Plan B Forum

Posted: **Sun Mar 23, 2014 8:55 pm**

The far-right anti-immigration National Front party in France is making significant gains in local elections, according to exit polls.

It nearly won an outright majority in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont and is first in some other towns it was targeting, the polls suggest.

President Francois Hollande's Socialists trail the centre-right UMP.

The vote is seen as an important test for the Socialists, deeply unpopular after nearly two years in power.

The Socialists were also hit by the low turnout in the first round of the elections - exit polls suggest up to 35% of voters stayed at home.

National Front leader Marine Le Pen said her party had "arrived as a major independent force - a political force at both national and local level".

Posted: **Sun Mar 23, 2014 9:20 pm**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9nin-Beaumont

"... In the 2009 election to replace the incumbent Socialist mayor who had resigned after a corruption scandal, the National Front took first place in the first round with 39% of the vote. A left-wing list was second with 20% of the vote.[1] This led all other parties including the center-right Union for a Popular Movement to support the list led by the independent left-wing candidate, Daniel Duquenne in the second round runoff. Duquenne won the race 52%-48%.[2]

In the first round of the 2012 presidential election, Marine Le Pen won in Hénin-Beaumont, with 35% of the vote, ahead of François Hollande (27%) and Nicolas Sarkozy (16%). ... "

Not the place I would choose to generalize from. Makes a pungent headline. But not an accurate one.

yrs,
rubato

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2014 3:37 pm**

A two-party system has its shortcomings, but it is disturbing to see political contests where someone can "win" with less than 40% of the vote.

Posted: **Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:04 pm**

Can you read? The FN's vote in the first round of those elections was 39% and 35%. In France, any elections that are not won by an outright majority go to a runoff, in which the top two candidates run again to determine the winner. Every person elected in France has done so with at least 50% of the vote, which is more than can be said in the U.S., even with its much vaunted two party system.

Posted: **Wed Mar 26, 2014 7:17 pm**

Yes, I can read, and I understand. A party with less than 40% support can win an election. Ultimately.

Can't you read?

Posted: **Wed Mar 26, 2014 8:23 pm**

I think Scooters mistake here is assuming that he wasn't speaking to a total fucking moron.

The only way your response would make sense is if you somehow were deluded enough to believe that the supermajority of people actually voted for the candidate actually supporteh them instead of voting against the other guy

Posted: **Wed Mar 26, 2014 11:50 pm**

dgs49 wrote:Yes, I can read, and I understand. A party with less than 40% support can win an election. Ultimately.

Can't you read?

Let's try using as many one syllable words as possible, and see if you get it this time.

If a candidate does not get a majority in the first round of votes, it goes to a runoff. In the runoff, there are only two candidates. If one of the candidates in the runoff has less than 40% of the vote, that means the other candidate got more than 60%. That means that the candidate with more than 60% of the vote will win, and the candidate with less than 40% of the vote will lose.

Are you getting it now, or would a diagram help?

Posted: **Thu Mar 27, 2014 1:29 am**

I'm sorry Scooter, I didn't quite get that...

Could you go through it one more time, a little slower? Thanks.*

*READING COMPREHENSION GUIDE FOR RUBE:

That was a joke...

A...Joke:

joke
jōk/
noun
noun: joke; plural noun: jokes

1.a thing that someone says to cause amusement or laughter
synonyms: jest, witticism, quip, drollery

Used in a sentence: "When a resident of Santa Cruz who posts on this board claims to be a scientist, he must be joking"

Posted: **Thu Mar 27, 2014 8:19 pm**

Fun, fun, fun.

Candidate #1 has the fervent support of 35% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #2 has the fervent support of 26% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #3 has the fervent support of 20% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #4 has the fervent support of 19% of the electorate.

In the runoff, the fervent supporters of Candidates #3 and 4 stay home, and do not vote. Everybody who votes in the final election votes for the same candidate as before. Candidate #1 wins with 57% of the final vote.

Even though only 35% of the voters supported him.

It's really not that complicated, and in fact it happens all the time, even in our enlightened country. The supporters of fringe candidates in the primaries do not vote in the general election when their candidate loses to another candidate from the same party. Voter turnout is low, and the winner takes 52% of the votes cast, which equals 25% of the eligible voters.

Now, that wasn't difficult, was it?

Posted: **Thu Mar 27, 2014 8:44 pm**

I would bet in most cases a good number of the voters who originally voted in the 4 way election would still vote in the runoff election, if only to vote against the candidate they don't want to win. Much like our "two party" system where a majority of the time many, if not most, voters do not support the person they are voting for, but see him/her preferable to the alternative.

