1. Limoges is a traditional Communist stronghold.

2. Paris: this is the first time a candidate from the left has won Paris in the first round. All Paris region departments voted Hollande in 1st place except Sarko's home base, the wealthy Hauts-de-Seine.

3. Bayrou's home base is the Béarn area (Pau etc).

5. The two regions where the FN has built a strong base are the North and PACA (Provence Alpes Côtes d'Azur). The anti-correlation points, imo, to the fact that Mélenchon failed to make an inroad into the FN electorate.

6. The broad regional differences are traditional.

he got the right

The FN got a big chunk of the right, and those votes are not going to come to Sarko easily.

If you want to go against democracy, there are arguments for them, but then state it plainly.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi

But the campaign didn't otherwise touch on religion. I think the practising Catholic electorate is staunchly traditional-conservative, that's all.

Ex-UMP, opposed the "EU Constitution" in 2005. His party was founded as an "authentic Gaullist". He's associated with Jacques Pasqua (authoritarian interior minister in the 80s) but didn't associate with Declan Ganley's Libertas because, despite their agreement against the EU they don't share the economic ultraliberalism.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

It just seems too easy to co-opt  protest movements sometimes...

Index of Frank's Diaries

From their €2M home.

Two years after the eviction notice was issued.

They own 20 other properties and have business interests in Germany.

I'm not sure that this is the place to going looking for a brilliant new narrative ...

What I'm seeing is that, though a Krugman did NOT really had his say, its explanations are considered, even on the radical left, as inefficient.

This is, I believe, one of the differences between right and left: to the right, it doesn't matter that Sarkozy's or austerians policies didnt work: they know that, even unsuccessful, these policies will take a step in the general direction they deem positive.

My feeling is that even people like Krugman or Stiglizt have very important difficulties to get their message  through, so I don't think someone applied their ideas yet. It is part of the right's narrative to explain the contrary, because the right has found itself in a difficult position after the 2007 (-2012?) crisis in terms of communication. Pretending that keynesians policies have been tried and that they failed, even if an outright lie, is good to get them out of the communication trap.

And it is a common error from the left side to just accept this statement as fact.

The quantitative easing from the FED illustrated:

No keynesian infrastructure projects (like Tennessee Valley Authority) here... everything's financial.

A free fox in a free henhouse!

My bigger concern is how much difference a Hollande victory will make: will he really stand up to Merkel/ECB et al regardless of his "decent programme"? IS he another triangulator or will he be strong enough to lead Europe in a new direction?

Perhaps Merkel will be weakened ahead of and then defeated in the next German election that then there could be a pathway to a new direction.  Just when will the EU/Commission/Council/Parliament/ECB accept it is primarily their responsibility to regulate banks and develop a growth/jobs strategy for Europe?

Index of Frank's Diaries

Sarkozy     27.08%
1/2 Le Pen   9.01%
40% Bayrou   3.64%
Other right  1.8%

Total	    41.53%

I don't know what to do with Cheminade. Lyndon LaRouche WTF!?

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

Incoherent, certainly. There isn't anywhere near 18% of voters with a coherent far-right ideology (probably less than half that).

What fascinates me is the systematic error by all of the polling institutes : they had Le Pen 3-4% low, and Mélenchon 3-4% high. They are not transparent about how they massage their figures -- the French are, apparently, fairly devious about their political opinions when polled -- but on its face, that indicates a certain percentage of people who claimed to intend to vote Mélenchon, who ended up voting Le Pen.

This seems sociologically plausible to me. One of the reasons I was excited about Mélenchon's campaign was that I perceived him as able to reach out to the incoherent Le Pen voters. But in the end, he ended up aggregating the usually splintered far-left vote -- no mean feat in itself -- and no more.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

People see social coherence dwindling and are afraid. They are right. But then they blame immigration...

People who are motivated by bigotry are not amenable to any kind of other appeal. They are angry at the enemy and will pull the roof down on themselves if necessary.

IIRC, Total has already had to promise not to close certain French refineries in the next few years, despite ridiculously low crack spreads.

Speaking of a general lashing out, I do not care particularly if French politicians just lambast Total or shoot poison rhetorical arrows at it, that's fine by me. :)

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

Lesson: A coalition of the left is necessary.

Unfortunately, a coalition of the left is probably not necessary. The mechanics of the anomalous French two-round electoral system is likely to deliver power to the PS, with little or no necessity to make concessions to its allies or competitors on the left.

Firstly, Hollande will be elected, not by a coalition, but by the co-optation of those who voted for candidates who voted for other candidates of the left.

For the legislatives, it's even worse. The Greens will get, theoretically, between 15 and 30 MPs -- a historic record -- exclusively in districts where the PS has agreed not to run an official candidate against ours (more on this anon). The FDG, in my analysis, does not have enough support to enable them to significantly increase their current representation (15 MPs I think) without negotiating something similar with the PS.

The best result we can hope for is that the PS will not have an absolute majority in parliament; but even in this case, those holding the balance will almost certainly be in a sort of feudal relationship.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

It is, I suppose,  convenient to have a script where those who think 11% electoral showing with a good candidate indicates a limitation of tactical utility, those who fail to cheer for the militant populist approach that is bound to work sometime, must necessarily have an even more ridiculous point of view.