France Presidency 2017

France is scheduled to hold the first round of elections to the Presidency on the 23rd of April; if no candidate receives a majority of votes in this round, a second round will be held, between the top two candidates in the first round, on the 7th of May. Elections to the National Assembly, the popularly elected and most powerful house of the bicameral legislature, are also scheduled to take place in June, roughly one month after the likely second round of the presidential election.

I've written before about France's electoral system, but it is worth summarising the nation's constitutional arrangements at present. France has a semi-presidential system of government, with both a directly-elected President for a five-year term and a Prime Minister responsible to the lower house of the bicameral legislature (the National Assembly). The system is of the premier-presidential sub-type, meaning that the Prime Minister cannot be removed by the President, though they may appoint a Prime Minister.

This election follows five years of the presidency of Francois Hollande, a Socialist. Mr Hollande was elected to the presidency, defeating the leader of the centre-right UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) after seventeen years of centre-right control of the office. Mr Hollande, however, has struggled with a stagnant economy and high unemployment, and did not choose to seek re-election. He leaves office with low approval ratings, and with a Socialist Party that lost substantial support in local and European elections during his tenure.

Candidates

Benoit Hamon-Socialist Party

The governing Socialist Party held an open primary to determine their presidential candidate. Voters were required to be registered to vote in normal French elections, to donate one euro to the organisation conducting the primary (while only Socialist candidates were likely to win, candidates from minor parties closely affiliated to the Socialists also competed, hence the primary was branded as the "Citizens' Primary"), and to generally accept the values of the left. 1.6 million votes were cast in the first round, a figure which increased to 2 million in the second.

The leading candidates for this primary were Manuel Valls, a former Prime Minister, and Arnaud Montebourg and Benoit Hamon, both former cabinet ministers. Valls, considered a more right-wing candidate than the other two, led in early polls, but the first round of the primary resulted in an unexpected first place for Mr. Hamon, who won 36% to 31% for Mr. Valls and 17% for Mr. Montebourg. No other candidate won more than 7%. Montebourg endorsed Hamon for the second round, who won 58% to 42% for Valls.

Hamon is considered to be on the left of the Socialists, supporting a policy of providing a basic income to all citizens and the legalisation of cannabis.

Francois Fillon-The Republicans

Like the Socialists, the Republicans (a re-brand of the UMP) held an open primary to determine their nominee, in which the general public could vote. The unpopularity of the incumbent Socialist government made it likely that the Republican nominee would have a good chance of victory; hence, there was more interest in the Republican primary. 4.3 million voters turned out in the second round, 4.4 in the second.

Also similar to the Socialists, there were three main candidates in this primary. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Ministers Alain Juppe and Francois Fillon. Mr Juppe was the front-runner, with most expecting the runoff to between him and Mr Sarkozy. However, after a strong debate performance, Fillon surged to 44% in the first round, with Juppe on 29%, Sarkozy on 21% and no other candidate above 3%. With Sarkozy endorsing Fillon, he won an easy victory in the second round with 66% of the vote.

The victory gave Fillon frontrunner status; given the divided nature of the left, it was considered likely that he would face National Front candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round. Ms Le Pen's radical views mean that Fillon would likely win such a runoff comfortably with leftist votes. However, in recent days, he has been beset by a scandal involving his wife being paid for an apparently 'fake job', and his polling has dropped accordingly. It remains to be seen whether he will remain in the race.

Emmanuel Macron-Independent/En Marche!

Emmanuel Macron served as economy minister for two years as a Socialist, but resigned from the position last year, after conflicts with party positions on various matters within his portfolio. He then launched a new political party, En Marche!, and ran for the presidency. He has also signalled his intention to run a slate of candidates for the National Assembly election. 

Initial polls had Macron in third place, behind Le Pen and Fillon. However, following the Fillon scandal, recent polls have shown him catching up to Fillon, and advancing to the second round, where he receives the support of the centre-right and beats Le Pen comfortably. He stands on a platform of economic liberalisation and general social liberalism, to the right of Hamon and perhaps Le Pen economically, but to the left of Fillon and Le Pen on issues like immigration. 

Marine Le Pen-National Front

The National Front are a long-term minor presence on the French political scene. The usage of the two-round system, where the centre-left and right generally team up against National Front candidates in the second round, has generally led to little representation for the party in the National Assembly. The party's most substantial result in the past was Le Pen's father, Jean Le Pen, reaching the second round in the 2002 presidential election, narrowly beating Socialist Lionel Jospin in a fragmented race. Mr Le Pen's opponent in this round, UMP incumbent Jacques Chirac, received the endorsement of Mr Jospin, and much of the left, propelling him to a landslide victory (82-18).

Mainstream opposition to the party comes from distaste of its opposition to immigration and Islam, however, with an increase in concern about terrorism and immigration after the Syrian refugee crisis, the party's stocks have risen. They won the highest number of votes at the 2014 European election, and have performed strongly at lower-level elections throughout Mr Hollande's term. It appears likely that Ms Le Pen will win the highest number of votes in the first round of the election, with roughly 24%; however, most polls have her losing a runoff by twenty points or more to Mr Macron or Fillon.

Other candidates in the race include leftist Jean-Luc Melanchon, running with the support of the Left Front (successor to the Communist Party), though his candidacy is under the name 'Unsubmissive France', Green candidate Yannick Jadot, Nicholas Dupont Aignan (who is attempting to fill the niche between Fillon and Le Pen), and various other irrelevancies. Melanchon is the strongest of this group, polling at around 10%. None of the others is higer than 3%. Centrist Francois Bayrou has not yet stated whether he will stand for the election; polls that include him show him at 5%.

Problems with the two-round system

The two-round system is one of those most commonly used for presidential elections around the world. Much of this is due to many presidential systems (such as those in Senegal and the Central African Republic) being in place due to French influence during colonial times, but the system is used in countries like the Ukraine and Poland because it ensures a candidate will be elected with majority support. 

Nonetheless, the system has a substantial disadvantage in fragmented elections, which we may see demonstrated in this upcoming vote. In a fragmented election, the possibility exists that two candidates can make it to the second round with little initial support. If an ideological group splits itself between too many candidates, the possibility exists that no candidate representing a substantial ideological group is able to enter the second round.

An example of this is shown in the 2002 presidential election. Red candidates represent leftists, blue conservatives, black far-right candidates and cyan centrists. As you can see, Chirac and Le Pen finished first and second, and all voters had to choose between them in the second round. However, 45% of voters, all up, voted for a leftist candidate, compared to 29% for the left and 19% for the far-right. Yet there was no candidate for the leftists in the second round, because of the increased fragmentation of this group.

The problem arises because the two-round system does not necessarily provide great incentives for voters to coalesce around two candidates. Left-inclined voters in 2002 may have felt comfortable knowing that they could cast a ballot for a minor leftist, to signify their support for that particular candidate, thinking that Jospin would certainly enter the second round. A first-past-the-post system would mean voters would coalesce between two candidates, at least in theory; often, this squashes diversity in the party system, or leads to candidates being elected with little support.

While Fillon's woes have made this possibility likely, it could potentially have been the case that the left, with the backing of roughly 40% of the electorate, would have had no representation in the runoff. This particular issue is partially circumvented for National Assembly elections, where candidates can enter the second round if they receive the support of 12.5% of the registered electorate (on average, this represented 21.8% of the vote cast at the last election). However, the Constitution of France specifically entrenches the top-two requirement for presidential elections.

Even so, one of the key advantages of preferential voting for single-member seats (as the Presidency of France is) is demonstrated by this particular alternative; the usage of several rounds of exclusions and transfers results in the candidates in later stages of the count having wider support than their equivalents under the two-round system.

The National Assembly

The President has the right, after 'consultation' with the Prime Minister and Speaker, to dissolve the National Assembly at any time of his choosing. However, the Assembly's maximum term is five years, meaning that an election must be held by the tenth of June this year. 

No doubt, such an election date would serve the victor of the election well. The popularity bump incumbent presidents receive has meant that the last three legislative elections, all held shortly after those for the Presidency, have resulted in majorities for the newly elected President's party, a useful tool given that failure to control the Assembly means the President loses control over the cabinet and becomes less able to pass their agenda.

This will become an especially important point in the case of a victory by Mr. Macron. His 'En Marche!' party, as a cursory examination of its website will show, spends much of its time discussing Macron's statements alone. He has said he will run candidates for all 477 seats, but the  gives the appearance of being a mainly personalistic vehicle, focusing on providing a brand to its lead candidate, far more than any other French party. The Socialist and Republican sites show statements from a variety of other figures, and both parties, despite their weaknesses at this election, do have large legislative caucuses and incumbent members with personal vote factors.

Normal behaviour has been for the centre-left and centre-right to form opposing alliances where they allocate seats to parties within said alliances, with the National Front generally not being able to make the second round in most seats due to this tactic (unlike the presidential elections); in 2012, they only entered the second round in sixty-five seats, and won two. If Macron wins, it may well be the case that he forms an agreement with the existing leftist alliance (Socialists+Greens) that would allow the Socialists to have some influence over the new government, while giving some experience and aforementioned personal vote factors to the President.

It is still largely unpredictable what will happen at these elections. Perhaps reflecting the irrelevance of such polling until the winner of the Presidency is determined, the most recent poll with seat numbers was taken in June 2016. It had the centre-right winning a majority, and the National Front winning around fifty seats (in normal two-round elections, they have never left single digits; this would be their best result for any National Assembly election). Such a result, which seems consistent with general increases in support for the FN at the local and European level (implying it's not just Ms Le Pen's personal support) would provide a clear reminder of that party's growing influence, even if Le Pen loses.

Scotland and Wales-some simulations

For those that didn't notice, elections to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales's devolved Parliaments, as well as to various local authorities in England and the mayoralty and assembly of Greater London, took place on May 5.

In 1997, referendums took place in Scotland and Wales on whether country-wide Parliaments should be introduced to govern the two regions. In both cases, the proposal was successful. Further referendums were held in Northern Ireland (where the assembly was part of a comprehensive peace deal) and London in 1998, where devolved assemblies were introduced.