Posted: **Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:07 pm**

dgs49 wrote:Fun, fun, fun.

Candidate #1 has the fervent support of 35% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #2 has the fervent support of 26% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #3 has the fervent support of 20% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #4 has the fervent support of 19% of the electorate.

In the runoff, the fervent supporters of Candidates #3 and 4 stay home, and do not vote. Everybody who votes in the final election votes for the same candidate as before. Candidate #1 wins with 57% of the final vote.

Even though only 35% of the voters supported him.

It's really not that complicated, and in fact it happens all the time, even in our enlightened country. The supporters of fringe candidates in the primaries do not vote in the general election when their candidate loses to another candidate from the same party. Voter turnout is low, and the winner takes 52% of the votes cast, which equals 25% of the eligible voters.

Now, that wasn't difficult, was it?

First, your scenario is so far fetched as to be past ridiculous. Not the least because the differences in ideology between parties in a multiparty system are far more nuanced than the black and white choice of a two party system, making it far more likely that a voter would be willing to support a party other than his/'her first choice. If you have only a fascist party and communist party, supporters of one are highly unlikely to ever support the other. If however you have five or six parties that span the political spectrum, there is going to be more overlap between the ideologies of the parties, making it easier for supporters of one to shift to another in runoff elections.

Second, elections are decided based on those who actually show up to vote, not on who is eligible to vote. Election results are NEVER reported as a percentage of eligible voters, which is a number that is impossible to determine, in any case.

Third, since you admit that in two party systems with low voter turnout, candidates can win by capturing a small portion of eligible voters, then what you allege to be a flaw of multiparty systems does not in fact have anything to do with how many parties are contesting the election. In fact, low voter turnout is a much greater problem in two party systems than in multiparty systems, which tend to have much higher voter turnout than your enlightened country. Perhaps you should try asking yourself why so many Americans feel comfortable choosing to stay home on election day, rather than spewing your ignorant critiques of voting systems with far higher voter participation than yours.

Now, that wasn't difficult, was it?

At least, if one is not a moron.

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:12 pm**

In 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected with only 26.6% of the votes from the voting-age population. Not different from the multi-party examples given above.

yrs,
rubato

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:19 pm**

And every US President since has been elected with less...

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 12:54 pm**

In the runoff, the fervent supporters of Candidates #3 and 4 stay home, and do not vote.

I'm sorry Dave, but that assertion is factually incorrect...

The numbers show that in French Presidential elections, either more people vote, or the drop off is very slight between the second round and the first. Here are the numbers for the three most recent French Presidential elections:

2002:

First round winners, and total vote, with all candidates:

Jacques Chirac Rally for the Republic 5,665,855 19.88%
Jean-Marie Le Pen National Front 4,804,713 16.86% (The elder Le-Pen nosed out the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, who got 16.18% of the vote, to make the runoff)

Total votes, all candidates: 28,498,471

Second round:

Jacques Chirac Rally for the Republic 25,537,956 82.21%
Jean-Marie Le Pen National Front 5,525,032 17.79%

Total vote: 31,062,988

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_pre ... tion,_2002

Three million more showed up to vote against Le-Pen then turned out for all candidates combined in round one.

For the next two I'm just going to give the totals and the links, (Since it's Wikipedia, the copying and pasting is a chore when it comes to tables) you can check out the breakdowns for yourself:

2007:

Total votes 1st round:

36,719,396

Total votes 2nd round:

35,773,578

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_pre ... tion,_2007

2012:

Total votes 1st round:

35,883,209

Total votes 2nd round:

34,861,353

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_pre ... tion,_2012

It can be argued that the '02 election was something of an anomaly because you had an extremist candidate make it into the second round which might motivate more people to come out to vote against them. But in the following two more "normal" elections, where you had a mainstream center-right candidate facing off against a mainstream center-left candidate, the drop off between the first two rounds was only around a million votes. Meaning that the vast majority of the people who voted for other candidates in the first round chose to cast a vote for one of the remaining candidates in the second round, rather than "staying home".

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:01 pm**

Election results are NEVER reported as a percentage of eligible voters, which is a number that is impossible to determine, in any case.

Well, yes and no...

Election results aren't reported or interpreted that way, but the number of eligible voters is a knowable one, (at least to within a margin of error; it's derived from census data)

Total number of Americans eligible to vote 206,072,000
Total number of Americans registered to vote 146,311,000
Total number of Americans who voted in the 2008 Presidential election 131,144,000

http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 1:26 pm**

="Lord Jim"And every US President since has been elected with less...

