Thoughts on the French Regional Elections

The French regional elections were fairly hectic this year. The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) almost won the region of Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azure, Macron’s En Marche (EM) did pretty badly, a worryingly low number of people actually voted, and the centre saw a big resurgence.

Here in Alsace the candidat from Les Républicains, Jean Rottner secured a second term as President of the Regional Council of the Grand Est. A fun fact to note is that the candidate from the party Unser Land got nearly 10% of the votes in Alsace (the exact same result as last election, down to the second decimal point!); Unser Land advocates for Alsace to become more autonomous and become its own region again, among other things. Unser Land didn’t pass through to the second round but it came pretty close.

One of the big debates around the regional elections is the fact that RN only lost in Provence-Alps-Côte d’Azure (PACA) because all the other parties teamed up against them, which RN claims is anti-democratic. However I don’t believe this to be the case because clearly the majority of people would prefer not have the far-right in charge than have their own alignment do well.

Overall this election was a big relief for centrist parties all over Europe, who have been facing rising extremism. On the other hand there was a worryingly large number of people who didn’t vote, signalling a rise in political apathy, which could be disastrous for democracy, especially with the upcoming high-stakes presidential election.