Some observations on the Left in the French elections

Glancing over the exit polls from the first round of the French presidential election, I noticed a few interesting comparisons with the results from last time around.

I'm including the Communist Party and the Greens as well as the Trots and José Bové in these counts.Perhaps not surprisingly given what happened in 2002, the far left (broadly defined) went down from 19% of the vote to 15%, and generally the centrist parties did significantly better. More interesting is the relative performance of the groups.

The LCR's Oliver Besancenot was the only one to hold steady, at about 4.3%; in 2002 that put him 8th, after the Greens and Arlette Laguilier of Lutte Ouvrière; this time 4th with as many votes as the Greens and Arlette put together.

The "Non collectives" were the main organization of the "Non de Gauche", the campaign against the proposed EU constitution of 2005. They later reinvented themselves as "antiliberal collectives" and subsequently as "the Popular and Anti-Liberal Left". Apparently the Communist Party managed to maneuver itself into a controlling position in the network over the last several months. José Bové did remarkably poorly, perhaps because of his decision to spurn the "antiliberal collectives". He came 3rd to last, ahead of only the Hunting and Fishing Party and the tiny Lambertiste Parti des Travailleurs. Marie-George Buffet of the Communist Party - which from the'40s to the '70s could count on 20% of the vote - got only 2%. This was a third lower than in 2002, even though she was officially the candidate of the former Non de Gauche.

On the whole this seems to reflect rather favorably on the LCR, and particularly on the perspective the LCR majority adopted leading up to the election. I have to admit that I was rather skeptical, but events seem to have proven them right.