French Election Results: A Deep Dive into Tactical Voting and Its Implications

The second round of the French elections held yesterday has been followed worldwide with great interest because, based on the first round, it was speculated that the immigration-critical National Rally might rise to become the country's largest party and possibly even take on government responsibility.

However, when the results came out, it was clear that this did not happen. Instead, the largest party in parliament became the red-green New Popular Front with 182 seats. The center-right Ensemble pour la République, supported by President Macron, came second, and the National Rally ended up with only 143 seats. Other parties received 68 seats.

What makes the result interesting is something that, at least on their election coverage websites, the national broadcaster Yleisradio as well as private newspapers Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti failed to mention.

Namely, in Finnish elections, the percentage distribution of votes usually plays a major role. According to this, the clear winner of the elections was the National Rally with 37.1 percent. The New Popular Front, which grabbed the most seats, received "only" 25.8 percent, and the Ensemble coalition got 24.5 percent of the votes.

In other words, the elections saw a huge discrepancy between the parties' support and the number of parliamentary seats they received. The explanation for this was so-called tactical voting, an unholy alliance where the political center-right and left-green encouraged voters in each constituency to support each other's candidate if the National Rally candidate had a chance of winning.

One can – of course – ask whether true democracy was realized in the Gallic elections.

In this writing, however, I do not aim to answer the question I posed, but I note that it will be extremely difficult for Macron's supporters and the left-green to find common ground on the direction in which France will be governed in the future. And the situation is not helped by the fact that the left-green New Popular Front is very likely to break up during the current parliamentary term.

This might not matter much otherwise, but France's public finances are even more indebted than Finland's. And the country's economy has not grown in a long time. Meanwhile, the number of immigrants is steadily increasing, and as a result, the number of Muslims now stands at about 10 percent of the population.

Therefore, it remains to be seen what will happen in one of the EU's major powers in the upcoming parliamentary term. My guess is that we will see a lot of action and dangerous situations, so to speak, but France's problems will remain unresolved despite this. And this is not good for the EU, the French, or Finland.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Elections in the UK: A Shift Toward Hand-Waving Politics?
A National Rally election victory does not mean that France will become like Finland under the Finns Party
The future of all Europe is at stake