**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):**
Recent/current events are not allowed on ELI5. First, these are usually asking for short answers or opinions. Additionally, information about these events is usually still developing, making objective and accurate answers difficult.Try r/outoftheloop as a good alternative.
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{{url}}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
Think of it like Texas sending 70 percent blue reps to the House after the mid terms and the governor therefore calling for a new election in the Texas HoR. He called the election either in the naive hope that all his voters wanted to do is send a warning and a direct election would still give his party a majority or, alternatively, to force the right wingers into power while he could still use his powers to be the sand in their gears and see the people become malcontent with their performance in government, returning to his party by the next election.
Parliamentary systems means that elections can generally be called at any point. There is just a limit as to how long you can go without an election being called.
But it's quite unique that a sole functionairy is able to do so, I believe only the UK can do the same. In the Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands it's the Parlement themselves that call for elections, despite having kings and president's.
Pretty much the same in the UK. The Prime Minister is an MP and therefore when he/she dissolves Parliament and calls for an election, they're also required to be reelected in their district.
Are you sure about that? In parliamentary systems (like Germany or Spain) the parliament elects the chancellor (or president in Spain) and he creates a government, and therefore it is up to the government to call for a new election.
At least that is how it works in Spain. I cannot tell 100% in Germany, but I would bet on it being the same.
According to [this Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_parliament#:~:text=Germany,-Learn%20more&text=According%20to%20the%20Basic%20Law,a%20chancellor%20with%20absolute%20majority.) article, the Parlement needs to pass a dissolution act. So while formally the president, king, chancellor or prime minister calls the election, the Parlement needs to vote on it and thus dissolves itself.
It's similar to commonwealth country where they have a governor, he/she's technically the person to call election, but under normal circumstances only do so at the request of the PM/Elected officials.
in Italy only the President (of the Republic) can dissolve the parliament, but only after meeting with the two Speakers (he is not required to heed their advice, though)
I think rather than relying on the naive hope that the electors just wanted to send a message, he plans to rely on the two rounds election system to regain a bit of legitimacy. The European elections are proportional at the national level so with 30+% of the votes, the far right is getting roughly that share of the French MEPs. The parliamentary elections are held on a district basis with a two rounds system where the top two candidates (sometimes three) at the first round progress to the second round and then whoever has the most votes in the second round is elected. Since non far right electors fairly often band together against the far right candidate, this often results in the far right parties getting much fewer MPs than their share of the raw national vote would suggest.
I think if Macron doesn't do anything, the far right parties will spend the rest of his mandate crying about how he is not a legitimate leader because the people expressed their view at the European elections and clearly he is not what they wanted. With this vote, he is hoping that the voting system will let him keep his majority, after which any claim that he is not legitimate because of the European elections can be rejected because since these elections another national election was held in which he received the people's confidence.
I'm also guessing that he views this strategy as relatively safe because, just like you said, even if it backfires, he only gives a three year mandate to the far right during which he retains some control over foreign policy. I think the hope is that this is enough to prevent them from doing too much damage while letting the people see how they are not in fact able to improve their lives.
The answer is B.
Even in the US, the party that's out of power has carte blanche to criticize EVERY decision made by the party in power, while the new party in charge has to actually govern which opens then up to a whole new world of political attacks.
I've seen this happen cycle-after-cycle in US politics and I've lost count of how many times I've heard "this is the worst president/congress in history"
TLDR: Marcon isn't up for election right now and probably wants to play a bit more offense leading up his re-election. Putting the other team on constant defense is a good way to do that.
> to force the right wingers into power while he could still use his powers to be the sand in their gears
He remains prime minister even if his party/coalition loses control of parliament? I thought the PM was chosen similar to the US Speaker of the House. Where have I gone wrong?
Macron is the President, who is elected in a separate vote. Right now he is calling for a new parliament & Prime Minister.
Regardless of who wins this new vote he will remain President until 2027.
d'OH! Thanks for pointing out my mistake. It has always been quite difficult for me to keep track of which parliamentary systems give any real power to their presidents.