In order to gain cross-party support for these assemblies, the Blair Labour government decided against using a single-member plurality electoral system to elect members of the Scottish and Welsh assemblies. Instead, it was decided to use a mixed-member proportional representation system.

In London, there are fourteen members elected in single-member districts, and eleven members elected from closed party lists. Voters have two votes; one for their single-member district candidate, and one for a party list. In the districts, the candidate with the most votes is elected. Following this, all the list votes are tallied up, and the eleven party list seats are allocated using the D'Hondt method of party list proportional representation.

However, it is modified somewhat. The number that the party's vote is divided by is increased by the number of single-member districts the party has won. So, if a party wins five single-member districts, its vote will be divided by six at the beginning of the D'Hondt count. A party needs to win 5% of the vote to win any party-list seats.

A very similar electoral system is used for Scotland and Wales. Scotland is divided into eight districts. In each of these, eight to ten members are elected in single-member districts, and seven members are elected using party-lists. An identical system to the one used in London is used to allocate the party-list seats: however, there is no threshold. This is made up for by the substantially reduced number of seats to be elected in these districts. If we add all the seats in a district together, we get an effective threshold of about 4.4%; however, this is probably lower in practice, and may depend on the results of the single-member districts.

Wales is identical, except the districts are somewhat smaller. Each district elects between seven to nine members in single-member districts, and four members in the party-list system. This makes it very much less proportional

Scottish results

A couple of months ago, I wrote this blog post on decoy lists in Scotland. As it turns out, Nicola Sturgeon does not read my blog, and as a result no party in Scotland tried the decoy list strategy. While the Greens only ran district candidates in a small number of districts, this was more so that they could focus their efforts on winning list votes.

However, what if the parties had used decoy lists? The below chart shows what would have happened if only the SNP had used decoy lists; that is, their list candidates and district candidates were not affiliated to each other. 

Compared to the actual results, the SNP would gain thirty seats. The Conservatives would lose thirteen seats, Labour eleven, the Greens five, and the Liberal Democrats one. Rather than their current position of governing in minority, with support from one of the opposition parties needed to back legislation, the SNP would have a comfortable majority. 

But what if other parties had followed the SNP's strategy? This would make Scotland effectively mixed-member majoritarian, an electoral system where the aim is to add some proportionality onto a majoritarian system. The goal of mixed-member proportional representation is to make the entire result proportional.

The SNP would only gain twenty-four seats this time, with their list gains balanced out by the ability of the Conservative and Labour parties to make the same sort of gains. However, Labour would lose ten seats and the Conservatives would win nine; Labour's substantial weakness in the constituencies would be exaggerated. The Liberal Democrats would win the same number of seats, as most of their seats were won in constituencies. The Greens would be, proportionally, the biggest losers; they would lose all but one of their seats.

Following the election, and the SNP's failure to win a majority, Alex Salmond stated on his weekly radio show that the electoral system used in Scotland was responsible for the result. In an interview that appears fairly incoherent, Salmond claimed that the 'variations' that led to the SNP not winning a majority were the fault of the regional list system.

But is this the case? Well, we can test this. The below charts show the results of the election using a national list system; to be precise, such a system would allocate all the list seats in one district, covering the entirety of Scotland. As such a system would be very proportional, there are two simulations; one with a 5% threshold, and one without.

It's quite clear that Salmond is wrong, at least in that sense. The national list system would not have given the SNP a majority; in fact, in both simulations they would be in an even weaker position. They would have won only the 59 seats they won in the constituencies. As you can see, there are few other differences; the Liberal Democrats and Greens would both gain a couple of seats, as they were disadvantaged by having their vote spread out in the districts, while UKIP, which won only 2% of the nationwide constituency vote, would win two seats without a threshold, and none with one.

In the same article, Salmond also supports the introduction of a single-vote MMP system. Under such a system, voters would have one vote, for a constituency candidate. That vote, however, would count as a party vote for the party that constituency candidate was affiliated to.

Were such a system implemented in Scotland, it would have a number of effects. For a start, it would be bad news for the Green Party. The Greens only ran a few constituency candidates, and focused their efforts on the list. In most constituencies, the Greens have little chance of election, and Green voters would be pushed towards tactically voting for a more competitive contender. This would mean the Greens would win fewer party votes, and thus substantially fewer seats.

At the same time, tactical voting in the constituencies would go down somewhat. Despite the above, some people would still vote Green in the constituencies, but they would obviously vote for someone else if there was no Green candidate, which is the case in most places. Abolishing the list ballot would mean the Greens would be forced to run a candidate in every seat. The same would go for weak Liberal Democrats, Conservative and Labour candidates; partisans for these parties would be less likely to switch to more viable constituency candidates closer to their party affiliation if that meant that they could not vote in any way for the party of their first choice.

Wales

The results of the Welsh elections were, on the face of it, rather unusual. Labour's vote in the constituencies dropped by 7.6% and their regional vote dropped by about 5%, but they only lost one seat. So, how did this happen?

Well, there are a number of reasons for this. First of all, the big gainer in these Welsh elections was UKIP. This Eurosceptic party has gained substantial support in recent years, and while it failed to make much of a mark in Scotland, at the 2015 general election the party polled 13.6% in Wales. 

Rather than focusing their attention on the party-list seats, like the Scottish Greens, UKIP ran constituency candidates in all but two constituencies. This meant that the opposition vote became more split. Labour also had an efficient vote spread; only 16% of the vote for Labour was cast in the constituencies that they did not win (which constituted 26% of the electorate).

This on its own does not cause disproportionality. For example, in Scotland, the Scottish National Party received 80% of the district seats, off only 46.5% of the vote. Wales had a similar imbalance, with 67% of the seats for Labour for 35% of the vote. However, Wales was twice as disproportional as Scotland, using the Gallagher Index.

The key issue causing disproportionality in Wales is the very low number of party-list seats. In Wales, the percentage of list seats is very low for an MMP jurisdiction.

What if Wales had a similar amount of proportional seats to Scotland? I have simulated this by adding three seats to each region, thus making the percentage of list seats 46.67% (compared to 45.74% for Scotland).

Labour would be the main loser, falling from one seat short of a majority to just 40% of the Assembly. Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and UKIP would be slightly better off. The Liberal Democrats would be the big gainer, winning four seats, up from just one. 

Overall, the Gallagher Index of disproportionality for Wales would decrease from 13.03 to 7.25, closer to Scotland's 5.6. In an area like Wales, where one party is dominant and the opposition is heavily split, increasing the number of party-list compensatory seats would be a sensible step to ensure an accountable regional government.

Has the migrant crisis really impacted Austria's politics?

Austria, a small country in Europe's south-east, has been quite substantially impacted by the large numbers of Syrian immigrants travelling towards Western Europe. Like all countries in Europe, Austria's government services have been placed under strain by the large number of people moving through and into the country.

It is not unusual for immigration of this sort to lead to political change in a country. Sweden, for example, has seen substantial gains in recent years for the right-wing anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which has been linked to concern over increases in immigration. In Germany, Angela Merkel's liberal policy towards Syrian refugees has led to a polling surge for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party.

There is something in common between these two countries. In Sweden, asylum seeker policy has generally been fairly liberal under both the centre-left and centre-right, while in Germany, the liberal asylum seeker policy has been led by centre-right Merkel. Centre-right voters are less likely to support such an immigration policy, leading them to seek alternatives to the right.

At the moment, Austria is governed by a 'grand coalition' of the centre-left Social Democrats and the centre-right People's Party. A government of this sort presiding over high immigration would be likely to alienate People's Party voters concerned about immigration, and cause them to move towards right-wing alternatives. The largest and most prominent of these is the Austrian Freedom Party (FPO).

This party has a long history in Austria. They were formed in 1949 as the Party of Independents, and won 10% of the vote at their electoral debut. For its early years, it was a more liberal party, which had only a small number of seats. Oddly for a country with a very proportional electoral system, at this time Austria had a very strong two-party system, with the Social Democrats and People's Party often being able to form majority governments.

However, the party began to gain traction under the leadership of Jorg Haider. Haider was a more right-wing figure, and led the party in a Eurosceptic direction. This turned out to be electorally profitable; at the party's first election under Haider's leadership (in 1986), the party increased its vote by 4.7%, and by 6.9% in 1990 (probably related to the previous government being a grand coalition. The continuance of the grand coalition up to the 1994 election meant that their vote went up by 5.9% to 22.5%, despite the liberal wing of the party leaving to form the new Liberal Forum. This result meant that they were close to the centre-right.

The 1999 election was the apex of the Freedom Party's support. The party recieved 26.91% of the vote, the same percentage to two decimal places as the People's Party. However, the Freedom Party recieved 417 votes more than the People's Party, making them narrowly the second largest party. Rather than continuing the grand coalition, the People's Party decided to form a government coalition with the Freedom Party. People's Party leader Wolfgang Schlussel became Chancellor, since the parties had an equal number of seats and the Freedom Party were considered to be too extreme to run the government.

The Freedom Party, as the less visible coalition partner, lost a large portion of its support as a result of the coalition. At the 2002 election, the Freedom Party vote went down to just 10%, with the People's Party's vote going up by 15%.

Nonetheless, the coalition of the People's and Freedom parties continued after the election. However, the Freedom Party split in 2005, with Haider forming the new Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZO). This party stayed in the coalition with the People's Party, while the Freedom Party left government.

Internal strife of this sort led to both parties faring poorly at the 2006 election. The Freedom Party won only slightly more votes than their dismal 2002 performance, and polled below the Greens for the first time in their history (only by 538 votes, though), while the BZO only just crossed the 4% threshold under Austria's multi-tier method of party-list proportional representation. It is also worth noting that 2.8% of the vote at this election was taken by the list of Hans-Peter Martin, a Member of the European Parliament who had been prominent in attacking other MEPs for misuse of travel expenses; a populist figure of this nature could be expected to attract the support of Eurosceptic voters who might otherwise be attracted to the Freedom or BZO parties.

