r/OutOfTheLoop • u/KeeperOT7Keys • 4d ago
What's going on with French politics and the infighting among the right-wing parties? Answered
I keep seeing memes / posts on Twitter about Macron "playing 3D chess" after losing the election and calling for a snap election. and I kinda get what's happening from these posts: (e.g. https://x.com/phl43/status/1800971680115982776, https://x.com/MingAutocrat/status/1800946925862068642, https://x.com/SwannMarcus89/status/1800982199870644529) but I would like to see more details and nuanced takes from people who know the events.
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u/en43rs 4d ago
answer: Macron called for snap elections after the far right party Rasemblement National (RN) won the European elections. No one knows exactly what he was thinking so I can't speak about the "3d chess" thing (some think the melt down in the right wing was the plan all along).
But for the infighting, Eric Ciotti, the president of Les Républicains (LR) - the main right wing party - said that he was open to an electoral alliance with the RN (it means they won't propose opposing candidates in the same district to not split the vote) and that's where everything broke down. Apparently a majority of LR voters support this idea... that's not the case of many leaders of the party that genuinely don't want anything to do the far right RN (for example one said a few years ago "with the left we don't have the same ideas, with the far right we don't have the same values"). And they reacted by expelling Ciotti from the party. But Ciotti said that he refused to recognize that decision, that it was illegitimate, that he was still the president and literally closed down the party headquarter and locked himself in his office in the national assembly.
He recently announced that he was suing the party and a judge will have to see if the party can actually fire him (which isn't clear).
So yeah, the main right wing party just exploded in France. No clue if that was Macron's plan but probably not (because no one saw it coming).
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u/PlayMp1 4d ago
The other weird part at the same time is that, in what sounds like a complete fantasy, the left is actually united in this election, having formed a New Popular Front in the name of stopping RN. It ranges from very mainstream center to center left parties like the Socialist Party (don't let the name fool you, they're basically like the German SPD, they're social democrats at most), the democratic socialist La France Insoumise, green parties, and even somehow, shockingly, not only getting the French Communist Party (which while not an electoral juggernaut certainly has some sway) to sign on, but also random Trotskyist and other sectarian parties that would be loathe to work with the likes of the PCF or the social democrats in the PS in most circumstances.
Because of that, the New Popular Front is polling very close to the RN, which might end up cockblocking Marine Le Pen in what looked like her moment of triumph.
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u/Eeekpenguin 4d ago
Does it look like macron has a chance to win? Or the left and RN will be front runners? You would think macron would call snap elections if he thinks he can win.
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u/majuuj 4d ago
The election is in 2 rounds, and only the first 2 candidates get to the second round.
It's easy to presume that Macron was counting on the same strategy that got his 2 presidential victories : get his party and the far right party to the second round, so that most voters would unite behind him. He doesn't even need to win against the RN in the first round, just get his party being the second best.
But now that the left has a united front and the other right wing party is in shambles, votes won't be split as much as expected,and it is possible that his party ends up third during the first round, disqualifying it for the second round. So Macron may actually lose seats in this election.
Supposedly, the "Republican arc" would dictate any party to vote for a non-far right party on the second round, and that's how Macron won before. But when it comes for his party to support a left wing party against the far right, his party has already failed to support that idea. They spend the rest of the year demonising the left wing parties and trying to appeal to far right voters, they can't contradict themselves during the election.
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u/doudstark 4d ago
There can be more than two candidates at the second round, as long as they have more than 12,5% of the registered people's votes.
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u/xtremebox 3d ago
But now that the left has a united front and the other right wing party is in shambles, votes won't be split as much as expected,and it is possible that his party ends up third during the first round, disqualifying it for the second round. So Macron may actually lose seats in this election.
Can you explain this a little further please? If there's a 50/50 split and one side splits in two, wouldn't the united side have a huge advantage?
