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Isn't this what happened the last several times? The far right does well in the first round because there's only one far right party. But they don't do especial

Isn't this what happened the last several times? The far right does well in the first round because there's only one far right party. But they don't do especially well in the second round because they're nobody's second choice. It does sound like there are some additional factors in play this time, but it sounds mostly like people staying home in the first stage and turning out for the second. That's not entirely unlike the US, where people seem to have little interest in the primaries, or off-year elections, but show up more for the general.

rsynnott 2y ago
Something that looks vaguely similar has happened a couple of times before (far right do well in the first round, but once the non-far-right vote is less split in the second round they do badly) but this was different in that it involved significant coordination; the main opposing coalitions coordinated to drop candidates in scenarios where it could go from [coalition A - 25%, coalition B - 35%, NR - 40%] to [coalition B - 60%, NR - 40%]. (That's obviously simplified; there would be _some_ transfer from A to NR, but in general far-right parties don't do well on transfers). This isn't entirely unknown in electoral systems like this; it has been done on a small scale in the UK, say. But the scale is very unusual. They arguably more or less coerced their voting system into an extremely inefficient/inaccurate form of STV-PR. Something arguably kind of similar played out in the recent local and euro elections in Ireland, but because Ireland uses STV it was less remarkable; it was just kind of the way things normally work. Various far right parties and independents did respectably on first preference votes, and transferred amongst themselves, but as the count went on they sank and ultimately did quite badly, because people who vote for normal parties generally didn't transfer to _them_. When filling in a ballot, no-one says "I'll vote for labour, then the greens, and then the person who says 'woke' every three seconds", but they often _will_ grudgingly give the centre-right parties a low preference to keep the saying-woke-every-three-seconds party out.

rsynnott 2y ago

Something that looks vaguely similar has happened a couple of times before (far right do well in the first round, but once the non-far-right vote is less split in the second round they do badly) but this was different in that it involved significant coordination; the main opposing coalitions coordinated to drop candidates in scenarios where it could go from [coalition A - 25%, coalition B - 35%, NR - 40%] to [coalition B - 60%, NR - 40%]. (That's obviously simplified; there would be _some_ transfer from A to NR, but in general far-right parties don't do well on transfers). This isn't entirely unknown in electoral systems like this; it has been done on a small scale in the UK, say. But the scale is very unusual. They arguably more or less coerced their voting system into an extremely inefficient/inaccurate form of STV-PR. Something arguably kind of similar played out in the recent local and euro elections in Ireland, but because Ireland uses STV it was less remarkable; it was just kind of the way things normally work. Various far right parties and independents did respectably on first preference votes, and transferred amongst themselves, but as the count went on they sank and ultimately did quite badly, because people who vote for normal parties generally didn't transfer to _them_. When filling in a ballot, no-one says "I'll vote for labour, then the greens, and then the person who says 'woke' every three seconds", but they often _will_ grudgingly give the centre-right parties a low preference to keep the saying-woke-every-three-seconds party out.