I read all over that Macron has seemingly come out successful of his political 4D strategy “gambit” calling for an early election. Can someone explain to me what his strategy was, what were the risks and what he saw that others didn’t that eventually led to this win? Sunak in the UK used a similar strategy with an early election which he lost. How are the two different then?
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The goal of an early (aka snap) election is to try and take advantage of a situation or circumstance that the person calling it thinks will give his/her side more seats in government.
If you have a narrow majority you call one to secure a larger majority.
If you have a coalition government you call one to secure a solo majority.
If you are facing a large/contentious issue you call it to shield yourself from the full effects of that issue doesn’t go smoothly (say Brexit). You can point to the “mandate” from the people.
Of course it can backfire, and you can lose seats, weakening your position, or losing the majority outright, as happened in the UK.
there are many things at play here but the simplified version is the French people voted for a very right wing EU Parliament but with a low voter turnout, just over 51% of the eligible voters actually voted and only a part of that voted for the far right.
His gamble was basically that these early elections will have a higher voter turn out which will then show the real situation in France which would either be that left or center parties win (like they did) or that the French people really want far right politics to happen.
The voter turnout was very high for these elections and as always when many people go vote the right wing parties lose.
That was the very simplified gamble here but theres also the factor here that this vote was called for on extremely short notice which also means there was no time for right wing parties and outside Influencers to use their fake news and anger based elections campaigns to their full potential.
Why did this work differently in the UK?
because the Tories have been in power for a very long time and have shown nothing but failure.
The UK has seen what happens when you let nationalists who are very good at shouting out all kinds of “facts” actually govern the country.
The campaigns they ran with for the last years and including everything leading up to the Brexit were mostly based on lies and false promises and the people are not realizing they have been lied to which is why even die hard Tory voters are turning away from them.
The EU elections and polling showed that the Far-right party was positioned to win the majority and form a government.
The next parliamentary elections were slated for 2027 together with presidential elections. So the fear was that the Far-right would parade on this win and claim legitimacy giving them a sweep for both elections.
Macron called bullshit on this with the idea, that people voted for them as a protest vote, but don’t actually want to run the country. Which turned out to be correct.
When push came to shove the voters and other parties showed this to be the correct assumption. With the Far-right NR coming out third in seats with both the left coalition and Macron’s party ahead.
In this point of view it was a win as it squashed the idea the NR has a legitimate support to be the government of France.
But whether it actually worked out will be seen by the ability of this pretty much deadlock parliament being able to form government.
If the two big blocks fail to compromise and form a government this could still be a huge boon for the RNs presidential campaign in 2027.
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