French elections: First Past The Post Voting

The final round of the French elections took place on 7th July and it saw defeat for the far right National Rally. 

That’s something that looked unlikely after the first round of voting a week earlier. Today we’re going to look at how this happened.

Firstly, what’s very clear is that, if France used the same single round First Past The Post electoral system as the UK, the far right would likely have won a majority on 30th June.

They would have done so with just 33.2% of the vote - marginally lower than the vote share won by Labour in their landslide victory earlier this month. This is the major drawback of First Past The Post voting systems.

Absolute power shouldn’t be awarded to parties that win just over a third of the vote.

The crisis of a far right Parliament in France was averted because the left and centrist parties decided to cooperate. 

After the first round of voting which had National Rally heading for victory, over 200 left and centrist candidates withdrew from the race - leaving the majority of seats as two way battles between National Rally and a Left or centrist candidate. 

Here’s the difference that made - 

It led to a disproportionate outcome where in Round 2, National Rally’s 37% of the vote turned into 20% of the seats won. 

Effectively the left and the centrist parties ‘gamed the system’ by ensuring the non-far right vote was not split between the parties of the left and centre.

Anyone who cares about democracy will be glad that the National Rally and their allies were defeated. However the fact they got this close to power should worry all of us.

This was a reminder that First Past The Post voting is especially flawed when there’s more than two parties involved in an election.

That’s what we saw in the UK, where Labour won a huge majority with the support of just 1 out of 3 voters. That’s what we saw in the first round of voting in France where National Rally led with just under a third of the vote.

With multi-party voting in a First Past The Post system, the winning post for ANY party drops down dramatically. With a proportional representation system of voting, a party has to win 50% of the vote. 

So far this has proved well out of reach for extreme political parties. But with First Past The Post, unassailable majorities can be secured with a third of the vote.

That’s a much more achievable target for extremists and populists.

The recent elections in France and the UK lay this problem bare. 

In the UK, some have welcomed the fact that the electoral system denied Reform more than 5 MPs, despite winning 14% of the vote. 

But the fact is that if Reform had won just 1.6% more of the vote, in the right places, then they would have won 90 seats and would be the official opposition in Parliament right now.

The Conservatives would have won significantly more votes, but would have fewer seats than Reform. 

This is how bad and dangerous First Past The Post voting is.

It’s time that countries like France and the UK changed their voting system to proportional representation. Overnight that would ease the threat of an extremist takeover - with no need to ‘game the system’.

It will ensure that people get what they actually vote for and that can only be good for democracy.

Please back our campaign for electoral reform in the UK by clicking below.