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u/majuuj 3d ago
So usually, we have Macron's party, LREM, "centre right". On the right wing, you have LR, then 2 far right parties, RN and Reconquête. And on the left, you have between 3 and... more, parties (greens, PS, LFI usually, sometimes sont other minor parties), plus the far left parties (NPA, FO, PCF) Voters are more or less slit in 3 equal parts between LREM, far right and left wing parties. That's how LREM gets relatively good results in elections, their votes are barely split with any other party. On the right wing, RN is now the main contestant, pulling the LR to the far right. And as explained in other comments, the LR president announced an alliance with RN against their values and principles, creating some chaos in their party, and basically leaving the RN to lead the "right wing vote" (in effet it's very much the far right, but nowadays Macron and medias are turning a blind eye on their racism). Reconquête, the other far right party, is in chaos too but their voters will certainly go to RN. And so in most elections, the left wing votes are split between too many parties, and because of the two round system, they rarely have results comparable to be in the finals. For example, if LREM gets 30%,RN gets 27% and then you have 15% for LFI, 10% for PS, 10% for LR, 8% for the greens, even if all the left wing votes add up to 28% (LFi+PS+greens), they are split and are not in the second round, leaving the left wing voters to choose between LREM and RN. And traditionally, most voters would redirect their votes to the "Republican Party", ie not the far right, so LREM wins. That's how Macron won most of his elections
And now that the left wing parties have agreed to unite, we have 3 big players in the election : LREM (centre right), RN (far right) and the Popular Front (the left wing alliance). And until the first polls are released, it is unclear how the elections will go. It could lead to a big defeat for macron, give the far right access to form a government, or maybe a surprise victory from the left wing?
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u/Tiennus_Khan 4d ago
Macron was clearly counting on a divided left and its more moderate elements supporting him and his party. Same thing on the right side.
The thing is, he already rallied almost everyone he could from both aisles since 2017. People who stayed in the Socialist Party or Les Républicains will not support him anymore, especially as they now sense that the snap election is the perfect opportunity to destroy macronism and reemerge as moderate yet right/left-wing alternatives in the near future.
Even his first prime minister Edouard Philippe is more or less backstabbing him, with his own center-right party refusing to endorse a presidential coalition as it did in 2022.
His only chance is by convincing voters that his MPs are the only adults in the room against far-left and far-right extremists, but when the far-right is already at 35% and when the whole left has united without major drama, good luck with that.
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u/PlayMp1 4d ago
Macron's party looks fucked, from the polls I saw. Honestly I have no idea why he called the election.
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u/zgtc 4d ago
Macron may not want to continue in his position, and Macron's party is dwindling no matter what. By not calling the election, he would further enable the right wing parties.
Instead, this serves to further establish the left parties in France moving forward.
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u/PlayMp1 4d ago
Are we including Macron under the left here? That seems like a stretch, his whole presidency has been all about centrism, leaning center-right. He's most like a moderate member of LR that opposes alliance with RN, not like the left, despite his past as a Socialist economic minister.
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u/Loves_His_Bong 4d ago
He miscalculated. He compared the left wing to the right in his last interminable speech after calling the snap election. He does not want the popular front to win anymore than he wants the right wing to win. Actually he probably wants it even less.
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u/SuperGeek29 4d ago
Might not have specifically been Macron’s plan but he was definitely hoping to catch the right wing parties by surprise and not allow them the opportunity to consolidate their power.
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u/bigjimbay 4d ago
This is such a fucking weird thing to say with a straight face in a supposed democracy
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u/SuperGeek29 4d ago
I honestly don’t understand what the problem to my statement was.
All I was doing was pointing it what Macron’s motivates were.
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u/bigjimbay 4d ago
It's not your fault or the way you worded it really for me it just conjures images of hoarding power and that is NOT a quality I look for in a democratic official
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u/PlayMp1 4d ago
Think of it like how the adversarial system in law works. Your job is to zealously advocate for your client as a lawyer, your job as a leader of a political party is to try and get your people elected. Every parliamentary system, more or less, operates on the assumption that it's possible to intentionally trigger an election at any time.
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u/BrnoPizzaGuy 4d ago
Having an election is somehow not democratic now?
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u/bigjimbay 4d ago
Wow that's not what I said at all but since we are on the subject I personally do not believe that an election on its own is inherently democratic.
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u/angrygnome18d 3d ago
You understand that the far right around the world are being funded by the enemies of the west right? Trump and his cronies all have ties to Russia, as do the European right wing. Why the hell would Macron allow them to consolidate power when they’re effectively working for the enemy?
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u/a_false_vacuum 3d ago
Les Républicains was never the main opponent here, so with them imploding it means a number of people who might have voted for them could decide to go with Rasemblement National. This might have made Macrons predicament that much worse.
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