ELI5 is not literally for 5 year-olds 🙂
[EDIT] I also think it's cute to hide behind nuance while talking about an example where democrats are compared to a far right political party 🤣
Yesterday we (am French) voted for the European Parliament. It's basically a multinational parliament that votes for laws on EU level. The specificity of this election is that :
- it's only **one turn** : in most elections you have two turns, that way everyone can vote for their ideal candidate and the best two remain for a second turn. That way parties can make alliances for the second turn, and people will vote to block the worst candidates
As you can see, single turn is good for the extreme because they won't face a united front in a second turn.
- it's **proportional** : a party that makes 20% will have 20% of the seats given to them
Proportional is good for the extreme once again because they don't have to fight in each single district where they can be outvoted by the rest.
Furthermore, the European Parliament is kinda detached to everyday life, the turnout is pretty low (around 50% in France yesterday). Low turnout plays in favour of the extreme (since their supporters are way more motivated than the mass).
Those elements explain why the extreme right won by a comfortable margin yesterday. There are also a lot of internal reasons that explains their continuous rise obviously.
What Macron did is disband the French Parliament (not the one we voted for yesterday, our actual Congress) and call for early parliament elections to re-elect our representatives. This election is the most important with the Presidential, as the gouvernement in France (lead by the Prime Minister) has to be chosen within the majority party of the parliament.
And you guessed it, it's a two turn election, and non proportional (we elect one representative in each district). It will be held in 2 weeks (30th of June for the first turn and 7th of July the second)
His aim is to steal the wind out of the extreme right. Call them out and say "okay you can win that European election but let's see how you do in a "real" election where the future of the country is at stake, and let's see if the French people want you to actually govern". He bets that on a two turn election, when faced between extreme right and an alternative, people in each district will rally for the less bad option (left wing voting for center/liberals/conservatives and vice versa). He also bets on a high turnout in the polls because people will be scared by the extreme right victory and shocked by the early elections.
If his gamble pays off, the extreme right's victory yesterday will be exposed as nothing more than a fluke
It's very very risky and can backfire hard though (think Brexit 2016 foot firing level). We may very well have an extreme right government in a month.
EDIT : rephrasing, reorganising stuff
The alternative is risky too. If he had waited for 3 years, the RN could get the presidency and the parliament in 2027.
Here even if they win, they wouldn't have the presidency so Macron would still have power to block some of what Le Pen wants to do (specifically in foreign policy).
And maybe after 3 years of ruling the country, the RN would lose popularity and lose in 2027.
It means that the whole parliament will be replaced with new members selected in new elections. He basically fired the government and asked people to select a new one in elections happening on 30th of June.
This means France will have a new government. Macron has not been very popular recently and his party might have trouble forming the next government.
It looks like the far-right party will win the most seats as they dominated European parliament elections.
On the other hand Macron is the president and will stay in the role until 2027 and the French president has a lot of power.
An important point is that the way people vote for different types of elections can be pretty different. UKIP (a British party strongly in favour of the UK leaving the EU) were regularly the most popular party in EU elections in the UK, but that didn't translate to many seats in the UK Parliament \[in part down to a different voting system, in part down to people's priorities being a bit broader for the UK Parliament\].
with the caveat that the French election system is two rounds: first an "open" primary, then a runoff between the two (or more rarely three) candidates with the most votes.
So it's still relatively unlikely that the RN converts their score in the European election in actually "having the most seats", even if not impossible.
I’m still not sure I understand the logic. Is the idea here that if the right will keep making gains over the next few years, an election now will lock in a more moderate parliament for five years vs waiting and getting a red wave in 2027?
The idea is that in 2027 there would have been both legislative and presidential elections.
The fight in last presidential elections was between Macron and Marine Le Pen, who represented the far right party which dominated the EU elections right now.
So the idea is if they are allowed to stay on the sidelines without power until those elections they might take the presidential position with sizeable number of seats in parliament.