However, better days were to come for these two parties. Following the 2006 election, another 'grand coalition' was formed between the two main parties. As has been stated above, such 'grand coalitions' have lead to voter dissatisfaction with the two major parties. The 2006-2008 period also saw the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon, which expanded the powers of the European Union somewhat, without a referendum. In the early 2008 election, both the Freedom and People's parties gained support, at the expense of both major parties.

Following this election, there was little option other than a grand coalition of the Social Democrats and People's Party. However, this coalition was extraordinary weak for a grand coalition in Austria; the two major parties had only 55% of the vote between them.

The BZO suffered a substantial setback following the election, when leader Jorg Haider died in a car accident. This meant that the gains from the weakening of the grand coalition parties, which continued, went heavily to the Freedom Party. The 2008-2013 grand coalition government served its full term, but, as usual, the following election saw a decline in support for the grand coalition parties.

This loss did not only advantage the Freedom Party, but also a new party that had been formed recently. Canadian-Austrian businessman Frank Stronach formed a party, with the support of a number of existing Members of Parliament, called Team Stronach. It was opposed to the European Union, and supportive of economic liberalism. Stronach's strong financial support for the party propelled it to a fairly strong performance at the election. The other new party, The New Austria, was a liberal, pro-European group, which won a small number of seats.

The expected result of the election was a grand coalition government, as before, but with only a small parliamentary majority (with 92 seats needed, the Social Democrats and People's Party had only 99 seats). 

So, how are the FPO doing?

Since the 2015 election, the events of the migrant crisis have taken place. Certain international media reports have suggested that there has been a surge in far-right support. Now, if we look at FPO votes over time, that certainly does seem to be the case.

2016 vote share from this poll.

It's not hard to see why that would be viewed as a surge. However, that's not the whole story. As I've said above, the Austrian far-right has two other parties in it; Team Stronach and the Alliance for the Future of Austria. If we add these two onto our graph, we get a somewhat different one.

This certainly looks a lot less impressive. The increase from 2013 is only 3% if you factor in the Stronach and Alliance votes, which is hardly a party-system shaking change, and certainly not a 'surge'.  Even if we consider that the Stronach Team may not be as anti-immigration as the Freedom Party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria+Freedom Party (with both parties being fairly anti-immigration, and likely to enter coalition with each other if they had a majority) vote share in 2008 was 28%, which makes the increase only 4%.

But what about the presidentials?

One of the other events that has happened in Austria recently was the presidential elections. In these elections, the Freedom candidate Norbert Hofer came first, with Alexander van der Bellen, the Independent Green, in a poor second.

As you can see, the Freedom Party was comfortably ahead; Hofer is not yet President, as he has to contest a second round against van der Bellen, as no candidate won a majority in the first round. Polls for the second round show both candidates at a dead heat; however, since Hofer was substantially underpolled in the first round, it appears likely that he will be elected President.

So, does this mean that there is a massive surge in support for the Freedom Party? Well, that's uncertain. For a start, the presidential race is highly personalistic, as can be seen by the small votes for the Social Democratic and People's candidates compared to their party polling (and as can also be seen by the posters, which do not show party affiliation for certain candidates), and the large number of votes taken by the independent Griss. The results of the presidential election will not necessarily be borne out in the legislative election.

Second, Hofer has the advantage of running against van der Bellen, who has mostly left-wing support. Had Griss, who had more right-wing support, been in the second round, she could have been more competitive, as she would have been able to mobilise both left-wing (in opposition to Hofer) and right-wing support.

While the underpolling for the presidential elections suggests that there could be underlying support not detected in the polls, the polls for the legislative and European elections were quite close to the actual support for the party.

The increase in support for the Freedom Party should not be seen as a massive upsurge in support for them. Instead, it represents consolidation of the voters sympathetic to the right-wing populist policies espoused by them. The party remains short of a majority; however, if Hofer is elected President (by means that, as stated above, do not necessarily suggest a surge in support either), he will be able to appoint the Prime Minister, and dissolve the legislature. This represents the most substantial challenge for the non-Freedom parties, and suggests potential for a constitutional crisis.

Scotland 2016-One weird trick to improve a party's seat count

With elections to Scotland's devolved parliament coming up next year, it looks almost certain that the left-wing nationalist Scottish National Party, which has been governing since 2007, will win a comfortable victory. Polling done in recent months suggests that, off their near sweep of Scotland's Westminster seats earlier this year, the SNP will win a comfortable victory, under the leadership of First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

However, unlike in Westminster, their gains will be limited somewhat, because of Scotland's usage of a mixed-member proportional representation system. Even if the SNP wins all of Scotland's constituencies, or makes a near sweep, the mechanism of the mixed-member system (described below) will keep their vote shares aligned with their seat shares. There is an option, though, for the SNP to make use of a tactic that has been used before in MMP and compensatory mixed-member systems to avoid this, called decoy lists.

How does Scotland's electoral system work?

Initial plans for a Scottish parliament were put forward by the Wilson-Callaghan governments in 1978, following an inquiry triggered by a strong SNP performance in the 1974 election (the October one). Exact details of the electoral system are unclear, as I don't seem to be able to find the specific legislation. It seems that some variation of the plurality system was proposed. This would have likely led to a Labour-dominated assembly, and this may have been one of the reasons that the proposal was rejected in a 1979 referendum (while 51.62% of voters voted Yes, this only represented 32.8% of the electorate, substantially short of the 40% of the electorate requirement).

Shortly after this referendum, a general election resulted in a Conservative government, led by Margaret Thatcher, take office. The Conservatives had little interest in devolution, and as a result it stayed off the agenda until 1997. In this year, a Labour government, led by Tony Blair, took office. Labour were committed to devolution. A referendum took place in 1997, which resulted in a 74-26 vote in favour of a Scottish assembly, and a 63-37 vote in favour of said assembly having tax-varying powers.

In order to get broad support for an assembly from the SNP and Liberal Democrats, the Blair government proposed a proportional system. Much discussion was had on the issue of this system, but the eventual result was a mixed-member proportional system that was later adopted by London and Wales.

The system works in this manner. Voters have two votes; one for single-member districts and one for regional party-lists. The single-member districts are simple: the candidate with the most votes wins. In the regions (of which there are currently eight, each electing seven members), all the party-list votes are counted up. The D'Hondt system is applied in these regions; however, the first divisor in the sequence is increased by the number of single-member districts won by the party.

For example, if Labour wins 5 district seats and 50,000 votes, and the SNP wins 1 district seat and 40,000, Labour's vote is divided by 6, meaning that Labour's vote in the party list contest is 8,333. The SNP's vote in the party list contest is 20,000. Party list seats are then distributed using D'Hondt.

This system serves to reduce the disproportionality that happens with single-member plurality. For example, at the first election to the parliament, Labour won 53 constituency seats off 38.9% of the vote, but this strong result in the districts meant that they only won three seats in the lists, thus making the overall result relatively proportional (off 33% of the list vote, Labour won 43% of the seats).

What is a decoy list? 

A decoy list is a tactic used under a mixed-member proportional (or compensatory) system in order to turn it into a mixed-member majoritarian system. The basic idea is that you run your single-member district candidates as members of a different party to your district candidates. This means that you can avoid the penalties that these sort of electoral systems levy on parties that win big in the districts.

An example of this took place in Italy's 2001 election. At this time, the lower house of Italy used a mixed-member system called the scorporo. The voting process was similar to Scotland, except the compensatory mechanism was somewhat different; the list the winning candidate district was affilated to had its vote reduced by the votes cast for the second place candidate in the district plus one. If a candidate affiliated to the list of Party X wins 10,000 votes, and the runner-up gets 5,000 votes, Party X's list votes are deducted by 5,001.

A key element of this system is that parties are permitted to form coalitions, as parties need to win 4% of the nationwide vote to get party-list seats. As a result, a district candidate can display themselves as a candidate of a national coalition on the ballot paper, while being affiliated to a list within that coalition. All party lists were on the national ballot paper.

In the 2001 election, the centre-right coalition, Casa della Liberta (House of Freedoms), led by Silvio Berlusconi, affiliated many of their district candidates to a list called Abolizone Scorporo (Abolish Scorporo). This list used a dull symbol and was not publicised. Single-member district candidates affiliated to it used the Casa della Liberta symbol. Its only purpose was to soak up the vote reductions caused by the scorporo*. The centre-left list retaliated by running their own similar list, called Paese Nuovo (New Country). The two lists actually received some votes; 0.09% for Paese Nuovo and 0.07% for Abolizone Scorporo.

Given that statistics are vague and calculations are difficult, it's a bit hard to measure the exact impact of this tactic. However, the Gallagher index of disproportionality (measured out of 100, based on list votes) spiked from 6.91 in 1996 to 10.22. It's also notable that the Communist Refoundation Party got only 11 seats out of 630, for 5% of the vote. They relied entirely on list seats for their representation in parliament.

How would it work in Scotland?

Let's look at an example. The below table shows the result of a hypothetical election in a region. The SNP has won all 9 single-member district seats, off just 55,000 (33.5% of the vote). With what is clearly an unlucky vote distribution, Labour wins no seats and 27.4% of the vote. The Conservatives (they have the cross logo) win 21.3%, the Lib Dems win 12.2%, and the Greens win 5.5%.

If the SNP ran with their single-member district candidates affiliated to the list, they would win no list seats. Three seats would go to Labour and to the Conservatives, and one to the Liberal Democrats. This would mean that the severe disproportionality in the single-member districts would be compensated for as much as possible.

However, let's say the SNP did not run a party list attached to their district candidates. Instead, they ran a nominally independent list, called, say, the National Scottish Party, that all SNP voters voted for. As you can see, this would mean that the SNP's landslide in the district seats would not reduce their share of the list seats. They would win three of these, bringing their total up to 75% of the total seats in the region.

What if the SNP had tried this strategy in the last election? If we assume that all SNP voters would vote for the decoy list, the results would be as below.

As you can see, it would be a quite dramatic gain for the SNP. They would go from 69 to 96 MSPs, three-quarters of the parliament for 44% of the vote. This is not necessarily an accurate reflection, though. Some voters might not recognise the SNP's decoy, or, more importantly, the other parties could run decoy lists of their own as a defensive measure. This would effectively turn Scotland's electoral system into a pure mixed-member majoritarian system, with complete separation of both tiers. Given the small size of the regional districts, this would lead to a relatively disproportional electoral system (average magnitude would be 1.6).

