The French Communist Party lost a lot of its appeal when they joined the government way back in 1981 ; at that point, they became "just another political party", with slightly more radical left leanings (but not enough weight to really implement those kinds of policies). From that point on, they've been in steady decline.
This is why other extreme-left parties (such as LCR/NPA or Lutte Ouvrière) have risen to fill the void left by the PCF, with some degree of success until this year. Mélenchon's big achievement here was to gather back most of this extreme-left vote onto his name... but that only works for the presidential election ; the legislative election system means that the PCF/FdG must compromise with the PS to get some of its members elected.
[edit] And they still own that building, although it costs them an arm and a leg to keep.
edited 8th May '12 1:46:49 AM by Jhiday
How exactly do the legislative elections work? Do you have a district system or something?
France has two legislative bodies : the National Assembly (577 députies) and the Senate (343 senators).
Nobody cares about the Senate, because its election system is quite complicated (it's not the ordinary citizens that vote, only half of it is elected at a time, etc.), and whenever they disagree it's the National Assembly that has the last word. (For what it's worth, the Left controls the Senate by a hair since last year, for the first time since the last regime change in 1958.)
The legislative elections are for the National Assembly. It's a pure district system : in each of the 577 districts, a deputy (and their backup) is elected in two rounds. This mostly favours the big parties (UMP & PS), which is why smaller parties such as EELV (the Green) have settled with them to get some districts of their own.
It's slightly more complicated, though, because the second round is open not only to the leading two candidates, but also to whoever gathers 12.5% of the registered voters (which may be quite a higher proportion of the vote in places, depending on the participation rate). This is what the FN is hoping to do in 100+ districts, thus destroying the chances of most of the UMP candidates there.
It's a bit difficult to predict the results, as the district map has been remodelled in the last few years to account for demographic evolutions and create 11 districts for the French living abroad. Even then, even the UMP guy who was in charge of this remodelling (and thus had every chance to nudge it a bit in favour his own party) isn't very optimistic.
edited 8th May '12 5:17:46 AM by Jhiday
Nobody cares about the Senate, because its election system is quite complicated (it's not the ordinary citizens that vote, only half of it is elected at a time, etc.), and whenever they disagree it's the National Assembly that has the last word. (For what it's worth, the Left controls the Senate by a hair since last year, for the first time since the last regime change in 1958.)
The legislative elections are for the National Assembly. It's a pure district system : in each of the 577 districts, a deputy (and their backup) is elected in two rounds. This mostly favours the big parties (UMP & PS), which is why smaller parties such as EELV (the Green) have settled with them to get some districts of their own.
It's slightly more complicated, though, because the second round is open not only to the leading two candidates, but also to whoever gathers 12.5% of the registered voters (which may be quite a higher proportion of the vote in places, depending on the participation rate).
Now that's so complicated it's just silly. Sounds like it was designed by the same people who came up with the German electoral system (which I still can't wrap my mind around).
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...The French election systems can be pretty complex, yeah. And it's not really heading towards simplification :
- Sarkozy planned a half-fusion of the "cantonal" and "regional" elections (for the ruling bodies of the 101 departments and 27 regions, respectively). It was supposed to simplify things (basically, the same people would be elected for both the departments and regions), but it's such a mess that few people at the local level liked it, and Hollande has already promised to cancel this reform before it's ever used.
- For decades now, there's been some talk to have about 10% of the seats at the National Assembly elected proportionally to the global vote, allowing for a token presence of small parties. It may finally come to pass with Hollande, although I wouldn't hold my breath over it. It certainly wouldn't be making the system any simpler.
But then, at least it's not as stupid as our implementation of the European election system. France gets 74 seats, elected proportionally. But that would be way too fair to small parties, so someone decided to divide the country into 8 "districts", meaning that one must get a very high score in any of those (at least 8%, at best) to get any seat.
Well, I think the American electoral system is fairly simple. Horrible, but simple.
Mache dich, mein Herze, rein...
Yeah, the "Delftware" stuff. Not that anyone cares about it here; it's just kitsch we sell to tourists.
Personally, I was thinking of the old stuff — items you'd find on the Antiques Roadshow.
—-
Back to the Topic in Hand, methinks.
edited 10th May '12 4:43:09 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnThe complication that comes with the American system comes at the Electoral College stage and the fact that there's one of two ways to apportion votes. (Theoretically, I suppose we could have more, but the methods we have make sense at the beauracratic level.) It's either Winner Takes All or Proportional "give what they actually got in each district", and the state governments can essentially change whenever they want. (Which some months ago caused a good deal of anger because they were trying to essentially change how the votes got apportioned out in two different states, both of them essentially to the opposite one they were currently using.)
That said, the French system seems hideously more complicated, given how you choose that one body of Congress. I'm also not sure I get the point of two round voting. I don't think most people here would care enough to vote a second time.
At least this campaign will have brought forth something wonderful. Sarkozy's
◊ Trollcadero
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C'EST LE SAAAAAAARKO DE LA VIEEEEEEE, UN CYCLE INFERNA-AL! CHUIS CONTENT QUE CE SOIT FINI!...
Melenchon is going up against Le Pen in the parliamentary elections.
First round of legislative elections set to give Hollande 35% - up to about 40% when you add his Green Party allies into the mix. A lefty majority is likely, meaning it's going to be easier for Hollande's big reforms to get through. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18388273

It would be funny if the second cohabitation government is PS president, UMP ministers.
It would be even funnier if it were Front de Gauche instead of UMP that got a majority. Le contraire, ce serait bourgeois