In the last day of campaigning for the first round Macron

[Suff]

Sounds like they will vote for him in the second round then; and then spend the next five years complaining about him.

Exactly what I tell my friends. You need to vote FOR someone, not AGAINST Le Pen. Otherwise you are always going to be disappointed.

It is perpetuated by the way they view the two rounds. They view the first round as a "vote of the heart" and the second round as a "vote of the head". If they viewed the first round as a statistical probability of getting your preferred workable candidate to the second round; then there would be a lot less backbiting and a lot more solid Presidents.

[Workingman]

Nor that even though France has a Moslem population of 11m, out of 60m, they are not the majority or even near.

Not so. France has a population of 65 million and a Muslim population of about 6 million.

Marine Le Pen is the French female equivalent of Nigel Farage - a political opportunist lacking morals.

She was a hard-line member of FN since 1986 but seeing how the wind was blowing she changed the party name from National Front to National Rally to soften its image "de-demonisation" but a leopard does not change its spots. She and her party are still anti-immigrations, nationalist and protectionist.

If she was the only name on the ballot my vote would be NOTA.

[Suff]

OK I was out by a bit.

I used the US number, should check instead of assuming I remember. 60m or 65m is not a big difference.

As for she's nasty and the party is nasty and they are anti semite's and and and and.

From the wiki page on MLP.

From 2009 until 2019, she was in a relationship with Louis Aliot, who is of ethnic French Pied-Noir and Algerian Jewish heritage.[35] He was the National Front general secretary from 2005 to 2010, then the National Front vice president.

Yep the worst kind of anti semite party and their policies are just terrible.

Lots of sound bites and not a lot of reality or substance. There is a long, long, loooong way between being right of the spectrum and being tantamount to Hitler's successor. In fact, with this last campaign people go to see "real" far right with Éric Zemmour and had to reassess who MLP is and what she has done with the party.

Just like Farage, who at his core simply wanted Britain to be governed by the British, Le Pen is someone who wants France to be French. Something virtually all French are rabid about. The most interesting thing about the whole French political system is that the Woke lot are making a whole song and dance about how the French must become Less, well, French and push MLP away.

In the French system it is much like the US system. The President does have power, but the parliament has overall control. For the French it is quite possible to vote in MLP for President to give a short sharp shock and then deny her a government to drive her agenda. Much as happened to Trump.

The most interesting thing about this election is the motivation of the 18-24 group for RN. For a long time FN and RN were supported by older people who remembered a time of more Glory for France and more independence. It was expected that they could be ignored for long enough and their base of support would die off. Now with young people listening to the message and getting on board, that can no longer be said. The risk that a RN leader may make president has gone up, not down. Hence Macron's rather ill mannered rhetoric.

[cromwell]

The French electoral system doesn't seem to be that popular with a lot of French people.
I was struck by one article I read the other day.
The run off will be between Macron and Le Pen. One woman, a working class socialist from the south of France, was really upset because once again she had no one to vote for.
Either Macron, who is widely referred to as "the President of the rich" or Le Pen, widely portrayed as a Fascist. So this woman will not be voting and I suspect there will be a lot like her.
In the first round of voting the votes of the candidates portrayed as extremists (Le Pen, Melenchon, Zemmour) came to 52% of the total.
But the way the system is set up means that Macron, who less than 28% voted for in the first round, will almost certainly become President.
It seems like a system specifically designed to shut out the unwanted.

[Workingman]

At least the French get to vote for their Head of State and, eventually, it will be someone with 50.1% of the vote - a majority. We don't get that, we get the unelected Monarch.

We also get a PM who is the "leader" of the major party and that is by the whim of its members - a vast minority of society, of whichever party.

Neither system is perfect and both cut out the majority / unwanted.

[Suff]

Yes well, their system means that the two candidates who go through have the run off.

But if people actually thought about the first round a bit, perhaps different candidates would go through.

Macron didn't "win" 9ver 60% of the vote last time, at least 30% voted "against" Le Pen because that was all the choice they had.

In China the communist party "wins" 100% of the cast vote, every time.

[Workingman]

2017 French Presidential Election:

Macron 66.10%. Le Pen 33.90%.

Spin it how you want but Macron still beat your sweetheart.

[Suff]

In round 2 the French have 3 options vote for someone you want, vote against someone you do not want, don't vote.

This time record numbers are choosing option 3.

Is that democracy and choice? Because the French don't seem to think so.

[Workingman]

To not vote is wrong, with that I agree. It is why I have long argued that None Of The Above (NOTA) should be an option on the ballot paper, and those votes should be counted. If NOTA "wins" then the election for that seat should be run again with new candidates.

Difficult with French presidential elections, yes, but not so much with our FPTP general and local elections. It might help in getting rid of "parachutists" and those selected due to some party's diversity quota.

[Suff]

In that scenario I agree, if NOTA can force a reselection of candidates, then an election run off, it might work. That being said, the whole point about the election is that nobody knows how everyone else votes until it is over. Forcing a NOTA re-run would be done with full knowledge of the election overall and would then become more of a by election where other issues come into play.

But I'd still support it. It is more democratic that way as votes are not lost due to a lack of faith in the offered candidates.