How would it be done?

So, if you are Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and you are reading this blog, you are probably thinking 'Great! But how do I put up a decoy list? What do I call it?'. Well, Ms Sturgeon, this is where you have to use your imagination.

Now, there are a wide variety of ways in which this particular nut can be cracked. However, my best idea is one that takes advantage of Nicola Sturgeon's personal popularity and recognition. First, Ms Sturgeon should resign her membership of the SNP, and form a new party, called, say, 'Nicola Sturgeon for Scotland' or 'Nicola Sturgeon Team'. As there are no formal membership requirements, and it could not be argued that the label was intended to confuse the SNP and the new party, as Sturgeon would not be an SNP member. This party could run in the party-list section, and it could be mentioned in SNP literature as an encouraged second vote.

Now, this article is not to present a strategy only for the SNP, and this strategy could also be used by the Scottish Conservatives, for example, who have strong local appeal in the South of Scotland. I'm not sure what sort of name recognition the Scottish Conservatives have, but had they registered their candidates in the South as independents, they would have won an extra three seats (assuming no SNP decoy and all Conservative voters voting for the independents).

What would be the consequences?

The SNP trying a trick like this would not go unnoticed in Westminster, which formally controls the election legislation for Scotland. If the Conservative government had significant doubts about the SNP's actions, and if the Scottish Conservatives were substantially hurt by decoys, there is the possibility of Westminster legislating to make decoy lists useless.

One way which they could do this would be by introducing one-vote MMP. Under this system, voters would vote only in the single-member districts, and these votes would be used to calculate the list totals, replacing the list votes in the previous system. If SNP candidates recieve 5000 votes in a region, the SNP list is credited with 5000 votes. As it is impossible to separate single-member district and list votes, this would blunt the SNP's tactic.

It's unclear what impact such a system would have on support for the parties. With one exception, no party has a marked difference between their list and district votes. The key exception, of course, is the Scottish Greens. They have adopted a policy of running lists only, in the hope of picking up list votes from left-leaning voters who, while recognising that the Greens cannot win a district seat and therefore not voting Green in the districts, are willing to vote Green in the lists. Under a single-vote system, the Greens would have a much harder time attracting voters.

Another option would be dumping the single-member districts entirely, and having a party-list system only. This option would likely prove controversial, as this has only been used in the European elections, and if it were introduced, it would probably have to have some form of mechanism to open up the lists, and give voters personal control over the elected members. Perhaps, too, the single transferable vote could be used. Scotland has experience with the single transferable vote, as it has been used in local elections since 2007. While this sounds like a good idea, the issue remains that Scotland has lots of land that is virtually empty (and for good reason). This would mean that some STV constituencies would be quite large.

This post is not intended to endorse the Scottish National Party. Indeed, this is a strategy that could be used by all of Scotland's parties. The SNP, however, is in an especially strong position to exploit this particular loophole. I would suggest that it would be advisable for Westminster to close it, in some way, to ensure Scotland's parliament continues with its original intention of proportional representation.

*The Abolizone Scorporo list was used again in the 2004 European election. In an attempt to reduce the vote for the Green party, the Abolizone Scorporo symbol was placed in the middle of the symbol for the 'Green-Greens', a right-wing Green party. Under Italian electoral law, this means the list is entitled to get on the ballot automatically.

Poland 2015-Some observations on threshold

Poland recently held elections to both houses of its parliament: the Senate, which is the upper, newer and less powerful house, and the Sejm, which is the lower, older and more powerful house. The Senate is virtually powerless, in fact. A majority vote of the Sejm can override a Senate rejection of any bill. This rarely matters, though, because the Senate is elected at the same time as the Sejm, and uses a less proportional electoral system.

The impact of the threshold

Poland uses D'Hondt open party-list proportional representation in districts with an average magnitude of 11. The system includes a threshold of 5% on parties and 8% on coalitions of parties, which is implemented on the national level. An exemption is made for lists that represent ethnic minorities.

District allocation and a nationwide threshold both have a negative impact on proportionality. However, which one has the most significant impact says a lot about a nation's party system. If a nation has a party system where parties have consistent support across the country, then the use of district allocation will have a more substantial impact on proportionality. But if the party system is geographically diverse, the use of a nationwide threshold will have a more dramatic impact.

Let's look at Poland's party system. At this election, there were two major parties; Law and Justice and Civic Platform. Law and Justice is a traditionalist conservative party, while Civic Platform is a more liberal party on both social and economic issues. Civic Platform was in government coming up to this election. Musician Pawel Kukiz also formed his own party, after winning 20.8% in the first round of the presidential elections earlier this year. He is an anti-establishment figure, and his party's main issue is the introduction of the single-member plurality system in Poland, which he claims will remove party domination of Poland's politics.

The Polish left has not been especially strong in recent years. It's divided between post-communists, modern greens and socialists, and liberals. At the last election, the Democratic Left Alliance, which is the major left-wing party, won 8.2% of the vote and 27 out of 460 seats in the Sejm, while Palikot's Movement, a left-liberal party, won 10% of the vote and 40 seats. However, Palikot's Movement has dramatically lost support over the past few years. At this election, it (now called Your Movement) formed a coalition with Democratic Left Alliance and a number of other left-wing groups. The coalition was called United Left. Another more left-wing party was also formed, called Razem (Together).

A number of liberal parties also contested the election. The largest was Modern, which is a pro-EU centrist party, in a similar vein to the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom and the Free Democrats in Germany. It was only formed this year. The second is KORWiN, which is a more radical libertarian, Eurosceptic party. Its leader, Janusz Korwin (see what he did there?)-Mikke, is something of a controversial character. He has made statements about women that have gotten him in trouble, and his views are somewhat polarising. His former party, the Congress of the New Right, won four seats in the European Parliament at the 2014 elections, and Korwin-Mikke himself is a member of the European Parliament.

The Polish People's Party is the other substantial political presence in Polish politics. This party is one of the oldest, and was around before the Communists took control and in some form before World War 2. It is focused on rural issues, and is economically leftist and socially conservative.

It's worth noting that none of these parties are focused on local issues. Poland is also fairly ethnically homogeneous. As a result, I would expect that national instead of regional allocation would have the most substantial impact in terms of improving proportionality.

The graph above shows the results. As you can see, regional application of the threshold would lead to United Left and  However, this does not give us an indication of proportionality. To do this, the Gallagher index is used. This is a standard index of disproportionality that goes from 0 (most proportional) to 100 (least proportional). On this scale, the actual result scored 12.55. If the threshold was applied regionally, the index would be 9.86. However, if allocation was national but between the parties past the threshold, the index would be 9.41.

The reason that applying the threshold regionally would lead to a smaller increase in proportionality is that Poland has a geographically consistent party system, with none of the parties below the threshold receiving especially strong support in a geographic area.

A good country to compare Poland to is Turkey. The nations have similar electoral systems, but very different political environments. Turkey uses the D'Hondt method applied in small districts (average magnitude of 6.5) with a 10% national threshold. This has led to some very disproportional elections. For example, at the 2002 election, 45.3% of the vote was cast for parties that fell below the threshold. This led to Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party winning two-thirds of the seats off 34% of the vote.

Now, if Turkey had gone with the approach of applying the threshold at a regional level, the results would be substantially different. The below graph shows the results, using the three methods described above.

As you can see, Turkey is quite different from Poland, mostly due to the large number of parties that fell below the threshold at this election. National allocation would, in theory, go some way to relieving this disproportionality. However, it removes Turkey's only alternative for candidates to be elected outside their parties; running as independents. Independents in Turkey are exempt from the national threshold, and are counted as single-candidate parties in district allocations. The Kurdish ethnic minority, following their failure to receive 10% nationwide, runs independent candidates in order to get some representation in the parliament.

The lack of independents means that a national allocation would actually make this election more disproportional. National allocation would score 27.47 on the Gallagher index, which is worse than the 27.41 the actual result got*. 27.41 is massive on the Gallagher index. Even in the UK, no result has not even been close to that.

Regional allocation would be a more dramatic change. As you can see, it would allow the entry into the parliament of other parties, although they would be very weak compared to their vote. The True Path Party, a centre-right secular party, would win 6.73% of the seats for 9.54% of the vote, and the centrist Young Party would win 2.36% of the seats and 7.25% of the seats.

The only party below 10% to receive more seats than their vote share is the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party, which would get 8.18% of the seats for 6.22% of the vote. This is because the Kurds are an ethnic group that mostly live in a small number of provinces in the nation's east. As a result, they can win these seats, whereas the other small nationwide parties have low vote shares everywhere, and cannot win many seats. This pattern has been repeated in recent elections, too; at this year's most recent election, the Kurdish-based People's Democratic Party won 59 seats with 10.76% of the vote, while the national-based Nationalist Movement Party won 40 seats with 11.9%.

Both results, however, show something important. Even under proportional representation systems, vote distribution is important. The lower the magnitude, the more important it is. Parties with uneven vote distribution will win more seats, but this assumes they get above the threshold. For parties like this (for example, the pro-Kurdish parties in Turkey), applying the threshold on the regional level would have the most positive effect. However, for parties with geographically consistent support, like Poland's Modern party, national allocation would have the most substantial impact.

*Note: Data is not consistent on the result of the election. However, this is likely to be close enough, although do not use this data for anything where accuracy is very important. 

European Radicals-Ireland

The Global Financial Crisis of 2007, and its impact on debt in European countries, has had a far-reaching impact on politics in Europe, especially in the nations hit by debt. Countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece and Ireland have gone through dramatic political change as a result of the crisis and the response of governments.

But have these changes lasted? As the worst of the crisis passes, have the new parties that popped up hung around, or have they collapsed? The fact is that there are examples that go both ways. Some of the parties have succeeded, and others have failed; this depends on the issues the parties are feeding off, the issues that are salient in the country, and the performance of the parties in the government (if they have been given any power).

