in 2010, the Socialists snatched all but one of what were then
22 regions. Some regions were amalgamated in January 2015, reducing
the number of regions to 13.
Why do these
elections matter?
This is the last
national vote before France’s next presidential and parliamentary
elections, due in May 2017. The second round Sunday will also take
place just one month after the terror attacks which left 130 dead in
Paris and prompted the government to declare a state of emergency.
The vote also happens against a backdrop of economic crisis, with
French unemployment now higher than the Eurozone average for the
first time since monetary union began.
How does the
electoral system work?
French regional
elections are conducted using proportional representation lists. If
no party gets 50 percent of the vote in the first round, a second
round is held. Any party that took more than 10 percent in the first
round may enter round two. Any party that got at least 5 percent of
the vote in the first round can choose to merge their list with that
of another party.
The winning list
automatically gets allocated a bonus of 25 percent of the seats. The
other seats are distributed proportionally between all remaining
lists that achieved more than 5 percent of the vote.
What were the
results in the first round?
As expected by most
political analysts, in a context of economic crisis and with security
high on voters’ minds, the National Front did remarkably well,
coming ahead nationally with 27.7 percent of the vote. Les
Républicains, the party chaired by former president Nicolas Sarkozy,
was a close second with 26.8 percent. The Socialists received 23.3
percent of the vote.
The Front National
came in ahead in six of the mainland’s twelve regions — the
North, Provence, Alsace, Center, Bourgogne and Languedoc. Les
Républicains led in Normandy, the Loire, the Paris region, and
Auvergne. The Socialists were ahead in Brittany and the Aquitaine
(Bordeaux) region.
In the North,
Provence and Alsace, the three National Front candidates were largely
ahead. Party leader Marine Le Pen polled 40.6 percent in the North,
her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen also got 40.6 percent in Provence,
and her close ally and party vice president Florian Philippot got 36
percent in Alsace. In all three regions, the socialist party came in
at third place and decided to withdraw its lists of candidates before
the second round, calling on its supporters to vote for Sarkozy’s
conservatives.
What do these
elections mean for François Hollande?
President François
Hollande enjoyed a boost in popularity following the November 13
Paris attacks but that did little to help his party in the first
round of regional elections on December 6.
Five years ago,
while in opposition, Hollande’s Socialists swept all but one
region. This time they will be lucky to hold on to three or four.
Hollande remains an
unpopular president who seems unable to find ways to address high
unemployment.
Who is Marine Le
Pen?
Marine Le Pen is the
National Front’s current leader and daughter of the party’s
founder Jean-Marie. She has pulled her party away from the far-right
fringes in recent years, ridding it of its extremist stigma, and
courting the disenfranchised working class she says is being
abandoned by the mainstream political parties of both right and left.
Le Pen has a chance
of winning and then running the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, an area
more populous than 12 EU countries. Her personal victory, winning
more than 40 percent of the popular vote in an industrial area that
was historically a stronghold of the Communist and Socialist parties,
shows how many voters have drifted away from the ruling left, after
seven years of economic crisis.
Le Pen’s niece,
Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, who is seen as more conservative than her
aunt, notably on social issues, received almost the same proportion
of votes (40.6 percent) in her region as her aunt in the North.
What about Nicolas
Sarkozy?
Sarkozy once
described himself as the “only barrier” against the rise of the
National Front. That barrier is looking pretty shaky after Sarkozy’s
Les Républicains came second to Marine Le Pen’s National Front in
the first round.
Some analysts
believe that voters looking to stop the National Front could rally
around Hollande’s Socialists and Sarkozy’s party could lose
everywhere. That would pose serious problems for the former
president, just 18 months before a presidential election.
When we will know
the result?
The last polls close
at 8 p.m. and the first exit polls, which are usually reliable, will
be published right then. Follow all our coverage here.
Authors:
Pierre Briançon
and Kate Day
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