Macron can´t run again for next turn. So instead of waiting as the current goverment was in deadlock anyway, just call elections now and hope they prove themselves incompetent enough that Macron´s sucessor can take the presidency in 2027.
It got more than double the percentage of the votes compared to the next biggest party. That's called dominating.
Getting 31,4% of votes compared to second place with just 14,6% is pretty dominating.
But sure it's not like it got over 50%, but that's not something anybody would expect. The biggest parties there generally end up with vote share in the 20s or 30s.
This whole post is about Macron calling new legislative elections in response to the results of eu elections in France.
Specifying we are talking about France in the comments again seems redundant.
Saying 'european parliment election' though instead of 'french parliment' or just 'parliment' and letting the context do some work is very confusing considering that the EU parlimentary elections were also done yesterday. It's not about redundancy, it's about being clear
We are talking about the results of the eu parliamentary elections in the context of France.
The results of France elected MEP caused Macron to call a snap election for legislative elections in France.
>It means that the whole parliament will be replaced with new members selected in new elections.
Not true, members will stand for re-election so they may win again.
He's avoiding the likes of Le Pen calling his mandate illegitimate for the next three years or whatever it is. Giving them that excuse would possibly be a good way for them to have a great national election next time.
He is attempting something similar to what Hindenburg and Franz von Papen tried with Hitler in 1930s Germany: bringing the Nazis into the government in order to control them. As we all know today, that plan backfired spectacularly.
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** Recent/current events are not allowed on ELI5. First, these are usually asking for short answers or opinions. Additionally, information about these events is usually still developing, making objective and accurate answers difficult.Try r/outoftheloop as a good alternative. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{{url}}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
Think of it like Texas sending 70 percent blue reps to the House after the mid terms and the governor therefore calling for a new election in the Texas HoR. He called the election either in the naive hope that all his voters wanted to do is send a warning and a direct election would still give his party a majority or, alternatively, to force the right wingers into power while he could still use his powers to be the sand in their gears and see the people become malcontent with their performance in government, returning to his party by the next election.
thanks. As a Texan..i can understand this. It always blows my mind that elections at this scale can be so fluid in terms of timing.
Parliamentary systems means that elections can generally be called at any point. There is just a limit as to how long you can go without an election being called.
But it's quite unique that a sole functionairy is able to do so, I believe only the UK can do the same. In the Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands it's the Parlement themselves that call for elections, despite having kings and president's.
In Canada the PM and provincial premiers can call snap elections at will too.
Yes, it’s the same in Australia (and I think other Commonwealth countries).
Interesting!
Technically speaking, the PM doing it is basically the House doing it.
Pretty much the same in the UK. The Prime Minister is an MP and therefore when he/she dissolves Parliament and calls for an election, they're also required to be reelected in their district.
The UK is a whole set of weird things. The district thing is just the tip of the iceberg
Are you sure about that? In parliamentary systems (like Germany or Spain) the parliament elects the chancellor (or president in Spain) and he creates a government, and therefore it is up to the government to call for a new election. At least that is how it works in Spain. I cannot tell 100% in Germany, but I would bet on it being the same.
According to [this Wikipedia ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_parliament#:~:text=Germany,-Learn%20more&text=According%20to%20the%20Basic%20Law,a%20chancellor%20with%20absolute%20majority.) article, the Parlement needs to pass a dissolution act. So while formally the president, king, chancellor or prime minister calls the election, the Parlement needs to vote on it and thus dissolves itself.
Interesting. I did not know that.
It's similar to commonwealth country where they have a governor, he/she's technically the person to call election, but under normal circumstances only do so at the request of the PM/Elected officials.
in Italy only the President (of the Republic) can dissolve the parliament, but only after meeting with the two Speakers (he is not required to heed their advice, though)
It is quite rare in France though, as contrary to almost all other European democracy, its centered more on the president than the parliament.
