Pink-Letter Day in France

Cover of tomorrow's Libération. (twitpic.com)

[UPDATE: Added video links]

As the iPhone app beside this paragraph indicates, it was kind of a big day for the Parti socialiste in France, who managed to win control of 21 of 22 regional councils in metropolitan France. Only Alsace squeaked by with a UMP majority, and overseas, the UMP won control of the council in La Réunion and possibly in Guyane as well. No “grand chelem” this time around, alas.

I’m less inclined to provide the same kind of analysis as I did for the first round, largely since I’m leaving France in less than two days, but also since not much actually changed. The abstention rate fell a bit, but it was still historically high. The UMP representatives on television still acted largely clueless, and even their candidates looked lost on the television. Valérie Pécresse, in fact, looked so lost, that the French Twitterverse erupted in speculation over how in the cups she may have been. (video) Frédéric Lefebvre kept up the same level of stupefying idiocy he showed last weekend, arguing that without the Front National, the PS would not be celebrating. But the UMP also fell back on the argument that it’s not their policies that are to blame here, but, rather, la crise, man.

It is interesting that even Corsica was captured by the PS this time around (while the news explained this, they cut to footage of Corsican nationalists shooting flares at a government building while brandishing the intimidating Corsican flag, particularly given that the leftists were not able to build a similarly strong coalition in Alsace. But Alsace will probably require some greater analysis. All I can provide here are the numbers. In the first round, the UMP won with 35% of the vote, followed by a split left (19% PS, 16% E-E). But the FN got 13% of the vote, and the extreme right 5%, and MoDem 4%. In the second round, UMP support soared to 46%, the PS support climbed to 39% (PS + E-E + 4 more points), and the FN picked up not even two points. The question then is whether those nine extra points came from MoDem. Furthermore, turnout improved in Alsace in the second round, showing that UMP did have some reserves, after all.

In any case, the funeral for the UMP has possibly begun, signaled by François Fillon’s wearing a black tie when addressing the nation on the embarrassing results shown by his party. (video) “Fillon en noir : c’est un deuil?” asked one person on Twitter. That seems to be the case.

As a final thought: in France, a campaigner or supporter–that is, anyone who is at an election night party–is called a “militant.” Hearing that word over and over without the radical connotation it has in the US was kind of jarring.

Tags: Alsace, Corsica, Europe-Écologie, France, François Fillon, Frédéric Lefebvre, Front National, Libération, MoDem, Parti Socialiste, UMP, Valérie Précresse