AHC: President Jean-Marie Le Pen

this is kind of based off of the "Jospin wins in '02" thread, so is there any way that Jean-Marie Le Pen could of won that race or was it just magic he made it to round 2 at all.
 
this is kind of based off of the "Jospin wins in '02" thread, so is there any way that Jean-Marie Le Pen could of won that race or was it just magic he made it to round 2 at all.

No magic, but to go on the second ballot, he needed only 17% (there were 15 other candidates, an all time record). To win, he would have needed 50 or more. Thank God (or Charles de Gaulle) for the 2 ballot system!
 
No. Even if the second round was Jospin-Le Pen, I guess the margin would have been somewhat closer provided a small majority of the conservative voters would have chosen Le Pen and a far more important faction wouldd have gone fishing on election day. But he would have lost.

Unlike, probably, other right-wing populist leaders in Europe, Le Pen has managed to secure a sizeable fraction of the French electorate, but he is positively hated by some 40% of the population and feared by another 35 %. Remain 5 % of hardcore extemist voters, 10 % who vote Le Pen as some form of protest (many Le Pen voters have voted previously for the Communists...) and 5 % of conservatives who despise le Pen but would rather have Belzebuth for President than a Socialist.

It's not only the racism and antisemitism, even if, of course, it plays a major role in Le Pen's isolation. His ideology has its roots in the most shameful times of French history (Vichy and the Algerian coup) and, on top of everything, he's a radical Thatecherite when it comes to economics in a country where (for good and worse), egalitarian values are treasured byt the majority. The illegitimate child of Sarah Palin and Pat Robertson, raised by David Duke, would not be worse. As a sidenote, it is the honor of the French conservatives to have consistently refused any deal with the Front National.

Then again, when Le Pen passes away, his far more subtle daughter will most probably take the lead, and I'm pretty sure that a UMP-FN alliance would not be impossible...
 
Jean-Marie Le Pen had no chance to become President in 2002... It created quite a shock when it was revealed he was on the second turn of the Presidential Election against Chirac instead of Jospin. The result was an increase of the participation, although this can be explained by the events between the two turns (you rarely see a decrease of the participation), but also 82% of the votes went for Jacques Chirac.

The reason? The FN was seen (and is still seen I believe) as the legitimate heir of Vichy and the OAS. To some, the FN is even affiliated to Nazism.
Besides, Le Pen loves to provoke scandals. He was many times condemned in court for disrespectful comments, notably one where he emmited doubts on the Shoah's existence.

One last thing that could have played out (although I'm not really sure it did) is that Le Pen is probably the oldest figure still active in the French politics. Today, he is in his 80s while in 2002, he was in his 70s. Only former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing is as old and active (he has a sit in the Conseil d'Etat) : all the other have ended their political career.

Some can argued that if Jacques Chirac had debated with Jean Marie Le Pen, the latter could have pressured and provoked Chirac and that would have won Le Pen the necessary votes to become President.
I hardly belive Television debates can have a real influence of people, unless a big scandal is revealed. So, even if it had happened, I belive Le Pen would have (maybe) got more votes but I doubt he would have had more than 25%...

In fact, I belive the only scenario in which Le Pen could be elected is the one where he had to face a Far left candidate (Hard Communists, Troskits and others) as people would probably prefer to have a Far Right Leader than a Far Left one. Even today, the FN alone has as many votes (if not more) as all Far Left parties combined. Now, the chances of having Le Pen facing a Far left candidate are more than slim... They're pratically near Zero. The French election generally ends with a second turn opposing the candidate of the main right party (actually the UMP) against the one of the main left party (the PS). There have been few elections contredicting this.
 
No hope. I can't think of a scenario where a less palatable person would join him in the second ballot. I don't see them improving with his equally odious daughter, Marine, for that matter. The second ballot system means that a far right party will actually need 50% of voters to vote for them to gain a seat, not through vote splitting. Think of the case when David Duke got through to the Louisiana governor election (under a similar system) - a total arsewipe can get to the second round, but will never win it.

Besides, last time round it looked like they only go through to round two in one seat - the one in a crappy part of the North-East run in by JMlP's daughter. OK, better than the BNP did in Barking and Dagenham, but there's the second ballot in France. AV wouldn't make much difference, the far right don't get second preferences. They need either sheer flukes under FPTP or party list with no barrage.
 
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