Friday, May 11, 2012

And the winner is...


For those of you who are fond of politics or international affairs you might have been following the French presidential elections. Elections in France vary a bit from elections in the United States. First of all, in order to be authorized to run for president, the candidate has to collect at least 500 signatures from elected representatives in France, whereas in the US you can write down whoever you want and have your vote count. My family in the US is quite politically active, so naturally the French presidential elections interested me. I was initially shocked when I found out that for the 2012 presidential elections in France voter turnout was at an impressive 80% compared to the United States voter turnout of 58% for the last presidential elections, which was the highest percentage in four decades. This surprised me only because there was very little talk about politics/elections, almost no discussions about presidential debates, no mudslinging ads, and no little signs to put in your front yard, only posters of the candidates placed outside the town hall.



This photo shows all of the candidates for the 2012 elections. It was interesting to see how different each candidate was from the others, since in the US it's basically just a 2 party system; you're either a Democrat or a Republican.

The first round I went with my host dad to the town hall to see how the French voting process worked. It went very quickly, we were in and out in less than 5 minutes. First my host dad showed his id and then collected 10 slips of paper, everyone with the name of each candidate, chose his preferred candidate and placed it in an envelope to put in the voting urn, he also had a card that had to be stamped, which prevents him from trying to vote multiple times, like this one below.



That night on the TV we found out the results; Sarkozy and Hollande received the highest percentages and since neither one got the majority of the votes, they would have to wait 2 weeks for the second round of elections.


Here are the percentages from the first round of the elections. One of the more surprising results was that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front received third place and a very healthy 18% of the vote.
Candidates
Parties
Votes
%
Socialist Party (Parti socialiste)
10,272,705
28.63
Union for a Popular Movement (Union pour un mouvement populaire)
9,753,629
27.18
National Front (Front national)
6,421,426
17.90
Left Front (Front de gauche)
3,984,822
11.10
Democratic Movement (Mouvement démocrate)
3,275,122
9.13
Europe Écologie–The Greens (Europe Écologie–Les Verts)
828,345
2.31
Arise the Republic (Debout la République)
643,907
1.79
New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste)
411,160
1.15
Workers' Struggle (Lutte Ouvrière)
202,548
0.56
Solidarity and Progress (Solidarité et Progrès)
89,545
0.25


Here's how the posters for the candidates are presented outside of the voting place (usually a town hall). The translated slogans are for Hollande "The change is now" and for Sarkozy "Strong France" or "France the strong"
So who was it going to be? Were the French ready to say adieu to Sarkozy?
May 6th, the day of the second round of elections we all got up from dinner to watch the results. It was like New Years, everyone was counting down the seconds on the screen and they had both the images of Sarkozy and Holland spinning around the screen with us waiting anxiously for them to stop, which really mounted the tension. It was exciting for me to be there when it happened in real time instead of hearing about it afterwords, I'm sure this will be something I'll remember for a long time. So without further ado, the winner is....

Francois Hollande
It was an incredibly close election; Francois received 52% and Sarkozy 48%.He will begin replacing Sarkozy the 15th of May. So there was your little general culture for the day! Now we'll wait and see how his presidency will affect the euro zone meltdown and France's economy.