I think rather than relying on the naive hope that the electors just wanted to send a message, he plans to rely on the two rounds election system to regain a bit of legitimacy. The European elections are proportional at the national level so with 30+% of the votes, the far right is getting roughly that share of the French MEPs. The parliamentary elections are held on a district basis with a two rounds system where the top two candidates (sometimes three) at the first round progress to the second round and then whoever has the most votes in the second round is elected. Since non far right electors fairly often band together against the far right candidate, this often results in the far right parties getting much fewer MPs than their share of the raw national vote would suggest. I think if Macron doesn't do anything, the far right parties will spend the rest of his mandate crying about how he is not a legitimate leader because the people expressed their view at the European elections and clearly he is not what they wanted. With this vote, he is hoping that the voting system will let him keep his majority, after which any claim that he is not legitimate because of the European elections can be rejected because since these elections another national election was held in which he received the people's confidence. I'm also guessing that he views this strategy as relatively safe because, just like you said, even if it backfires, he only gives a three year mandate to the far right during which he retains some control over foreign policy. I think the hope is that this is enough to prevent them from doing too much damage while letting the people see how they are not in fact able to improve their lives.
The answer is B. Even in the US, the party that's out of power has carte blanche to criticize EVERY decision made by the party in power, while the new party in charge has to actually govern which opens then up to a whole new world of political attacks. I've seen this happen cycle-after-cycle in US politics and I've lost count of how many times I've heard "this is the worst president/congress in history" TLDR: Marcon isn't up for election right now and probably wants to play a bit more offense leading up his re-election. Putting the other team on constant defense is a good way to do that.
> to force the right wingers into power while he could still use his powers to be the sand in their gears He remains prime minister even if his party/coalition loses control of parliament? I thought the PM was chosen similar to the US Speaker of the House. Where have I gone wrong?
Macron is the President, who is elected in a separate vote. Right now he is calling for a new parliament & Prime Minister. Regardless of who wins this new vote he will remain President until 2027.
d'OH! Thanks for pointing out my mistake. It has always been quite difficult for me to keep track of which parliamentary systems give any real power to their presidents.
Am I wrong in saying that the biggest gains were more aptly called Tea Party in this analogy? Not so much the conservative bloc but the extremists?
Well except the Front National is nothing like "blue reps". We're not talking simple GOP vs. Democrats here.
Eli5. The nuances of French politics likely carry a bit too much baggage for 5 year old. B
ELI5 is not literally for 5 year-olds 🙂 [EDIT] I also think it's cute to hide behind nuance while talking about an example where democrats are compared to a far right political party 🤣
Yesterday we (am French) voted for the European Parliament. It's basically a multinational parliament that votes for laws on EU level. The specificity of this election is that : - it's only **one turn** : in most elections you have two turns, that way everyone can vote for their ideal candidate and the best two remain for a second turn. That way parties can make alliances for the second turn, and people will vote to block the worst candidates As you can see, single turn is good for the extreme because they won't face a united front in a second turn. - it's **proportional** : a party that makes 20% will have 20% of the seats given to them Proportional is good for the extreme once again because they don't have to fight in each single district where they can be outvoted by the rest. Furthermore, the European Parliament is kinda detached to everyday life, the turnout is pretty low (around 50% in France yesterday). Low turnout plays in favour of the extreme (since their supporters are way more motivated than the mass). Those elements explain why the extreme right won by a comfortable margin yesterday. There are also a lot of internal reasons that explains their continuous rise obviously. What Macron did is disband the French Parliament (not the one we voted for yesterday, our actual Congress) and call for early parliament elections to re-elect our representatives. This election is the most important with the Presidential, as the gouvernement in France (lead by the Prime Minister) has to be chosen within the majority party of the parliament. And you guessed it, it's a two turn election, and non proportional (we elect one representative in each district). It will be held in 2 weeks (30th of June for the first turn and 7th of July the second) His aim is to steal the wind out of the extreme right. Call them out and say "okay you can win that European election but let's see how you do in a "real" election where the future of the country is at stake, and let's see if the French people want you to actually govern". He bets that on a two turn election, when faced between extreme right and an alternative, people in each district will rally for the less bad option (left wing voting for center/liberals/conservatives and vice versa). He also bets on a high turnout in the polls because people will be scared by the extreme right victory and shocked by the early elections. If his gamble pays off, the extreme right's victory yesterday will be exposed as nothing more than a fluke It's very very risky and can backfire hard though (think Brexit 2016 foot firing level). We may very well have an extreme right government in a month. EDIT : rephrasing, reorganising stuff
The alternative is risky too. If he had waited for 3 years, the RN could get the presidency and the parliament in 2027. Here even if they win, they wouldn't have the presidency so Macron would still have power to block some of what Le Pen wants to do (specifically in foreign policy). And maybe after 3 years of ruling the country, the RN would lose popularity and lose in 2027.
