France’s current electoral system uses single-member
districts, elected over two rounds. In
the first round, voters can cast their vote any way they please. Candidates need to meet a threshold to
qualify for the second round. The
threshold is set at 12.5% of registered voters; when you bear in mind that
turnout is well below 100%, this threshold is higher than it sounds, and more
often than not only two candidates qualify to the second round, which then
becomes a face-off between a left-wing and a right-wing candidate. Occasionally two candidates from the left or
from the right meet the threshold; usually the one with the lower score will
stand down in order to concentrate the vote behind the better placed candidate
from their side. This doesn’t always
happen though, especially when one of the three qualifiers is from the
far-right Front National (FN), in which case there is a “triangulaire”, or
three-horse race. In the second round,
the rules of simple plurality apply. If
there are two candidates, the winner will – by definition – win an absolute
majority of the vote in the second round, whereas a plurality will suffice when
there are three or more candidates.
This electoral system has numerous
consequences. It tends to crowd out
smaller parties, including the Front National who have won a total of only two
seats in the past five elections, despite a steady vote share of 10-20%. Another party to suffer from this problem is
François Bayrou’s party, Mouvement Démocrat or MoDem. Bayrou came third in the 2007 presidential
elections with 18% of the vote, but his party was annihilated in the
parliamentary elections barely two months later, obtaining only three seats out
of 577. It is understandable, then, why
both François Bayrou and Marine le Pen (FN) are calling for proportional
representation. Their share of
parliamentary seats, their status and their power would undoubtedly increase as
a result of a more proportional seat allocation.
What is less clear is why François Hollande and
Nicolas Sarkozy are also supporting PR.
The Socialists are pre-eminent but not omnipotent amongst left-wing
parties, with numerous smaller parties eating away at the left-wing vote
share. To ensure a unified left-wing
vote, parties on the left have often cut electoral deals, whereby smaller
parties will be granted some seats that are not contested by the other
left-wing parties, in exchange for standing down and supporting a different
left-wing candidate in the remainder of seats.
This has led to some concentration of the left-wing vote from the first
round, although only in constituencies where the left has a credible chance of
being elected. In right-wing dominated
seats, there is no logic to congregating behind a single candidate, especially
as each party obtains part of its state funding for every vote cast for that
party. So the smaller parties may lose
out on funding if they stand down too frequently in support of a Socialist
candidate. In addition, the Socialists,
as the dominant partner in bilateral negotiations with smaller left-wing
parties, have been able to reserve more seats for themselves than their vote
share would dictate. Thus, the current
electoral system promotes co-operation between left-wing parties that permits
the parliamentary presence of parties such as the Greens, the Radical Left
Party (le Parti radical de gauche), the Communist Party and a few others. But the Socialists remain the main party of
the left, and their pre-eminent status might be threatened by the introduction
of PR. If Hollande is making a gesture
towards smaller left-wing parties and centrist voters, all of whom he hopes to
rally around him in the second round, he needs to tread carefully. The likely gains that such a promise will
bring him seem to be outnumbered by the potential threat to his party if PR is
introduced. At the same time, the French
left have rarely achieved their electoral potential in France, which has earned
the description: “France thinks to the
left but votes to the right” (la France à gauche qui vote à droite). Perhaps Hollande is hoping that PR will help
to reverse this trend.
As for Sarkozy, the appeal of PR is even less
clear. It is obvious that the noises he
has made in this direction were aimed squarely at the FN electorate, whom he is
trying to woo away from Marine le Pen and towards himself. If the FN want PR, and Hollande is offering
it, Sarkozy may feel he needs to make a counter-offer in order to win over FN
voters in the second round, without whom he will certainly lose. However, PR is such an unrealistic prospect
for his party (the UMP) that his overtures on this topic have already been
muted. The UMP loathe PR with a
passion. It is seen as the electoral
system that brought down the Fourth Republic.
From 1944 to 1958, France’s parliament was elected with PR, resulting in
an atomised party system and dysfunctional coalition governments that kept
disbanding within a few months of their formation. The experience was one that the right are
eager not to repeat. In 1958, Charles de
Gaulle – whose legacy is still adhered to by many on the right – founded the
Fifth Republic, with the new institutional design including the current
two-round electoral system. The
combination of parliamentary majorities, stable governments and a more powerful
presidency has been credited with the relative stability and long duration of
the Fifth Republic. Only once since this
time has anyone dared tinker with the electoral system. In 1986, after five unpopular years at the
helm, François Mitterrand saw that his party (the Socialists) were certain to
lose the forthcoming parliamentary elections.
He therefore changed the electoral system to one of partial PR, which
mitigated his party’s losses even though it was not sufficient to stop them
from losing. The victorious right-wing
majority reversed the electoral system to the two-round format as one of their
first acts of office. The PR experiment
was almost universally viewed as negative.
Its partisan motivations did not reflect well on the Socialists, and
later attempts to introduce a gender parity law were contingent on an
understanding that they were not a veiled attempt to reintroduce more profound electoral
reform. The FN, who have been
marginalised from power at every other election, achieved their mainstream
break-through in the 1986 election, winning 35 seats. This victory propelled them from a minor to a
major player in French politics, a status they have retained ever since despite
their subsequent quasi-absence from parliamentary representation. Even women’s representation, which is
normally positively associated with PR, did not increase in 1986. Hence, no tears were shed when the electoral
system was returned to the two-round system, and electoral reform has been off
the table ever since.
For all these reasons, the sudden support for PR
from all four major candidates comes as something of a surprise. It reveals the extent to which the two main
candidates are feeling insecure and are seeking to draw in voters from the
other parties. Hollande needs to unite a
divided left that stretches out from the very far left to the centre, as well
as trying to mobilise Bayrou’s supporters in the second round. Sarkozy also needs to win over Bayrou’s
supporters, as well as bringing the far-right on board. He is more likely to achieve the latter
through his discourses on immigration, but PR offers one means of appealing to
moderate and far-right voters in the same breath. Unfortunately for Sarkozy, this tactic is
doomed to failure because his own party simply will not entertain the notion of
electoral form. It is not certain that
Hollande’s party will go for it either, as a rational analysis suggests that
they have more to lose than to gain from such a measure, and it is not clear
that the voters are hungry for electoral reform. Hence, despite all the noise about PR in
these elections, I would not be surprised to see the two-round system endure
beyond the next election.
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