I will admit that I stole (no, borrowed) this title from Josep Colomer. I have been meaning to post for some time on the French presidential election campaign. The first round of this two-round majority contest is on 22 April.
The main contenders are Nicolas Sarkozy of the incumbent conservative bloc, Ségolène Royal of the Socialist party, and François Bayrou of the Union for French Democracy. And, of course, there is Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National and a series of other candidates–twelve in total.
In 2002, France experienced something of a debacle with its majority-runoff system and the failure of the left to consolidate sufficiently as to place its leading candidate, Lionel Jospin, into the runoff. With the left badly split, Le Pen passed Jospin for second place, setting up a runoff between right and more right–and a national embarrassment in the process.
In 2007, there is little risk that Le Pen will play in the second round, but there is a different dilemma on the left. Polls suggest that Royal will not defeat Sarkozy, but Bayrou would. However, he may not make it to the runoff, as he is running a close third behind Sarkozy (who has been fairly consistent in the 27-31% range recently) and Royal (slipping recently to below 25%). Bayrou is essentially tied with Royal in the low-to-mid twenties.
For instance, this poll seems fairly typical of recent samplings that have asked about the possible runoff pairings:
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Sarkozy beats Royal, 54-46
Bayrou beats Sarkozy, 54-46
Bayrou beats Royal, 60-40
In each pairing, 17-18% say that they would not vote in the runoff.
(Le Pen is polling around 12% for the first round and 46% of his supporters favor Sarkozy in the runoff.)
So, Bayrou looks like a clear Condorcet winner (the candidate who would beat any other in a head-to-head race). But if he can’t place first or second in the initial round of voting, he will never get to prove it. And Sarkozy, apparently, will be France’s next president.
Should leftist voters vote strategically for Bayrou, in order to stop Sarkozy? Or vote for their candidate and hope for the best? This will be one to keep an eye on.
As I have noted in the past, I am not of the view that a presidential-selection method necessarily must ensure the election of a Condorcet winner (when one exists). However, that view stems from the recognition that the potential Condorcet winner is often one with limited first-preference support. As long as a method prevents the election of a Condorcet loser (as two-round majority does), I prefer a method that ensures that the winner has significant first preferences over one that ensures a Condorcet winner.
This French race is different: The Condorcet winner, Bayrou, has support not much less than the other two (assuming he does, in fact, come in third place). This is a race in which it is possible that a different method of determining the majority could produce the more broadly supported candidate from the three leaders. A one-round ranked-choice ballot with sequential elimination (IRV or Alternative Vote) might allow Bayrou to pick up support from other defeated contenders and survive in the counts long enough to emerge as the winner. There is, of course, no guarantee that this would happen: the transferred votes of the more extreme parties might simply boost both Royal and Sarkozy in the later counts, and leave Sarkozy as the winner, with Bayrou falling further behind. The outcome would depend on the fuller preference profiles of voters, which I doubt any polling sample has recorded.
If the French left suffers from the vagaries of majority runoff twice in as many elections, I wonder if we will see an IRV movement in France. (I wonder if one exists now. Anyone?)
I’m sure you realize that the 2002 election didn’t upset so many people because the Condorcet winner lost. Rather it was a combination of what Le Pen’s popularity said about the values of the French people, and the fact that a large proportion of voters felt completely unrepresented in the second round.
Regardless of which two of the top three make it to the second round this time, there will still be a genuine contest between popular candidates. And although many will not be able to vote for their first choice in the run-off, I don’t think there will be all that many who will feel alienated by the available choices. So I don’t expect a strong desire towards changing voting systems.
I think it might be interesting to see what Bayrou does after the first round, presuming he is eliminated. Usually I’d expect a first round loser to try to “sell” their support, but Bayrou doesn’t seem the type–especially because his support might not last long if he gets in bed with one of the dominant parties.
Slightly off-topic, the only place I know of that uses Condorcet voting is the Debian project, a distribution of the Linux operating system. The fact that they’ve had particularly awful organization and leadership may or may not reflect on Condorcet voting in general, but it’s certainly soured me on the idea.
(Note that I have a lot of respect for Debian, and often use their tools–I’m not trying to disparage the project by mentioning their problems.)
Seed planted by Vasi — 16 April 2007 @ 12:19
I recall the coverage of the 2002 election at the time indeed was often about what LePen’s showing said about the values of the French people. But, of course, it was really–as I noted in the main planting—about the failure of the left to coordinate (thereby resulting in that roughly half of the electorate’s being unrepresented in the runoff). Le Pen had won 15% in 1995; his increase to 16.9% in 2002 would have been pretty trivial, by itself, as an indicator of French values had the left not been so fragmented. Even so, Jospin (the Socialist) barely missed a place in the runoff, winning 16.2% of the first-round votes.
Seed planted by MSS — 16 April 2007 @ 12:58
Was Jospin the Condorcet winner in 2002? Maybe, but doubtful. A month later, the left did poorly in National Assembly elections, winning only around 30% of the votes.
If swing voters who had voted for Chirac only to send a message that “middle France” rejects LePen had really wanted the left in power, they could have reelected the then-majority in parliament and retained the cohabitation that had been in place since 2002. But instead they–with the help of the electoral system–gave a huge majority to the Union for a Presidential Majority.
Seed planted by MSS — 16 April 2007 @ 15:44
Even if I think of myself as a poor poll analyst, I would just like to add something to the last post. Well, maybe to all of them and especially about 2002.
We – we french people, who have grown as the “génération Mitterrand” and are in our 25-35 now – have been strongly educated to consider that Le Pen was even worse than a narrow-minded-revisionnist-neo-fascist (which could seem enough to diabolize anyone; but in politics you always need a scapegoat).
So the result of the first round in 2002 came more as a shock than you can imagine: try to figure that Hitler has been elected AFTER you know about the Shoah (I know it seems a bit extreme, but even centrist and calm people were ready to take again the Bastille or make a new Commune after the first round and there have been millions of people manifesting in all France between the two rounds).
Le Pen in 2002 was the result, not only of the fragmentation of the left; but also of a presidential campaing strongly focused on security – which was, along with immigration and protectionnism – a major theme of Le Pen since the 70′. The left did not take position on this subject; add to this the French inclination to protest (and unuseful) vote and you get the result of the first round of 2002.
So yes, Chirac get a second roung vote high enough to make him compete with any African president because of the French rejecting Le Pen.
And for the legislatives, the Left has been punished to have been too weak durign the presidential campaign (just the resignation of Jospin the very nigth of the first round was hard to swallow for all leftish people- and had he been leading the campaign for the legislatives, the result may have been different)
But, of course, as French people often seem to vote for the reasons they forget the time before; leftish people were so pissed to have been “forced” to vote Chirac that they voted “no” the next important election, which was the European Constitution referendum.
Matter-of-factly, they- we, France, voted “no” to Europe because we had almost voted “yes” to nationalist ideas four years before.
One last fact about this week election: in all polls, the percentage of floating voters is about 30%. Which leaves a great margin for any surprise on sunday.
Seed planted by Kass — 17 April 2007 @ 13:55
Don’t count out Royal just yet
The third candidate, François “Condorcet” Bayrou, has now fallen well behind Sarkozy and Royal
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 19 April 2007 @ 19:22
French Gear Up for Presidential Elections
It will be interesting to see if supporters of the eight non-contenders defect and make a strategic choice to support the second most favored candidate in the first round.
Scion grafted by PoliBlog — 20 April 2007 @ 09:55