From the Financial Times:
Small parties crushed in French elections
By Ben Hall and Pan Kwan Yuk in Paris
June 10 2007
The historically low turnout in Sunday’s first round of France’s parliamentary elections looks set to hasten the demise of the smaller parties in the National Assembly, leaving a divided Socialist party to form the only real opposition to the dominant centre-right grouping of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Polling agencies last night estimated turnout at 60-63 per cent, the lowest for a first round of legislative elections for 40 years and more than 20 points down on the second round of last month’s momentous presidential contest.
French voters appear weary of politics after May’s dramatic race to the Elysée and following widespread predictions that the parliamentary elections were a foregone conclusion.
A sense that the parliamentary elections were simply the third round of the preceding presidential contest may help to explain why the centre-right UMP and its allies and the Socialists both did much better than expected, with 46 per cent and 36 per cent respectively, according to Ipsos estimates.
The poor performance of the smaller parties, accentuated by the two-round, first-past-the-post constituency system, means the National Assembly is set to become an essentially bipolar chamber, with an opposition centre-left confronting a governing centre-right that holds a crushing majority.
François Bayrou, the centrist who claimed to have broken the mould of French politics after scoring 18.6 per cent in the first round of the presidential election, has suffered a spectacular collapse in his fortunes.
His Mouvement Démocrate party won only 7 per cent of the vote, according to estimates by Ipsos, meaning it will have only a handful of deputies, far short of the 20 required to register as a formal parliamentary grouping.
The communists also look set to disappear from parliament as a formal group, after winning only 3 per cent together with the other far-left parties, according to Ipsos.
Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front also continued its sharp decline, winning 5 per cent compared with 11 per cent in 2002, and is once again likely to be left without parliamentary representation.
Despite the stronger-than-expected results for the two main parties, the low turnout will reduce the number of outright victories in the first round. To be elected in the first round, a candidate needs to win not only 50 per cent of the votes cast but also at least 25 per cent of the eligible electorate, a threshold that is harder to reach if turnout is low.
In the vast majority of constituencies, there will be a second round of voting on June 17, a run-off between all those candidates who secured the votes of at least 12.5 per cent of the electorate.
The results are likely to intensify the debate about whether France should adopt an element of proportional representation for its parliamentary elections. Mr Sarkozy has said he is open to the idea.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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