Ireland

Ireland was one of the hardest hit nations by the global financial crisis. Traditionally, it has been governed by the Fianna Fail party, which was formed in 1926. Describing Fianna Fail's position on the issues is not easy; they have been described as 'populist' and 'catch-all'. The traditional Irish opposition is Fine Gael, a party that is similar to Fianna Fail (although their main bit of ideology is 'not Fianna Fail'). Ireland's other significant party up to this point was the Labour Party, which is a traditional European social democratic party, but much electorally weaker than most European social democratic parties (its strongest electoral performance was 20% in 1992).

Fianna Fail governed Ireland almost consistently from 1932 to 1973, with only two breaks of short Fine Gael government when all members of the opposition teamed up. Ireland uses the single transferable vote, but with low district magnitude (between 3-5 members per district; 3.8 on average), this is not especially proportional. This meant that under this period, Fianna Fail either had a small majority of seats or a narrow minority, off 42-50% of the vote.

A more competitive political period began in 1973. At this election, Fianna Fail was defeated, and was replaced by a coalition government of Fine Gael and Labour. This government lasted its full term, before Fianna Fail returned to office in 1977 with a comfortable majority. This government lasted for only a short time; Irish governments at this point were under much pressure, due to the fighting in the North. The candidacy of strong supporters of Northern Ireland's reunification with Ireland attracted some sympathy, which put further pressure on governments, because in tight parliaments governments might need their support.

During the 1980s, five elections took place. All but one resulted in a change of government (from Fianna Fail to Fine Gael-Labour or Fine Gael minority or vice versa). This period ended with the election of a Fianna Fail government in 1987, which served in minority for two years before being re-elected in 1989, this time in coalition with the liberal Progressive Democrats.

In 1992, another election took place. This saw a dramatic increase in seats for the Labour Party, which won 33 seats and 19% of the vote. Fianna Fail was significantly short of a majority, but was nonetheless the largest party by a long way. After a long process, they decided to form a coalition with the Labour Party, which was rather unusual; Labour were traditionally allied with Fianna Fail. This coalition did not last very long, and in 1994 Labour formed a coalition with Fine Gael and the socialist Democratic Left party.

Labour were punished at the 1997 election for their decision to go into government with Fianna Fail. They lost half of their seats. This meant that the incumbent Fine Gael-Labour government would not be able to continue in office, despite gains made by Fine Gael. Fianna Fail teamed up with the Progressive Democrats and a few independents, and Fianna Fail leader Bertie Ahern was elected Prime Minister.

This coalition was continued after the 2002 election, despite dramatic losses for Fine Gael changing the balance of power somewhat. However, the Progressive Democrats were wiped out in 2007, so Fianna Fail had to deal with the Green Party, which had won a record 6 seats, as well as independents. Shortly after this election, Bertie Ahern was resigned and was replaced by Brian Cowen, the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister.

Over the next few years, Ireland's economy was placed under serious stress. Irish banks were unstable, and the government passed legislation bailing them out. This, of course, was not cheap, and in order to pay for it the government needed to make cuts to other services. Generous spending promises made in previous years had to be rescinded, and this caused many political headaches for the government, which fell to second place in local and European elections in 2009. The Green Party were wiped out entirely. Ahern was forced to ask for a bailout from the European Union in 2010, further eroding support for the government.

Independents that had backed the government were quickly withdrawing their support, and the Green Party was getting restless. In January 2011, the Green Party formally resigned from the government, and Ahern called an election for 25 February, before resigning as Fianna Fail leader (but not as PM): he was replaced in that capacity by Foreign Minister Micheal Martin.

Martin was placed in a virtually impossible position. Fianna Fail, the party which had finished first in almost every Irish election under the Republic, had a one in front of their vote. They were in third place, behind Fine Gael and Labour. Fine Gael had consistently been in first place since the beginning of the crisis, for the first time in their history. Labour, too, had massively benefited. Strong polling results, including some showing Labour in first place, led the party to start the campaign with hopes of something other than the junior partner in a coalition.

As the campaign begun, though, it became abundantly clear that Fine Gael, under the leadership of Enda Kenny, would win first place by a wide margin; indeed, at some points it looked like Fine Gael would win a majority. A large number of new independents with vague promises of 'new politics', as well as a number of new far-left parties and Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein, as some of you will know, is a party strongly in favour of merging Northern Ireland with the Republic. It has been considered by many to have been the political arm of the Irish Liberation Army, the terrorist group responsible for many bombings and killings in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and 80s. They normally only contested elections for the UK and devolved parliaments in the North, but they started contesting elections in the Republic in 1982. They did not win seats for quite a while, and remained fairly minor up until the economic crisis, at which point their economically leftist views gained traction.

The results of the election saw Fianna Fail poll disastrously. They fell from 41.6% of the vote and 77 seats in 2007 to just 17.5% of the vote and 20 seats, and they went from having at least one member in each constituency to having seats in only 18 of 43 of the constituencies. Fine Gael gained significant number of seats, going from 27.3% and 51 seats to 36% and 76 seats, while Labour made substantial gains, going from 10% and 20 seats to 19.5% and 37 seats; while they made gains, they were well short of Fine Gael. Sinn Fein won 14 seats, a gain of ten, and the new socialist parties and independents won 2.7% and 5 seats.

Independents overall made significant gains from the election. While Fianna Fail had mostly taken the political blame for the crisis, the whole political system was tainted by the crisis. Independents were viewed as anti-politics as usual, and as a result people were motivated to vote for them to protest. In total, 12% of votes were cast for independent candidates. Of course, independent candidates are not a monolith, and the candidates elected were of vaguely different affiliations. Two independents were considered right-wing, five left-wing, five elected on local issues, and two did not fit into any of these categories. A diverse bunch, certainly.

While certain other options were considered, including a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail coalition, it was eventually decided that a Fine Gael-Labour coalition would be best. Opposition to this deal came mostly from within Labour; some members felt that it would be best for Fine Gael to take the fall for implementing harsh economic measures, leaving Labour with a strong run at the next election. Nonetheless, it was decided that Labour would enter government by the party conference.

Labour voters, of course, were not happy with the policy decisions made by the coalition. Neither, it turned out, were Fine Gael voters. While the coalition polled 55.5% at the election, one year later it was closer to 44-46%, and in another year it had sunk to 40%.

The major beneficiaries of this fall were Sinn Fein, who went from 10% to the high teens and low twenties by 2013. With Labour in government with Fine Gael, and therefore unable to convincingly express anti-austerity views, Sinn Fein were placed in the position of anti-austerity party. This was certainly an electorally advantageous one.

Independents also made dramatic gains, both outside the Dail (parliament) and inside it. By 2013, the total number of people who intended to vote 'other' had reached 18-20%. This included the far-left groups, but they were usually very minor. Independents also made gains from the other parties in the Dail. Sixteen members of parties left them to become independent, although some rejoined their old parties or joined new parties later on. Fianna Fail did not gain much, although they returned to the lead for a short period at the start of 2013, which was more due to the drop in Fine Gael's vote than any surge for Fianna Fail.

In 2014, the first national elections took place since 2011. These were for the European Parliament and local councils. These elections would have no actual impact on the government, but they would be a test of whether the dismal poll numbers for Labour and Fine Gael were real. It turned out that they were.

In terms of vote, Fianna Fail came first narrowly, with 22.3%. However, poor preferences from the other parties in Dublin (where their candidate won 12.6% compared to 10.2% for independent Nessa Childers, who received a stronger preference flow from other parties and was elected) and a close call in Midlands-North West (where their candidate was defeated for the last seat by 275 votes, or 0.04%) meant that they only ended up with one seat out of 11, losing two from their already poor result (24.1% of the vote) in 2009.

This is what is meant when certain people characterise STV as only semi-proportional; low district magnitude (on average, 3.7 members per constituency for the European elections) and the impact of transfers can mean that seat results do not necessarily closely match vote results. While this is not especially obvious in large elections, like for the Dail, it is a bit clearer in low-magnitude European elections.

Fianna Fail also ran too many candidates. Their running of two candidates in Midlands-North West was also blamed for the poor result, as only about 61% of the vote from second candidate Thomas Byrne went to number one candidate Pat Gallagher. Had there been only one candidate, it would have been likely that some of Byrne's votes that exhausted would go to Gallagher. Clearly, Fianna Fail still has delusions of its pre-2009 days.

Fine Gael won slightly fewer (425 votes, or 0.02%) votes than Fianna Fail, but nonetheless ended up with four seats. This was mostly due to the result in the South, where Fianna Fail's leading candidate Brian Crowley won 27%. This meant that that too many Fianna Fail votes were tied up with him, and so second Fianna Fail candidate Kieran Hartley was excluded too early. As a result, Fianna Fail's 32% was rewarded with one seat, while Fine Gael's better divided 28% won two seats.

While in terms of parties Sinn Fein finished third, in total independent candidates did better. In total, independents won 19.8% and three seats: one in Dublin and one in Midlands-North West. Independent candidates were good at picking up preferences from other candidates, which gave them an advantage. The average Independent candidate was elected with 13.37% of the vote, compared to 17.18% for the average elected party candidate and an average quota of 21.7%. Clearly, independents had some support in Ireland. This is odd for European elections. Only two other independents were elected in the rest of Europe.

Sinn Fein polled strongly. They won 19.5% (not far off their performance in the North) and three seats. They won one seat in each district, partially thanks to their strategy of running a single candidate which represented a better self-assessment of their support then Fianna Fail's.The three seats allowed Ireland to be one of two nations (the other being Greece) where the far-left group won (equal) first place. This is very strong, considering Ireland has traditionally been a very weak nation for the left.

Labour polled dismally, winning only 5.3% of the vote and no seats, a loss of three. Their vote plummeted by nearly 9%, and none of their candidates even came close to winning a seat. Indeed, they ended up only slightly ahead of the Green Party, which won 4.9% and no seats.

Local elections were similar in terms of vote, although the larger number of seats and the larger magnitude meant that Fianna Fail's first place win was recognised in terms of council seats. As is not unusual in local council elections in many countries, Independents polled strongly. Labour lost Dublin council, and Sinn Fein won the most seats there. A by-election in Dublin South-West saw the far-left Anti-Austerity Alliance win the seat, despite Sinn Fein polling in first place.

