The second and final round of the French regional elections were held Today (the 13th of December 2015). The regions are roughly approximate to the US states, except they have much less political autonomy. The regional presidents are elected in a run-off voting system: if no one wins at least 50% of the vote on the first round, a second is held to decide the winner. France is currently in the process of massively decreasing the number of regions it has to 18 (13 in continental France), down from the 27 it’s had in the past. The Socialist Party, a center-left social democratic party of which current French President François Hollande is a member, claimed 5 regions, with the main opposition party, now called The Republicans (formerly the UMP, Union for a Popular Movement), claiming 7 regions in the continent, along with the island of Réunion, of the coast of south east Africa in the Indian Ocean. Corsica’s presidency is claimed by a regionalist party, the Radical Party of the Left, a center-left political party.
Surprisingly (to me, anyway), the far-right National Front party, which did well in the popular vote in the first round, did not pick up any seats. The Party’s nationalist platform has been consistently opposed to mass immigration (or much of any, really) by Muslims in particular. Considering the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the more recent Paris attacks, I would have bet money on them gaining a seat or two. The Party has had a longstanding reputation of downright racism–in earlier years against Jews, now more against Muslims. Nonetheless, the nationalist sentiment in France is not to be taken lightly. My take on European politics is that the left’s tendency to want to squelch all discussion about cultural assimilation, immigration, etc. for fear of racism is causing these discussions to be pushed to the margins. There is no room for moderates to debate these issues, so it coalesces on the extreme ends of the spectrum. The current Party leader Marine Le Pen is at the very least a fairly articulate speaker.