I seriously do not see him NOT being in the second round again in 2007. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Is he a nuissance, a bad guy or a really bad guy? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
So he is a populist anti-elite anti-immigrant clown (deprived of his EP seat for physically assaulting another candidate), with an impressive past (decorated veteran of the French paratroops in Indochina, Suez, and Algeria).
Probably a threat mainly to the socialists as he mainly attracts the votes of disgruntled working class people who don't like living next to Arab immigrants, (especially as he focus on being tough on crime)? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
The contrast being with the British system where the leader of a 20% party, elected himself in one particular district, can hold considerable power by providing a coalition with either of the other two 40% parties...
In the latest parliamentary elections, the FN got 11% of the vote, coming in third place. Can someone explain how it happened that the FN has no seats (according to wikipedia) even though much smaller parties did get seats?
In the 2004 European Parliament elections the FN got 9.8% of the vote and 7 seats. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
A second answer is the two-stage election; only candidates (within a circumscription) that win 10% in the first round advance to the second. As a result, FN candidates in the 2nd round are almost always in 3-way run offs; if it appears the FN candidate could win, "republican responsibility" often leads one of the two "major party" candidates to withdraw. However, these "triangulaires" are what made possible the 1997 Gauche plurielle victory; in 97 districts (IIRC) the left candidate won the 2nd round with less than 50% of the vote due to a "triangulaire."
IMHO, triangulating like that in order to shut the FN out of the parliament is counter-producing and only strengthens the FN as "anti-system" and "persecuted".
Better to let them have a small parliamentary group and make asses of themselves.
Single transferable vote would solve the problem without requiring that one of the "democratic" candidates withdraw. The mainstream left or right voters would vote for each other as second option and that would be that. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
A reason small parties (the Greens for example) can get deputies is as a result of bargaining with a big party (PS for the Greens). The PS and the Greens are currently hashing this out for next year, and having a job agreeing on numbers. The agreement, of course, is of a coalition nature; the PS will give the Greens some safe seats in return for Green support elsewhere.
No party negotiates this kind of agreement with the FN.
It's a vexed question, whether it's better to collude to keep the FN out, or let them in. They have no respect for parliamentary government, and dynamite it on every possible occasion. And they are not asses. Had they maintained a regular parliamentary presence over the last twenty years, I fear they might be even bigger today than they are.
If instead of actually fighting to get the protest voters back in the fold, the mainstream candidates can just collude, they get comfortable and the problems that the FN capitalizes on fester. Then if and when the Fn breaks through the enclosure, it does so catastrophically.
It is quite clear if you're going to have single-seat constituencies you should use single transferable vote. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
There is no significant difference with the British system here: both are FPTP, and both could in theory keep even a 20% party outside Parliament. What makes Britain (or if I want to be more precise, England) different is two things.
One is the strong geographic differences in the vote, the strong local traditions behind one party or the other: a 15% national vote for LibDem could mean 50% vote in some districts.
The other is the reason why three parties with long-running traditions can exist: the historical two-party system of Liberals and Conservatives could be modified due to the dual impact of WWI and a massive expansion of the circle of voters, among whom Labour found a foothold. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Bush or Chirac can be voted out by the nation as a whole, while still keeping their respective parties in office, but Blair can't be removed (except by his own small district) unless the country rejects the whole Labour party.
