The accepted narrative about France - at least in the United States - is that the country is a total mess. The economy is a wreck; society is falling apart; radical Islam is on the march and the fascists are on the rise. The first round of voting in the French election on Sunday has provided a corrective to this gloomy orthodoxy.

There were two really good pieces of news, which are testament to the health of French democracy. First, voter turn-out was amazingly high - over 84% of the electorate voted; compare that to the 56% in the last American presidential election and under 60% in the last British general election.

Second, the vote for the far right and the extreme left slumped. The French were justifiably mortified when Jean Marie Le Pen made it through to the second round of voting in 2002, with around 17% of the vote. This time Le Pen was back down at 11%. The Commies are also doing terribly. The official Communist candidate got less than 2% of the vote - compared to the 15% that the Communists used to get in presidential elections in the early 1980s. Even Jose Bove, the anti-globalist and scourge of McDonalds - often portrayed overseas as the colourful personfication of French bloody-mindedness - got just 1.3% of the vote.

The French took this election really seriously. As my colleague John Thornhill wrote: "There are few other countries in the world where almost one-fifth of the electorate tunes in for 2½-hour television interviews with the two main candidates." It will be interesting to see if turn-out goes up even further for the decisive second round. Or whether now Le Pen is out of the race, ordinary voters will relax.

April 24th, 2007 in Europe | Permalink