French Elections 2017

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France's Le Pen to run in parliamentary elections

Emerging from her crushing defeat in France's presidential contest, Marine Le Pen said Thursday she will run for a parliamentary seat in June elections and that her National Front party has "an essential role" in a new political landscape.

Le Pen will run for a seat in a district in her northern stronghold of Henin-Beaumont, a hardscrabble former mining region where she lost a similar bid in 2012. A new failure could jinx her bid to unite the National Front and to make it France's leading opposition party.

"I cannot imagine not being at the head of my troops in a battle I consider fundamental," Le Pen said in an interview on the TF1 television station, her first public appearance since her May 7 loss to centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Le Pen announced her candidacy while facing forces of division that could frustrate her new goals. Her popular niece is leaving politics, her disruptive father is back in the ring and her party is in disarray.

At the same time, Macron has upset the political equation, drawing from the left and right to win the presidency and to create his government. The new president now is looking across the political spectrum to obtain a parliamentary majority to support his agenda.

"We are in reality the only opposition movement," Le Pen said.

"We will have an essential role to play (and) a role in the recomposing of political life," she said, reiterating her contention that the left-right divide has been replaced by "globalists, Europeanists and nationalists" like herself.

Le Pen is counting on the 10.6 million votes she received as a presidential candidate to propel her anti-immigration party into parliament in the June 11 and June 18 elections.

The party also hopes to pick up votes from "electoral orphans" unsatisfied with Macron and feeling betrayed by the mainstream right, National Front Secretary-General Nicolas Bay said this week.

The National Front plans to field candidates for each of France's 577 electoral districts, hoping to block Macron's movement from obtaining a majority of seats and to secure a strong bloc of its own to counter his new government.

Le Pen dismissed the notion that there were links between her loss and a series of events widely seen as potentially weakening the National Front.

The party recently lost a rising star who served as a unifier on its conservative southern flank. One of the National Front's two current lawmakers — Le Pen's niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen — announced last week that she was leaving politics, at least temporarily.

Enter Jean-Marie Le Pen, who likened his granddaughter's exit from politics to a "desertion."

The elder Le Pen, who was expelled from the party he co-founded because of his penchant for making anti-Semitic comments, is backing up to 200 parliamentary candidates through an ultra-conservative alliance, the Union of Patriots.

Some of the five parties represented in the alliance are headed by former National Front militants who, like Jean-Marie Le Pen, were expelled by his daughter in her bid to scrub up the party's image for the presidential contest.

His own Jeanne Committees will present some 35 of the 200 candidates. The decision smacks of revenge, but the elder Le Pen's aide denied that was the case.

"This is not meant to cause trouble for the National Front. It is to defend the values that the National Front no longer defends," the aide, Lorrain de Saint Affrique, said.

The risk that other far-right parties would challenge the National Front "has existed since the National Front decided to exclude Jean-Marie Le Pen," De Saint Affrique said. "They should have thought of that then."
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f2wohf said:
The voting system in the parliamentary is very unfavorable to the FN.

The major parties all have a tacit alliance where when the FN gets first or second, the candidate with the most votes from the major parties remains and the others withdraw, leading to the FN always being defeated.
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Well I was looking at her previous result in 2012.

So she just lost there by 180 votes. If she's standing in the same constituency, she'll win given the trends since 2012...
 
Chris_the_Brit said:
Well I was looking at her previous result in 2012.

So she just lost there by 180 votes. If she's standing in the same constituency, she'll win given the trends since 2012...
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She will probably win, I doubt the party will get many seats though.
 
Macron’s party set for big majority after parliamentary vote

President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party is on course to win a massive majority after the first round of France’s parliamentary election, which also confirmed the collapse of traditional parties.

Projections showed Macron’s La République en Marche (LRM) — a movement-turned party that is barely a year old — and their allies winning more than 32 percent of the vote. Pollsters estimated they could win as many as 445 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly in a runoff vote next Sunday.

Next came the conservative Les Républicains party with around 21 percent and Marine Le Pen’s National Front with about 14 percent.

If the predictions prove correct, Macron and his allies from the MODEM party would have total control over parliament. That would give the 39-year old president, elected last month, a free hand to carry out reforms starting with a controversial overhaul of hiring and firing rules.

Former President François Hollande’s Socialist Party won only around 10 percent of the vote, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left France Insoumise (France Unbowed) movement was on 11 percent.

The Socialists and the Les Républicains — France’s traditional major parties — were already in crisis before Sunday’s result, having failed to make the second round of the presidential election last month.
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Hamish McPanji said:
Sacre bleu!! For ze new patty, zis is tres amazing!!!
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Lol, do you know nobody says sacre bleu since the 18th century ? ;)

It's good as he will have a huge majority (I don't since how many decades such a majority didn't happen but I don't think it ever happened in my lifetime) and will get the full credit for his successes but also the full blame for his failures.

Le Pen gets 2 to 5 seats and most of her high level guys get eliminated, so far for the supposed far right swing...

The socialist party gets annihilated with probably one of its worse results in its history.
 
I just searched, it is the biggest majority in the 5th Republic, so since 1958.
 
f2wohf said:
Lol, do you know nobody says sacre bleu since the 18th century ? ;)

It's good as he will have a huge majority (I don't since how many decades such a majority didn't happen but I don't think it ever happened in my lifetime) and will get the full credit for his successes but also the full blame for his failures.

Le Pen gets 2 to 5 seats and most of her high level guys get eliminated, so far for the supposed far right swing...

The socialist party gets annihilated with probably one of its worse results in its history.
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I think it was Charles de Gaulle who won anything close to this majority. And he was probably the last person to say Sacre bleu as well.

I learnt it in primary school French, I think the teacher was pranking us for when we were able to visit France. The other one is Zut alors!! She was a bit of a putain , she didn't teach us that a simple "merde" would work for most day to day occasions
 
Ahah.

Surprisingly my ward is still not announced.
 
Le Pen's party gets 8% less votes than in 2012.
 
For the first time 2/3 of the MPs will be new MPs (not elected before) and 40% of women.
 
OrbitalDawn said:
How can they know all this stuff already if the second round hasn't even happened yet?
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They don't. Ipsos exit poll I think. Just a projection, assuming the same people vote.

I think the top 2 in each constituency face off against each other. Am just guessing, though.
 
Hamish McPanji said:
They don't. Ipsos exit poll I think. Just a projection, assuming the same people vote.

I think the top 2 in each constituency face off against each other. Am just guessing, though.
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Anyybody who has more than 12.5% of the votes qualified for round 2.
 
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