🇫🇷Parisian elections, Dati, and Barnier
The field of candidates is becoming clearer for the Paris mayoral race, while former Prime Minister Michel Barnier may win over 60% of the vote in the Paris 2nd constituency election today.
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This week
⛵Paris Municipal election begins to clarify
✨Barnier the favourite in the Paris 2nd today
⛵Paris municipal election gathers speed
So, it's a slow news week this week, but some very interesting things are happening over in Paris.
So, to begin with, we’re beginning to see the slate of candidates becoming clearer and clearer, with Culture Minister Rachida Dati and former Prime Minister Michel Barnier having made their deals, and several parties having run their primaries for the, we now have a relatively good idea of who exactly people can choose from next year.
Now, with Rachida Dati being one of the more popular politicians in France, and having been far and away the favourite for the race in the 2nd Constituency of Paris, polling has, likewise, shown her as one of the favourites in the first round with 32% of the vote in the best-case scenario.
However, there’s a caveat to this: Rachida Dati is closely followed by Emmanuel Grégoire in 2nd place at 31.5%, Grégoire has more reserve votes that he can pull from.
While the Parti Socialiste are currently at war with La France Insoumise, who happen to be at war with everyone and their mothers, potential candidate Chikirou’s party has a pathological hatred of everything even remotely linked to Emmanuel Macron and his party, Renaissance.
This means that, in the event of a Dati vs Grégoire runoff, the La France Insoumise electorate will likely move forward with another left-wing coalition, pending negotiations, which would theoretically reach a high of 48%.
Meanwhile, Dati doesn’t have the same luck. Sure, she could very likely add Bournazel’s 9% of the vote, but then her reserves dry up. Mariani’s far-right Rassemblement National is far too toxic, as is Knafo’s even far-right-er Reconquete.
This means that unless Rachida Dati can make significant improvements on this poll by the end of July, then she’ll very likely see the Paris Mayoralty slip through her fingers once again.
But, as we always say here at The French Dispatch, my dear readers: polls are only snapshots, and they have a habit of changing. So let’s see what happens in the coming months.
Now, moving on…
✨Barnier the favourite in the Paris 2nd today
Today is the fateful day where we will find out if former Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, will win the election in the Paris 2nd Constituency, a right wing bastion that has consistently voted for Les Républicains or Macronists since being created in 1957
In a constituency with around 100,000 inhabitants, there are currently 18 candidates in the running, with Barnier’s major competitor being François Mitterrand’s former sports minister Frédérique Bredin, who happens to be the only socialists in the race, and would only be the second socialist elected if he won.
For my fellow geeks, the first was Pierre Dabezies in 1981, whose election was nullified by the constitutional council, and who was replaced in 1982 by Jacque Dominati from the Union for French Democracy - Valéry Giscard d'Estaing’s party.
However, there’s one major issue, as reported by Le Monde: nobody seems to care or know they’re supposed to vote, which is likely to benefit Barnier as he has been running an aggressive political campaign since before the deal was struck with Rachida Dati to give her the mayoral race.
If you look at the poll above, and we put two and two together, you can see that despite initially running against each other, Dati and Barnier were heads and tails above the rest of the competition, which gives us good reason to assume that now that Dati has pulled out, Barnier will take the 61% of the vote that they had.
But, once again, we simply don’t know how this will shake out, who will come out to vote, whether everybody even remembers there’s an election today, and what will happen.
But, you can rest assured that I’ll have the news for you once we do!
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"Choose your fighter"