US presidential votes are quite different in all cases; putting aside the court challenges re the Florida vote, W was "elected" president with less of the popular votes cast than Gore; and this was not the only time in US history that such a result happened.

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 2:02 pm**

Big RR, I was responding to rube's comment about the percentage of the total eligible vote that Reagan received in 1980...

I haven't looked it up, but if I did I'm sure that I would find that since 1980, (which for some curious reason rube chose to select as the benchmark to try and make his point) that Mr. Reagan in 1984 received the highest percentage of the total eligible vote for any winning candidate (since he got the highest percentage of the vote cast; about 59%) and that Bill Clinton in 1992 had the lowest, (since Ross Perot got 19% of the vote cast in that race.)

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 2:23 pm**

OK, thanks.

ETA: This site might help to estimate the numbers better as percent of the vote and percent tunout are reported:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Un ... ote_margin

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 6:01 pm**

It is quite entertaining how many of you waste your time "arguing" with me when what I have said is not even controversial.

In the second round of voting, those whose candidates have lost in the early round can abstain, or vote for any number of perverse reasons OTHER THAN support of the eventual winner. It could be personal bias, the lesser bad of two bad choices, intent to punish one candidate or party. No matter how you slice it, in the typical scenario, the winner has the actual support of far fewer than half of the electorate.

It is the same situation as we always seem to have in our Presidential system. At the end of the gauntlet we call "Primaries" each party has chosen a candidate that 60% of the party faithful is unhappy with, but they support because they are forced to.

Posted: **Fri Mar 28, 2014 7:16 pm**

Oh Dave, now that's disappointing...

You're pullin' a rube....

Substituting a completely different assertion for the one you made in the first place, and then trying to pretend they mean the same thing rather than just admitting that your original claim was erroneous...

Here's what you said originally:

Candidate #1 has the fervent support of 35% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #2 has the fervent support of 26% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #3 has the fervent support of 20% of the electorate going into the first ballot.
Candidate #4 has the fervent support of 19% of the electorate.

In the runoff, the fervent supporters of Candidates #3 and 4 stay home, and do not vote. Everybody who votes in the final election votes for the same candidate as before. Candidate #1 wins with 57% of the final vote.

Even though only 35% of the voters supported him.

It's really not that complicated, and in fact it happens all the time, even in our enlightened country. The supporters of fringe candidates in the primaries do not vote in the general election when their candidate loses to another candidate from the same party. Voter turnout is low, and the winner takes 52% of the votes cast, which equals 25% of the eligible voters.

(Relevant portions highlighted)

In that passage you are clearly asserting in the hypothetical that you present that it's just the same 35% turning out to vote for the winning candidate; it only rises to 57% because those who voted for "the fringe" candidates aren't participating, and the overall number in the second round is lower, thus making the winning candidate's percentage of the total vote higher.

That claim is proven false by the numbers I presented which shows only a minor difference between the overall totals in the two rounds of voting.

Here's the completely different (in fact not just different; actually the opposite) statement that you're now trying to substitute in for your original :

In the second round of voting, those whose candidates have lost in the early round can abstain, or vote for any number of perverse reasons OTHER THAN support of the eventual winner. It could be personal bias, the lesser bad of two bad choices, intent to punish one candidate or party.

That statement is by and large correct, (though I would argue with your editorializing in characterizing reasons for voting for someone other than your first choice after that person has been eliminated from the race as "perverse") but it bears no relationship to what you said originally; in your original statement you claimed (incorrectly) that the people voting for losing candidates in the first round don't vote in the second. In your new claim you admit (correctly) that they do vote in the second round.

You try to rationalize this glaring difference by employing another rube technique; defining words situationally...

You seem to be saying that, yes they vote, but they don't really "support"...

But the fact is that in the second round for whatever reason, those who vote have chosen to "support" one candidate vis a vis the other; they prove this by the casting of their ballot...(even supporting a candidate's election with your vote because you see them as "the lesser of two evils" is still "support". By casting the ballot for candidate A you prove that you "support" candidate A over candidate B; by definition)

Now the only question is are you now prepared to concede that your original claim was mistaken (there's no great shame in being wrong; I've been wrong a number of times) and make your case regarding your second claim, or will you pull yet another move out of rube's bag of tricks and either:

A. Continue to insist that the completely different claims you made mean the same thing, thus continuing to dig yourself a deeper hole....

B. Walk away from the discussion completely without manning-up and admitting that your original claim was mistaken.

Plan B Forum

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