The disastrous election results for Labour meant that leader Eamon Gilmore's time was up. He resigned in July 2014, and was replaced by senior minister and long-time Labour Dail member Joan Burton. Burton has so far failed to improve the party's dismal polling, however.

So, about four and a half years after the most dramatic election in Ireland's political history, what has changed? Well, quite a bit. Fine Gael is battered and bruised after a term in government in which they have had to make unpopular decisions, and they will certainly have fewer seats after the next election; the same anti-incumbent tendency that destroyed Fianna Fail in 2011 will have a dramatic impact on Fine Gael. However, as a right-wing party, more of their voters will approve of cuts to public spending.

Labour does not have this lenience from their base. Their junior position in the coalition meant that they were taken along on cuts to public spending disliked by their voters, which has had a dramatic effect on their vote. They are polling in the single digits, and it is probable that they will lose many seats indeed.

Their status as the leading left-wing party will likely be taken by Sinn Fein. As Sinn Fein has no record in government, they will be able to run with a clean record, like SYRIZA in Greece. Their polling has been in the low twenties and high teens, though, and their lack of experience may mean that they run too many or too few candidates to take advantage of their surge in support.

Of course, the Independents will also be an important presence in the new parliament. Polling on independents has been fairly inconsistent, perhaps due to the inclusion of small parties in the question. However, the European and local results suggest that the vast majority of the other vote is for independents. A parliament with significant numbers of independents will present challenges to the government, especially if it does not have a majority. Parties, which usually vote coherently, are easier to manage than large numbers of independents. One way of dealing with them might be pork-barrelling in their districts; this happened in the past when governments depended on independents.

It seems implausible that any single party will come close to a majority, and it certainly seems unlikely that the government will come close to a majority. Fine Gael will likely be the largest party, too, with 25-30%. I see it as likely that there are two options for government; a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail alliance or a Fine Gael-Sinn Fein alliance. Either could include Labour's few members.

Both of these options are very unusual. Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are ideologically similar, but have never formed government due to long-held antipathy after the Irish Civil War. A Fine Gael-Sinn Fein deal would be even more controversial, however. The issue would be with Northern Ireland. Sinn Fein are strongly in favour of Northern Ireland becoming a part of the Republic; indeed, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has long been accused of being a member of the Irish Republican Army, a terrorist group. A government in the Republic with a strong position on this issue could endanger the fragile peace (which has become even more fragile in recent months) and thus a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail deal, maybe with Labour, would be the most likely outcome.

In any case, the Irish election demonstrates a case where dramatic political change has been more long-lasting. Fianna Fail are no longer the dominant party they once were. Perhaps this will change, perhaps not; the impact of a likely stint in government as the junior coalition partner is unlikely to help much. The unique part in Ireland is the gain for Independents; perhaps this is the Irish version of the fragmentation that other countries have seen in recent years. Sinn Fein are the version of the new political movement, replacing Labour. They are similar to new movements in Spain and Greece, although the nationalist dimension adds something new to the equation. Ireland is an unusual case of political change, but certainly a dramatic one.

Electoral systems of the world-France (Part 3 of 3)

Previous posts in this series

Electoral Systems of the World-France (Part 1 of 23)

Part 2 of 3

The end of the Fourth Republic had brought with it an anti-parliamentary spirit to France. However, some were doubtful that the new government could survive, especially considering that France still faced many problems.

De Gaulle had taken the office of President, but he had not been elected directly. Instead, he was voted in by an Electoral College, an assembly of 80,000 Members of the French Parliament and local elected officials. This college had given him 79% of the vote to 13% for the Communist candidate and 8% for the candidate of the leftist Democratic Forces.

However, De Gaulle felt that him being responsible to an Electoral College would not provide the Presidency with the legitimacy that it would need in order to control the Government. He decided that direct elections to the Presidency would be the only means by which he could get this legitimacy. Direct presidential elections had not been done in France for 110 years at that time.

The electoral system for the Presidency would be broadly similar to that used for the National Assembly. In order to become a candidate, a person needed to have 500 signatures from local politicians. In the first round, voters would vote for one candidate. If one candidate won a majority of the votes in this round, they would be elected.

If no candidate won a majority, a second election would be held 14 days later. Unlike the electoral system for the National Assembly, only the top two candidates would be permitted to contest the second round. This appears to stem from a desire to ensure that the President received majority support from the public.

The President would serve a term of seven years, and could only serve two terms in a row. A seven-year term is fairly long by international standards, but clearly De Gaulle wanted the President to be in office for a long term; perhaps he viewed this as important for long-term planning.

The above proposal was endorsed in October 1962 in a referendum. This referendum was controversial, as the National Assembly had not endorsed it. However, despite this, 62.2% voted Yes, thus meaning that De Gaulle had a strong mandate for the changes.

Following this, a legislative election took place in November. The National Centre of Independents and Peasants, a centre-right party, had split, with a group leaving to join Charles de Gaulle's Union of the New Republic to provide De Gaulle with a presidential majority.

The result was a convincing win for the Gaullists, who came very close indeed to a majority. In their agreement with the Independent Republicans, they controlled about 54% of the seats. Another impact of the electoral system was that the Communists were still under-represented, as they struggled to form alliances in the second round. De Gaulle could not count on support from the other centre-right parties, due to their opposition to presidential government.

Three years later, De Gaulle went to his first presidential election. He was still fairly popular, and it was generally expected that he would comfortably win re-election. He was still a polarising figure, however, and the two-round system would be expected to work against him if he faced a moderate opposition candidate.

Francois Mitterand was chosen as the candidate of the united left, excluding the Communists, who nonetheless endorsed him. He put up a fairly strong performance, and deprived De Gaulle of a victory in the first round.

This result was confirmation of the idea that presidential elections encouraged alliance-building. The left, fearing the possibility of not making the second round, ran a united candidate, which reduced fragmentation.

Another legislative election took place two years later, in 1967. Mitterand had installed himself as Socialist leader, and the Independent Republican party had merged into the Gaullist party, while the two centre-right to centre parties merged into the Democratic Centre.

The Gaullists came very close to a majority, although presumably the centrists were willing to offer support to the government, or at least abstain to prevent the left-wing from controlling the Assembly. 

The next year in France saw significant social conflict. The left had made small gains at this election, especially the Communists. This result meant that the Socialists felt the need to form an alliance with the Communists, thus creating a left-wing alternative to the De Gaulle government.

In May, small student protests began against De Gaulle's government. These ballooned into a strike (not unusual in France), which was unusually large and independent of the traditional trade unions. Despite a fairly generous wage deal, the protests continued, and became so large and so destructive to the French economy that the nation began to collapse.

Late in May, De Gaulle was so concerned about the progress of the protests that he decided to leave for Germany. Once there, he gave a speech calling an election, and for workers to return to work. Hopeful of a victory, the Communists agreed to an election.

The movement subsided over the next few months, and by June, France's economy had returned to normal. The legislative election was marred by the left-wing parties (the Socialists and Communists) agreeing to an effective coalition deal, which was not especially popular with a public concerned about a Communist-dominated government.

The result was a landslide win for the Gaullists, mostly at the expense of the left. The Communists lost more than half their seats, while the Socialists won their lowest share of the seats since 1958. The centre also lost a significant number of seats.

But, more importantly, this election showed that the two-round system can be very, very disproportional. The Communists and Socialists only lost 2% of their vote from 1967, but the disproportional nature of the system meant that both parties were massively unrepresented.

By this point, however, De Gaulle was aging, and pressure was mounting on him to step aside for a younger candidate. However, in 1969, he pressed ahead with a proposal for reforming local government and the Senate.

The proposed reforms had dramatic consequences for the Senate. Half of its members would be elected by local government, and half would be appointed by representative bodies for social groups, in a similar manner to the Irish Seanad. This new body, however, would have a purely consultative function.

Power to declare war would be moved to the National Assembly only. Laws would only be allowed to be proposed by the National Assembly, and proposals only had to be forwarded to the Senate 'for advice' after passage of the National Assembly. Finance bills, too, would only require vague 'consultation'. Constitutional amendments only had to be 'subject to the opinion of the Senate', and only National Assembly approval and passage at a referendum would be required. In the event of the death of the President, the Prime Minister would become President (the original Constitution would have made the President of the Senate President)

Passage of these reforms would turn France into a nation that was bicameral, but in name only. This was perceived by local authorities as a power grab, and was fiercely opposed by them. The centrists, who had their power base in the local authorities, declared their opposition too.

The left-wing opposition parties, too, had their concerns; they felt that a Gaullist-dominated lower house could ram through legislation that they opposed, and seeing as government was so far away from them, they did not feel that this disadvantage would be outweighed by the advantage of complete power if they won.

Combined with this was a proposal for decentralisation. It would create regional government, which would have control over housing, as well as all the other issues that French local government controlled. These would be governed by regional councils, which would be indirectly elected.

De Gaulle had staked his reputation on the referendum, and had threatened to resign if it did not pass. This was a dangerous gamble, although as De Gaulle was elderly at the time, it was not especially unlikely (in fact, De Gaulle would not live out his presidential term).

When the votes were counted, 52.4% of the electorate had voted No. This was a fairly narrow defeat, but De Gaulle kept his promise, and resigned on 28 April 1969. In an interim capacity, he was replaced by Senate President Alan Pohler. But, unlike the United States, Pohler would not replace him for the entire term; he would only serve until new presidential elections could be held.

Pohler ran for President as a centrist candidate. He was opposed by former Prime Minister Georges Pompidou as the candidate of the Gaullist Union for the New Republic. The Communists ran Jacques Duclos, and Gaston Defferre ran as the Socialist candidate.

The first round result was a comfortable lead for Pompidou, while Pohler managed a narrow second. The second round was a more comfortable win for Pompidou, but it demonstrated a problem with the system. Left-wing voters, who comprised the largest opposition to Pompidou, were not given much of a choice.

Some of the more moderate leftist voters preferred Pohler, as the 'lesser of two evils'. Others just didn't turn out, or cast informal votes; turnout in the second round went from 77% to 68%, and the informal vote went up from 1% to 6%. This feature of the two-round system in presidential elections was to have serious ramifications later.

