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EXPLAINED: What’s at stake in France’s regional elections

A year out from France's Presidential elections - which are predictable only in their unpredictability - the French head to the polls for a second time on Sunday, to decide the political shape of the country's regional councils for the next six years.

EXPLAINED: What's at stake in France's regional elections
Photo: Damien Meyer/AFP

The first round of voting has already happened, and the French now head back to the polls on Sunday night to make their final choice.

In total, 18 regional presidencies are at stake – 13 in metropolitan France and Corsica, and five more in overseas territories, including the assemblies of French Guiana and Martinique, and the departmental council of Mayotte.

What can we expect from the vote, originally scheduled for March and delayed because of the health situation?

A political temperature check

Regional elections like this are often considered an opinion poll on the incumbent President and as the last time that the French head to the polls before the presidential election next year, this one is being watched more closely than usual.

But despite the media interest, it seems that voters are less engaged – the first round of voting on June 20th was marked by record voter abstention, a massive 66 percent of the electorate decided that it wasn’t worth their while to vote.

Those who did vote returned a very poor result for president Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique en Marche party in its first regional election fight, while Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National also did less well than in previous regional elections, and significantly less well than advance polling had suggested.

However, it’s the final results from the second round that count.

ALSO READ: Macron’s ‘grand tour’ of France gets underway ahead of regional elections

What do regional councils do?

Usually, regional elections take place every six years. This time, however, the term of office is seven years – with the next ballot scheduled for March 2028, to avoid clashing with the 2027 Presidential elections.

Regional councillors make key decisions about education: lycées are funded by the regions, for example.

They also have devolved powers for economic and social development, regional planning, education, and cultural matters, and fund local TER rail services.

Regions in their current form are relatively new, there was a significant shake-up in 2016, and cover huge areas – for example Nouvelle-Aquitaine is bigger than Scotland. 

Who gets to vote?

This one is for French citizens only. EU citizens do not have the right to vote this time, unlike in municipal elections. Non-EU citizens, including post-Brexit Britons, cannot vote, either.

Three quarters of the seats are elected by proportional representation with each political list having an equal number of male and female candidates. The other quarter are given to the list that received the most votes.

In order to gain these top up seats, a list must have gained an absolute majority of the votes (more than 50 percent) in the first round.

No-one achieved this last week, so a second round is being held involving parties that gained at least 10 percent of the votes in the first round. The party that wins a plurality in this round gains the bonus seats. It is common in this round for lower-ranking parties to withdraw in favour of parties they have entered into an alliance with.

Rise of the right

Le Pen’s party had been hoping for big gains, but in fact ended up with a smaller vote share than the last elections in 2016. The did finish in front in the southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, however.

Candidates from the centre-right, on the other hand, did better than expected.

The week since the first poll has seen a lot of alliances and political horse trading, with some parties withdrawing candidates or urging their supporters to vote for someone else in the ‘front républicain’ or an alliance to keep out the far-right.

Sunday will show whether this has been effective or whether the far-right wins power in a region for the first time.

ALSO READ: EXPLAINED: The very precise rules of French election billboards

What does this mean for next year’s Presidential vote?

It’s hard to say what all this could mean for the 2022 Presidential elections in France – its comparing political apples and political oranges.

At this stage polling still suggests that the second round in the presidential election will consist of Macron v Le Pen, in a repeat of the 2017 run-off, and yet both of their parties failed to inspire voters on a regional level.

OPINION Enemies of France should not see Le Pen victories on a regional level as a sign of things to come

But we’re still a year away from the vote and several parties including the centre-right LR and the centre-left Parti Socialise have yet to pick a candidate for 2022.

And a year is a long time in French politics.

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POLITICS

How disinformation targeting Brigitte Macron spread to the US and UK

Years after false posts began circulating on social media claiming that Brigitte Macron is a transgender woman, the French first lady remains the target of fake claims with the transphobic disinformation now being spread in the US and the UK.

How disinformation targeting Brigitte Macron spread to the US and UK

President Emmanuel Macron, 46, has in recent weeks lashed out at the false information spread about his wife, 70, who is taking legal action against those behind the allegations.

Prominent US right-wing commentator Candace Owens vehemently attacked the first lady in a now-deleted YouTube video posted on March 11th, propagating a false claim that first exploded in France just weeks before the 2022 presidential election.

Brigitte Macron is falsely said to have been born as a man called Jean-Michel Trogneux, her maiden surname, with that name going viral as a hashtag.

Macron is among a group of influential women – including former US first lady Michelle Obama and New Zealand ex-premier Jacinda Ardern – who have fallen victim to a growing trend: disinformation about their gender or sexuality to mock or humiliate them.

While this gendered disinformation is particularly visible in repeated attacks on prominent figures, it also affects women in general and sexual or gender minorities with differing levels of responsibility in public life.

According to the US-based observer group, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the goal is to drive women “off the platforms and out of public life”, which has serious consequences for democracy.

Originally shared in the United States on sites like notorious disinformation hub 4chan, the claim snowballed when figures “with very large audiences gave it visibility”, doctoral researcher Sophie Chauvet, specialising in audience metrics, told AFP.

In her video, conservative commentator Owens cites a “thorough investigation” by so-called independent journalist Natacha Rey, published in the French newsletter Faits et Documents in 2021.

Founded in 1996 by far-right French figure Emmanuel Ratier and now headed by Xavier Poussard, Faits et Documents regularly promotes stories targeting the first lady, a journalist at the French weekly L’Obs, Emmanuelle Anizon, told AFP.

“But what is new is that Xavier Poussard started translating his articles at the end of 2023,” Anizon said, adding that he claims to have sent an English version to those close to former US president Donald Trump.

Anizon, who spoke to Poussard and his associate Aurelien Poirson who advised on the translation, explained that it was no accident that the US far right had taken up the false claim ahead of the November US elections.

“It was their dream to export this claim across the Atlantic,” she said.

And it worked, spreading like wildfire after Owens posted her video with two associated hashtags shared tens of thousands of times on X, according to social network analysis tool Visibrain.

The false claims have also been repeated by tabloid newspapers in the UK.

The disinformation “was available as and when required”, said Sebastian Dieguez, an expert in conspiracy theories at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.

The “secretly trans” narrative is a long-standing feature of online, sexist violence, according to a 2021 Wilson Center report.

The bottom line, according to the NDI, is that silencing women has “serious consequences for human rights, diversity in public debates and the media, and ultimately, democracy.”

The impact is also personal for those targeted and their families.

Emmanuel Macron addressed the fake claims on International Women’s Day, saying, “the worst thing is false information”.

“People eventually believe them and disturb you, even in your private life,” he said.

The president’s relationship with his wife 24 years his senior, whom he met while she was a teacher and he was still a teenager, is periodically a source of media attention in France and abroad.

On March 22nd, a 51-year-old man was arrested in southwestern France for allegedly writing “Brigitte Macron, transsexual” on his garage, according to the French daily Le Figaro.

The first lady and her brother Jean-Michel Trogneux have taken legal action against two women who posted a YouTube video in December 2021 alleging she had once been a man named “Jean-Michel”.

A Paris criminal court is to try them on charges of defamation in March next year, a source close to the case has said.

The first lady’s daughter from her first marriage, Tiphaine Auzière, on Tuesday said she hoped the trial could quash the “grotesque” claims.

“Whether it’s my mother or anyone else in society, it can do a lot of harm,” Auzière told the BFMTV broadcaster.

“The justice system… can put an end to this misinformation and severely condemn the perpetrators because it’s a form of harassment like any other.”

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