
A spectacular result for Marine Le Pen and France's far right - tajen
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21679606-first-round-migrant-crisis-helps-national-front-its-best-results-history
======
buserror
Well, it's a well known scarecrow tactics from the rest of the parties.
They'll all wear horrified looks for a week, tell the voters that Democracy's
Future is a stake and so on and so forth, and the sheep^H^H^H^Hvoters will
vote for anyone else next week. That was the case in pretty all the other
elections were the far right lead at the first round.

It works really well as a tactic too; if there is a risk of the far right (or
the UKIP, or whatever is the pet 'extremist' party in your country) making
serious advance, you first /encourage/ the electorate to go for a 'rejection
vote' \-- and when it works, everyone will look at each others saying 'OMG,
what have we done!' and vote the usual complete incompetent at the second
round. Pfew, we're all safe again.

The last excellent example of this tactic's implementation was the UKIP rise
and fall in the UK; that was textbook.

I'm writing this as a French national living in the UK, but also as a
completely apolitical observer BTW.

~~~
buserror
Ok so can I wear my "I told you so" t-shirt tomorrow ? ;-)

Results are in, no far right landslide as announced, in fact, no region won so
far.

And everyone else is busy dislocating their own shoulder slapping themselves
on the back.

See? Works everytime...

------
tajen
Here is the map: [http://www.france24.com/en/20151206-france-far-right-
nationa...](http://www.france24.com/en/20151206-france-far-right-national-
front-le-pen-tops-first-round-regional-elections)

Although this is only the first round and each region's score is independent,
in a national average the far right party get 28%, the traditional right gets
27%, and the currently elected leftish party of Francois Hollande gets 23%.

The last paragraph of the OP is the most interesting: It is as much a reaction
to the current economic dismay and the current politics of the reigning
government as a reaction to the immigration wave and to the management of the
terrorist attacks.

As for my opinion: Don't run an election during a state of emergency where
demonstrators are arrested. Also, it is important that moderate people have
no-one to vote for, because the leftish party focusses on war instead of
economy.

For example entrepreneur's tax office RSI was measured [1] to request wrong
tax amount to 40% of its 3 million members among other failures, and was
denied a reform in Spetember by the Socialist party. President Francois
Hollande from the same Socialist party has now decided to add even more debt
than allowed by the cap of European treaties in order to lead the war in
Syria. Many things require social measures in France, but the reigning party
is focussed on terrorism.

[1] RSI was inspected by Cour des Comptes: [http://www.lemonde.fr/les-
decodeurs/article/2015/09/21/pourq...](http://www.lemonde.fr/les-
decodeurs/article/2015/09/21/pourquoi-la-grogne-ne-retombe-pas-contre-le-
rsi_4765720_4355770.html)

