I've been getting a lot of questions about politics lately, both from French people here and people at home. So I thought I'd do a little Election Day special. Before I start, I would like to clarify that this post is not an invitation to debate politics with me. This is not an attempt to change anyone's mind about who they are voting for (or, hopefully already voted for). If you feel the need to post a comment that argues against a point I make (though I plan to make very few politically-charged statements here), I urge you to think very seriously about why you are posting it. You will not change my mind. If you feel the need to post a comment, then there is pretty much no chance that I will change your mind, so what is the point in having an internet spat that will leave us both upset and angry? Ok. So now that that's out of the way, let's dig in a bit, shall we?
The question I've been getting most frequently is "What do the French think of our Presidential elections?" Answer: They're curious, and mostly baffled. Let's talk a little about French politics. France is a Democracy; very close to a pure Democracy (in case you're wondering, the US is NOT a pure Democracy. It is a Democratic Republic), but with some Socialism thrown in there. I know that in recent years Socialism has become a dirty word in the US, but it works for the most part here. The current president is François Hollande, and he is a member of the French Socialist Party. One of the huge differences between French and American politics is the respect for the privacy of French political figures. Very rarely does a newspaper article pry into the private life of a candidate or elected official. The family isn't subjected to the kind of public scrutiny that American politicians' families are. Correspondingly, opposing candidates don't discuss/attack each other regarding personal matters like religious belief, marital status, college transcripts, etc. The French people I've spoken to are generally pretty shocked at the amount of personal information American candidates release.
I just touched on religion, so let's delve into that for a minute. Everybody probably knows that France is a predominantly Catholic nation. Back in the old days, the Vatican was actually in France before it moved to Rome (not going to get into that; it's complicated and really has nothing to do with what I'm talking about right now). Today, it is still considered a pretty religious country. About 90% of French people are Christian (that's 88% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant), 1% Jewish, 5% Muslim, and 4% unaffiliated. That sounds like that would be a pretty religiously-driven nation, right? Well get this; only 22% of French people actually attend church regularly. In the US, it's two times that. So when I tell you that France is a remarkably secular nation, bear those statistics in mind. They take the separation of Church and State really seriously. It's one of the reasons that the idea of judging a candidate by his or her religion seems so foreign to them (no pun intended). Abortion hasn't been an issue in France for over a decade. The Pope may have condemned it, but French Catholics don't feel the need to force their religious beliefs on everyone in the nation. The parliament is getting ready to vote on legalizing gay marriage. It's going to go through with about 55%. The 45% who are against it are generally not against it for religious reasons. Attached to the law is a provision allowing gay adoptions (to stable, two-parent homes) and IVF or surrogacy for gay parents. Most of those against the law are more worried about the reproductive provisions, than the actual marriage for the usual reasons like undue emotional distress and confusing sexual identities of the children. The idea of fighting against it purely for religious reasons doesn't really occur to most people here.
The other big question I get asked is about the process for electing the President in the US. When the French elect their president, here's roughly how it goes down: Anybody who wants to run has to get their petition for candidacy signed by a certain number of elected officials (I believe the requirement is signatures from 500 elected officials; there are thousands of elected officials in France, so it's not too difficult). After they've filed their petition, they start their campaign. For a French election, there are two rounds; the first election is similar to an American primary, only everybody is running. All the political parties on one ticket; there are no party primaries. There are close to 20 active political parties in France, so there can be that many candidates on the ticket, but generally there are between three and five candidates who have enough support to actually have a chance. So after the first election, the two candidates with the highest percentage of the vote go on to the final election, even though they may have only gotten twenty or thirty percent of the vote. A few weeks after the primary, everybody votes again, and whoever has the majority wins.
The US has a specific way of electing its executive mainly because it's a very large country with a lot of people who need different things partly based on their geographic location within this single country. France is roughly the size of Texas, so a system like the electoral college doesn't make much sense. Now because of the highly-publicized controversy surrounding the Bush-Gore election, most French people have a rough understanding of how the American elections work. I've found that a lot of them think they get it, but actually don't. There's a bit of a misunderstanding of how the Electoral College works. My host family seemed to think that we voted to elect a specific elector to represent our state, that we didn't actually vote for who we wanted to be President. They also didn't know that each state has a different number of electors depending both on the population and geographic size of the state. My host Dad thought it was unfair for different states to get a different number of votes. Then I asked him how he'd like it if the votes from a department with only 10,000 people in it counted exactly the same as all of the votes from Ile de France (that's the French department where Paris is). Then he asked why we don't just vote by popular vote, and I attempted to explain that because the US is a very large country with such different needs from state to state that a popular vote would be unfair to people in less-populated areas. Bear in mind that I'm explaining this all in French without any sort of political dictionary.
So those are the high points. The last thing I'm going to talk about is the general political leanings I've seen. France is definitely very liberal. I'm in an urban area, so that's expected, but the research I've done for political leanings all over France suggests that they are liberal in almost every way, except when it comes to immigration and certain racial issues. They still have a lot of problems with African and Middle-Eastern immigrants. It's too big an issue to really discuss in this post, but it's something interesting to think about. My host family is pretty Conservative for France. But when we talk about politics or watch the American portions of the news, they tend to lean towards the moderate liberal views. They're not crazy about Mitt Romney (much to my relief) and they, like most of the international community, think that Obama has done well.
Well that's all I have tonight. I tried to present the facts in as objective way as was possible, but if you know me, it's hard for me to keep my political feelings completely under wraps. Before I sign off, I'm going to again emphasize that this post is not meant in any way to be argumentative or to open the door for a dirty internet fight on the eve of the election. I've made up my mind, and if you feel the need to argue with me on political grounds, you've made up your mind. So let's just agree to disagree. So that's it! Goodnight, good luck, and don't forget to go out and vote Tuesday!
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