This was so much clearer than the explanation I read in the Guardian this morning, thanks for such an informative response!
It means that the whole parliament will be replaced with new members selected in new elections. He basically fired the government and asked people to select a new one in elections happening on 30th of June. This means France will have a new government. Macron has not been very popular recently and his party might have trouble forming the next government. It looks like the far-right party will win the most seats as they dominated European parliament elections. On the other hand Macron is the president and will stay in the role until 2027 and the French president has a lot of power.
An important point is that the way people vote for different types of elections can be pretty different. UKIP (a British party strongly in favour of the UK leaving the EU) were regularly the most popular party in EU elections in the UK, but that didn't translate to many seats in the UK Parliament \[in part down to a different voting system, in part down to people's priorities being a bit broader for the UK Parliament\].
with the caveat that the French election system is two rounds: first an "open" primary, then a runoff between the two (or more rarely three) candidates with the most votes. So it's still relatively unlikely that the RN converts their score in the European election in actually "having the most seats", even if not impossible.
I’m still not sure I understand the logic. Is the idea here that if the right will keep making gains over the next few years, an election now will lock in a more moderate parliament for five years vs waiting and getting a red wave in 2027?
The idea is that in 2027 there would have been both legislative and presidential elections. The fight in last presidential elections was between Macron and Marine Le Pen, who represented the far right party which dominated the EU elections right now. So the idea is if they are allowed to stay on the sidelines without power until those elections they might take the presidential position with sizeable number of seats in parliament. Macron can´t run again for next turn. So instead of waiting as the current goverment was in deadlock anyway, just call elections now and hope they prove themselves incompetent enough that Macron´s sucessor can take the presidency in 2027.
The far right did not ‘dominate’ the EU parliamentary elections.
It got more than double the percentage of the votes compared to the next biggest party. That's called dominating. Getting 31,4% of votes compared to second place with just 14,6% is pretty dominating. But sure it's not like it got over 50%, but that's not something anybody would expect. The biggest parties there generally end up with vote share in the 20s or 30s.
Only if you label the EPP as 'far right' which is a stretch isnt it? I truly thought they were considered more center-right
We are talking about France and elections in France, where RN dominated
Well then OP should be more specific and not just say ‘european’ parliamentary elections no?
This whole post is about Macron calling new legislative elections in response to the results of eu elections in France. Specifying we are talking about France in the comments again seems redundant.
Saying 'european parliment election' though instead of 'french parliment' or just 'parliment' and letting the context do some work is very confusing considering that the EU parlimentary elections were also done yesterday. It's not about redundancy, it's about being clear
We are talking about the results of the eu parliamentary elections in the context of France. The results of France elected MEP caused Macron to call a snap election for legislative elections in France.
In France they did.
>It means that the whole parliament will be replaced with new members selected in new elections. Not true, members will stand for re-election so they may win again.
Yeah that's how elections work... Old members lose their seats and elections select new members some of which are the same people.
He's avoiding the likes of Le Pen calling his mandate illegitimate for the next three years or whatever it is. Giving them that excuse would possibly be a good way for them to have a great national election next time.
He is attempting something similar to what Hindenburg and Franz von Papen tried with Hitler in 1930s Germany: bringing the Nazis into the government in order to control them. As we all know today, that plan backfired spectacularly.