Week signals: All (geo)politics is local
Plus: watch points for Donald Trump, the UK, the European Parliament, China, and Russia.
This week:
IN REVIEW. Elections in France, the UK and the US, plus faint signals in the South Pacific.
UP AHEAD. The Republican National Convention, the King's Speech, Strasbourg sessions, China's Third Plenum, and Russian grandstanding.
The Week in Review: One vote is not always one value
The week opened with France’s surprise election result. Refuting polls, and expectations inside Emmanuel Macron’s party, the government’s ‘republican’ deal with the leftist New Popular Front (NFP) saw off the right-wing National Rally. RN ultimately came third in the second round, at 142 seats, to NFP’s 180 and the Macronist Ensemble’s 159.
Yet jubilation has been short-lived. Beyond creating a hung parliament, with little chance of a durable coalition, the deals Macron used failed to mask RN’s overall vote, which rose between the rounds as a share of the total from 33.2% to 37.1% (versus falls to 25.8% and 24.5% for NFP and Ensemble respectively). Just as in terms of French seats in the European Parliament, if the NFP bloc is disaggregated, RN is by far the National Assembly’s largest party.
Strange arithmetic was also seen in the UK last week. While the Conservatives’ defeat was never in doubt, the constituency result was wildly different from the national tally. Whereas Labour won 411 seats to the Tories’ 121, it did so with only a 1.7% swing. Most of the change could be attributed to Tory votes moving to Reform UK, which received 14.3% of the vote, to the Tories’ 23.7% and Labour’s 33.7%. This means that without a divided right, Labour would have lost. But Reform only won five seats, against the Liberal Democrats, who gained 72 with just 12.2% (or indeed the tiny Northern Irish Democratic Unionists, which also won five, but with only 0.6%).
None of this is of course new. Parliaments everywhere deliver such results regularly. But it’s a reminder that national polls often mislead, and strategies based on these often fail. It’s also a reminder that ahead of the US election