24 April 2007

Geography




This is how the French election broke down geographically; that is who won a plurality of votes in a particular area. Red equals Royal, whereas blue equals Sarkozy. The lone yellow marker is that of Bayrou.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grotius, what do you make of the fact that the industrial north went with Sarkozy while the more rural south went Royal? My understanding is that these are unusual results.

24 April, 2007 11:44
Grotius said...

I think Sarkozy tapped into a lot of the frustration in France's industrial regions (something of a rustbelt). A lot of his speeches in those regions spoke to their concerns.

As for Royal, I don't know. I just haven't been following her campaign all that closely. I suppose in part because I don't think she is going win. If she does win I suppose that is egg on my face.

As a guess one could say that the French left does appeal to a lot of the concerns about globalization, etc. that French farmers and more rural folks have. Of course she did really well in a lot of the working class and ethnic arrondissements of Paris. Which is no surprise.

I do think that Royal has a really big hill to climb in comparison to Sarkozy. First of all he starts with a bigger base vote than her and second if you look at how the left v. right votes worked out across all the candidates that can be described as clearly left or right the left had the lower vote total. The real wildcard are the Bayrou voters and I think a lot of those, three quarters or more (?), are going to have to swing to Royal to win. And I just don't see that happening sans some real screw-up by Sarkozy.

24 April, 2007 12:14
Grotius said...

...are going to have to swing to Royal for her to win.

24 April, 2007 12:16

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)