Legislative elections took place in 1973. In the period leading up to it, the Socialist Party, once again led by Mitterand, signed an agreement with the Communists outlining what a Communist-Socialist government would do. It called for mass nationalisations, the introduction of proportional representation, the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and unilateral nuclear disarmament.

This was a double-edged sword; on one hand, the Gaullists could raise fears about the Communists now that it was official that any left-wing government would include them, but the agreement could potentially lay out exactly what the left proposed, thus showing some transparency. The advantage for Mitterand was that he would be able to moderate and tame the Communists, and hopefully reduce their relevance and cement the Socialists as the major leftist force.

The agreement split the left, however. Certain members of the Radicals opposed it, and formed an alliance with the centrists, while the left of the radicals stayed with the left, becoming the Union of the Radical Left and signing the Common Programme. This division persists to this day.

The centre-right won a fairly comfortable victory, although it was a loss from the heights of 1969. The left made fairly substantial gains, and both parties benefited from the alliance. The centrists had minor losses.

The election showed the weak relationship between votes and seats in the two-round system. The Gaullists only lost 1% of the second round vote from 1969, but thanks presumably to greater coordination between the Socialist and Communist parties, lost about 17% of their seats. Of course, their vote share was still lower than their seats share, thus making them beneficiaries of the system, but it was a weaker benefit.

At this point, President Georges Pompidou had fallen ill. He had been suffering from cancer, and on the second of April, 1974, he died. He was replaced, once again, by Senate President Alan Pohler, for the interim period up until the election.

The next presidential election saw the widest field of candidates yet. The Independent Republicans, a centre-right pro-Gaullist party, ran Valery Giscard d'Estaing, while another Gaullist, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, ran as the Union of Democrats for the Republic. Giscard was more moderate than Chaban-Delmas. The UDR was much larger than the Independent Republicans, but, as you will see, this did not necessarily guarantee their candidate a lead within the centre-right.

The 1974 presidential election was the first one for the left running under the Common Programme, and this presented a dilemma. The Communist Party were (narrowly) the largest party on the left, but they were ideologically extremist, and a Communist candidate for the presidency would give the centre-right a useful angle of attack on the left. In the end, it was decided to nominate the more moderate Francois Mitterand, who you may remember as the candidate of the Socialists who had pushed De Gaulle into a second round in 1969. This was evidence that the two-round presidential system was removing extremism and encouraging moderates.

French presidential election candidate ballot symbols for the overseas district

Other than these three, the rest of the presidential field was fairly minor. Jean Royer, a Minister and Mayor, ran as an independent for social conservatism (with a minimalist campaign), while Arlette Laguiller ran as the Trotskyist candidate (she was the first woman ever to run for a presidential election in France). Rene Dumont ran as an environmentalist candidate, and Jean Marine Le Pen (whose name you will hear again) ran as the far-right candidate.

In the early days of the first round campaign, Mitterand was winning 35-40% of the vote, while Giscard and Chaban-Delmas were on about 25% each. However, as the campaign wore on, Giscard began to pull out a lead, while Chaban-Delmas fell back in to the high teens.

In the end, it was not even close. Giscard won an easy lead over Chaban-Delmas. This showed that presidential elections were becoming more personalised; while Chaban-Delmas's party was much larger than Giscard's, this did not help him.

The second round campaign was very, very tight. Polls generally gave Giscard a very narrow lead, or showed him tied with Mitterand, but the leads were narrow. 

The result was a very narrow win for Giscard, based off strong flows from Chaban-Delmas. This showed a clear advantage of the two-round system; the candidate with the broadest support could win, rather than just the largest minority.

Giscard's government style was fairly liberal and centrist. This provoked controversy amongst certain sectors of the UDR, which the Socialist-Communist alliance exploited. In 1977, a local election resulted in a significant number of left-wing gains, a fair few of which were made at the expense of UDR-centrist splits. At this point, the centrist movement had renamed themselves the Union for French Democracy (UDF), and Giscard had joined the party. The Gaullist right reacted by reforming themselves into a new party, called the Rally for the Republic.

Legislative elections were scheduled for 1978, and it was felt that the Socialist-Communist alliance would win, based off their success in the local elections. However, the Common Programme was not renewed in the lead up to the election, thus meaning that the cooperation that had given the group such a strong result in 1973 would not be quite as evident. The reason that the agreement was not renewed was that the Communists were concerned that the Common Programme was sapping their electoral support; not an unreasonable concern.

The result was the first since the end of the Third Republic where the Socialists were larger than the Communists, thus showing that the Socialist strategy was working. The RPR won the most seats and votes on the right, thus exacerbating the conflict between RPR leader Jacques Chirac and Giscard.

Giscard was the first president to serve out his entire term and run for re-election in 1981. He was opposed by Francois Mitterand, who ran as the Socialist candidate, Jacques Chirac, who ran as the RPR candidate, and Georges Marchais, who ran as the Communist candidate.

Giscard won a narrow first, but came comfortably ahead of Chirac. The same went for Mitterand, who finished comfortably ahead of his leftist rival.

Relations between the candidates in the runoff and the candidates who had dropped out would be vitally important to determining the winner. Marchais, Crepau and Laguiller all wholeheartedly endorsed Mitterand, but Chirac, whose relationship with Giscard was rocky at best, only offered his personal support, and did not endorse Giscard. There were even allegations from certain political figures that Chirac had made a pact with Mitterand.

Whatever happened between the parties, Mitterand won narrowly. He became the first Socialist president since 1954, and the first one to be directly elected.

His presidency, however, did not start auspiciously. The next year, local elections took place, which resulted in a loss of 35 seats in the cantons for the Socialists, and 47 seats for the Communists. More local elections in the next year, in which the right won 61% of councillors.

In the 1984 European Parliament elections. The joint RPR-UDF list won 43% of the vote, while the Socialists only managed 20%, and the Communists crashed to 11.2%. This election was also notable for the strong performance of the National Front, who won 10.9% and the same number of seats as the Communists.

Seeing that he would likely lose the next legislative elections, scheduled for 1986, Mitterand decided to introduce proportional representation, a belated manifesto promise. While he ostensibly did it in order to make French elections fairer, the timing made many political figures suspicious that he was doing it in order to avoid a landslide loss in the legislative elections.

The proposed proportional representation system was not especially proportional. It was party-list proportional representation. It used 2-24 member districts, with an average magnitude of 5.5 seats. Voters voted for parties only; lists were closed. Seats were distributed by the D'Hondt method, with a 5% threshold in districts to win seats, which would not be relevant in most districts. This was a fairly disproportional system that would not quite be fair to the smaller parties, but this would not matter too much to Mitterand; his interest was only in ensuring that his Socialists would be under-represented.

The electoral system was criticised by the right, who not only viewed it as a cynical attempt to reduce potential losses in the upcoming election, but as an attempt to split the right by allowing the National Front to win seats.

The result was a narrow win for the centre-right, who won 51.2% of the seats. While this was far from a comfortable majority, the presence of the National Front meant that the left were also far from a majority. This meant that, in order to avoid political gridlock, Mitterand would have to deal with the right, an effective coalition deal known as cohabitation. This was the first time under the Fifth Republic that the legislature and presidency were controlled by different parties.

The election also saw the further decline of the Communist Party, who won their lowest vote share since 1932. The National Front won a very strong result, and to this day the result is the best. However, the district-based PR system meant that they were under-represented, as were the Communists and other small parties.

President Mitterand appointed RPR leader Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister. The deal was tense, and Chirac was forced to use the National Assembly's power to pass laws without presidential approval a number of times. However, importantly, the proportional representation system was repealed, and was replaced by the two-round system, virtually unchanged from the pre-PR system. The only change was that the threshold for entry into the second round was raised to 12.5%.

Mitterand was not happy with this arrangement, however, and the 1988 presidential election resulted in the unhappy scenario of the two heads of government facing each other as the major candidates. Other candidates included Union for French Democracy candidate Raymond Barre (nominally independent, but strongly supported by the UDF), National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, and Communist candidate Andre Lajoinie. Polls showed Mitterand in a comfortable first in the first round, followed by Chirac and Barre in the high teens.

The result was a comfortable lead for Mitterand, followed by a somewhat less comfortable second place for Chirac ahead of Barre. The big surprise was the strong result for Le Pen, who won the strongest ever result for the National Front; it was felt that part of this was due to the increased status that the large National Front caucus in the National Assembly had given the party. The Communist Party managed a disastrous 6.76%; Mitterand's mission to make the Socialists the largest party on the left had overwhelmingly succeeded. 

Mitterand had won a second term, and the fairly comfortable win emboldened him to call a new legislative election. This election saw a strong President, as leader of the largest party on his political faction, facing a right-wing divided between the National Front, the RPR and the UDF. The abolition of proportional representation meant the government had the upper hand, as they could exploit this division.

The result was a narrow win for the parties of the left. Leftist candidates won 52.71% of the seats, while the right won the remaining seats. While it was a narrow result, it did give the Socialists the option of a deal with the UDF if the Communists opposed their legislation.

The disproportionality of the system was even clearer with the rise of the National Front, who won 9.66% of the first round results, almost the same as in 1986. However, they only won a single seat (which is not visible on the graph, it's so small) instead of the 35 they managed under proportional representation. This was because of their status as a 'pariah party', whose ideology was so repugnant to the other parties that they could not form the alliances needed to win seats under the two-round system.

Mitterand appointed Socialist Michel Rocard as Prime Minister, who led the party into a midterm election for the European Parliament. This saw a complicated result, that is an interesting demonstration of the impact of the two-round system

The result was a narrow win for the Rally for the Republic-Union for French Democracy list, but it was a very weak win. Both major parties were weakened by the presence of two new parties; the Greens on the left and the Centre of Social Democrats (a centrist group that was originally part of the Union for French Democracy). The strong Green result meant that the Socialists, who had initially ignored the Greens as a fringe party, were pressured to do a deal with the Greens. The disastrous result for the Communists made it clear that the party was dead as a major political force.

In 1991, Rocard left office and was replaced by Edith Cresson. She turned out to be massively unpopular. The Socialist Party won control of only one regional government in the 1992 elections, compared to one for the Greens and 22 for right-wing candidates.

Cresson was replaced by Pierre Begovoy, who failed to improve the waning support for the left. In 1993, a legislative election took place that resulted in a hammering for the Socialists and a landslide win for the right.

The result was a disaster for the Socialists, and by extension President Mitterand, who was once again forced into cohabitation with the right. Once again, the National Front managed a strong result in the first round, and a fairly decent result in the second, but once again only one seat. The ecologists won less than half a percent in the second round, and no seats. As the Communists lost support, they also shed their pariah status. Mitterand appointed Edouard Balladur, a RPR politician, as Prime Minister.

Presidential elections took place in 1995. Mitterand, who had spent two tiring years in cohabitation and had contracted cancer, was in no position to run for another term. The Socialist Party nominated Lionel Jospin, a former minister who lost his seat in 1993, in a primary election where he won 65% of the vote. Chirac ran again, but he was opposed on the right by Balladur, who ran as a RPR candidate with support from the UDF. Early polls showed Balladur leading Chirac, but as the campaign wore on, Chirac entered into the lead.

The result was a fairly comfortable win for Chirac. Nonetheless, Jospin polled fairly well considering the poor economic situation. Le Pen won the strongest result ever for the National Front.

In an attempt to cut the deficit, Chirac introduced a number of controversial changes to the pension system. These included an increase in the period public sector workers were required to contribute to pension funds by 2.5 years, increases in health insurance contributions for the elderly and unemployed, and increases in the retirement age for public sector workers. This led to a strike of public sector workers; a strike on the railways lasted three weeks.

Despite these, the government did pass some of the changes, and Chirac, who was hoping to catch the left off guard, called a legislative election in 1997. While the RPR-UDF did have a lead in the early days of the campaign, this was worn away through the campaign.

The result was a win for the left-wing parties, who won 55% of the seats. The result saw the Greens, who had been accepted into the leftist camp, enter the National Assembly for the first time. The result showed the importance of entering an alliance with major parties; had the Greens stayed outside the left, as they had done up to now, they would have had no seats.

This represents an interesting dilemma for small parties in France; do they stay ideologically pure and have few seats in the National Assembly (the course taken by the National Front), or do they soften their ideology (the initial intention of the Greens was to stay outside both major parties) and win influence in the National Assembly?

Following the result, President Chirac appointed Lionel Jospin, the Socialist leader, as Prime Minister. This meant that the third period of cohabitation under the Fifth Republic would begin; the increasing number of different parties controlling the Presidency and National Assembly was beginning to frustrate Chirac.

European elections two years later resulted in a deeply fragmented result. The Socialist Party came first, but with just 22% of the vote, this was hardly a resounding victory. Coming up to this election, a new party called the Rally for France had split out of the Rally for the Republic. This party was led by controversial former minister Charles Pasqua, and ran on a Eurosceptic platform, and won 13%. The original Rally for the Republic won 12.8%, the Greens won 9.7%, the UDF won 9.2%, the Communists won 6.8%, a new centre-right party called Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition won 6.7%. The National Front won just 5.7%; their vote had been split by the new entrants on the centre-right.

One year later, a referendum took place on a change in term limits. The frustration at mid-term legislative elections, which were caused by presidential and legislative terms being different. The referendum abolished this by reducing presidential terms to five years. This would mean that legislative elections could follow presidential elections, thus meaning that the results would be less likely to change.

The proposal was supported by RPR, UDF and the Socialists. It was opposed by the Communist Party and by some RPR members. On the day 73.2% voters voted Yes, and the proposal passed. However, turnout was pathetically low, at just 30%, thus suggesting that voters were disinterested.

Presidential elections were scheduled for 2002, and as the election neared, Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was in the lead. However, the large number of leftist candidates was to have an unfortunate effect on this lead.


The result put Chirac in the lead, but his main opponent Lionel Jospin did not win first place. Instead, Le Pen won second place, thus meaning that the second round would be between Chirac and Le Pen. The issue for Jospin was that leftist voters, feeling certain that Jospin would win second place, voted for minor parties in the first round.

Almost all the other candidates endorsed Chirac over Le Pen, and polls showed that Chirac would win a landslide victory over Le Pen. Leftist voters reluctantly supported Chirac, and he won the biggest victory for presidential elections in the Fifth Republic.

The result demonstrated a problem with the two-round system; while vote-splitting and the 'spoiler effect' were less of a problem, it could still be an issue.

The legislative elections later that year were another win for the forces of the right. Chirac had renamed his party the Union for a Popular Movement, and was successful in taking some support from the UDF.

The result was a comfortable majority for the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which gave President Chirac complete control over the legislature. Importantly, the election showed that France had progressed towards a two-party system; the UDF and Communists had been marginalised and the National Front was irrelevant in terms of seats. In total, the UMP and Socialists had 86% of the seats.

The law for electing the European Parliament was changed in 2003. Previously, a national list system was used, with a 5% threshold. However, the system was changed to create eight national constituencies, with an average magnitude of 9. No threshold applied in these constituencies. The goal of this was to improve relations between members of the European Parliament and their constituents.

The result was a comfortable win for the forces of the left, although you could hardly take the results as a prediction of the presidential election. The National Front polled fairly poorly, perhaps due to the presence of the Movement for France, a new Eurosceptic party.

President Chirac chose not to run for re-election in 2007, and he was replaced as UMP candidate by Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy was a fairly right-wing candidate within the UMP, and the UDF chose to nominate an alternative candidate, who was Francois Bayrou. The Socialist Party chose Segoilene Royal, a member of the National Assembly and a minister under Mitterand, following a ballot of party members in which she won 60.6%. Jean-Marie Le Pen ran as the National Front candidate, but he lost support to Sarkozy, and was polling in fourth place. Sarkozy was in first, with Royal and Bayrou fighting for second and a place in the runoff.

Following this result, the two candidates in the runoff were clamouring for the endorsement of the most prominent candidate in the second round, Bayrou. It was generally expected that he would endorse Sarkozy, as most previous UDF presidential candidates had done. However, he decided not to endorse either candidate, and further announced that he would form a new party. Sarkozy decided to run heavily to the right in the runoff, in the hope of picking up some of Le Pen's votes (Le Pen had called for an abstention).

Following this result, opinion polls showed the UMP on course for a landslide win in the legislative elections. While Bayrou's political party (called the Democratic Movement, or MoDem) was fairly strong, its position outside the two major parties put it in a similar position to the National Front. While the party did have fairly strong support, it was rarely enough to make it into the second round in districts, thus meaning that despite their moderate ideology they would not win too many seats.

Sarkozy's move to the right had an obvious effect, with the National Front vote tanking, and the party winning no seats. MoDem polled fairly well in the first round, but the low second round vote shows that few candidates ran in the second round, and even fewer were elected (the party won only 3 seats). This result showed that the two-round system did not just disadvantage extreme parties; it disadvantaged all parties outside the two major blocks.

Over the next five years, the Global Economic Crisis unfolded, and Sarkozy's popularity took a hit. However, there was an important start to a change in France's constitution. Sarkozy proposed an amendment to the Constitution to introduce a two-term limit for the Presidency, the right for the President to address the National Assembly, and allowed some more parliamentary control over the government. The amendment was passed in a joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate, with 539 votes out of 538 needed.

The crisis meant that Sarkozy was put into a tight race for re-election in 2012. The Socialist Party held an open primary to choose their presidential candidate. Francois Hollande, a former leader of the party, was elected, winning 39.1% in the first round and 56.6% in the second (interestingly, Hollande was up against Segolene Royal, who was not only the Socialist presidential candidate in 2007, but Hollande's former wife. She won 7%, and did not make it to the second round).

There was also something of a change in the National Front. For the first time ever, the National Front presidential candidate was not Jean-Marie Le Pen. Instead, his daughter Marine Le Pen was the candidate. Marine was viewed as something of a new image for the party, which she hoped to turn away from the cranky fundamentalism of her father.

Following the first round, the candidates who did not make it into the second round made their endorsements. Melenchon, Bayrou, Joly and Poutou all endorsed Hollande, while only Dupont-Aigian endorsed Sarkozy. Le Pen did not endorse.

This put Sarkozy in a position of needing to chase after National Front votes. He was fairly successful at this, and the polls tightened up in the runoff race. However, Hollande was able to win, albeit narrower than what was expected in the early days of the election.

The legislative elections scheduled for a month later were expected to result in a win for the Socialists. The increase in the National Front obviously would have little affect on the seat distribution, but it would be concerning for the major parties.

The Fifth Republic

The Fifth Republic has been fairly stable, as French governments go. Exactly what impact the power of the president has had on this is not clear, but certainly France has had longer-lasting and more stable government. Of course, the change to a presidential system is not the only issue, but it has clearly had some impact.

The impact of the two-round system on the party system is fairly clear. Political scientist Maurice Duverger is well known for Duverger's Law, a hypothesis where he claimed that the two-round system would lead to a party system with two large groups comprised of smaller parties. France certainly has this, with a few client parties on the left (Greens, Radicals) and a few on the right (Centrist Alliance, right-wing Radicals).

The existence of the National Front, and its strong performance in recent elections, has put pressure on this system. The most recent European election resulted in the National Front being the largest party (albeit with only 24.8% of the vote) and they look likely to make significant gains in recent times.

What impact has the two-round system had on the National Front? Its proponents say that it has reduced extremism in French politics, and has kept the National Assembly moderate. However, it could also be claimed that the system has meant that politicians from the major parties are unresponsive to political change, which has led to dissatisfaction with politicians, which has led to the rise of extremism.

In terms of presidential power, the powers given to the President are fairly broad compared to the other countries of Europe, which are mostly parliamentary. However, the National Assembly still has control over the instruments of government, as the Prime Minister requires its confidence. The National Assembly also has supreme legislative power, because the President does not have a veto. The shortening of legislative terms has meant that different parties controlling houses is rare, but in the event that it happens, there is a change in the people who hold executive power.