This past week saw elections in two of the world’s largest democracies, the UK and France. Britain’s July 4 election results were (mostly) as expected: a rout for center-left Labor, toppling the Conservative Party after 14 years in power.
But the French result on Sunday came as a surprise. The far-right National Assembly (RN), widely predicted to win, came in third. The New Popular Front (NFP), a left coalition ranging from the center-left Socialists to the radical France Unbod, took many seats — a stunning victory made possible by strategic coordination with President Emmanuel Macron’s moderate Renaissance.
Almost immediately after the French results came in, Tex started flying. The results proved it The center was rising against the far-right. Or perhaps that The left is on the march. Or perhaps, between A particularly confusing analysisThe results were evidence of the long-term rise of the far-right.
The truth is that none of these analyzes really hold up. There’s no clear ideological throughline, no grand narrative to tell what all this means for the world in 2024 — or what it might say about the mindset of American voters in November. Trying to tell the story of this election as some unified left-versus-right struggle ends up confusing more than it helps.
But if you look at it through the lens of institutions—the ways electoral systems and party leaders’ choices shape outcomes—some key lessons begin to emerge. In particular, the winning parties in both the UK and France won on the understanding that the nature of their systems required them to sacrifice certain candidates in order to defeat them.
And there may be a lesson for America — and for that Especially the Democratic Party.
A murky ideological tale
There is no doubt that right-wing parties have lost in both Britain and France. But while both countries reach somewhat similar results, the story they tell is more complex.
Labor’s victory over the Tories in Britain did not really support his political agenda. Although the party took about two-thirds of the seats in parliament, it won a large number of seats (with the help of third parties) by a relatively narrow margin. Robert Ford, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, Note that “More than half of their seats [were] won with a majority of 20 percent or less.”
Nationally, Labor won just 34 per cent of the national popular vote – the lowest number for a winning party in British history. Opinion polls on the eve of the election showed Labor leader Keir Starmer Underwater with the British electorate.
More than anything else, the British election reflects general frustration with 14 years of Conservative rule. Almost half of all British voters said their reason for voting was “Get out the Tories” was voter turnout in 2024 This is the second lowest in a hundred years of UK electionswith many voters Turning away from the UK’s two main parties. The moderate Liberal Democrats won a record-high number of seats; The far-right Reform Party won more than ten percent of the national popular vote.
The French results also do not tell a simple ideological story.
It’s hard to call the center a victory for Macron and Renaissance when they score a major electoral blow from 245 seats in parliament. About 150. The left did better than anyone expected, but still lacked a governing mandate: the New Popular Front fell just short of a parliamentary majority, while forming the most prominent far-left party in the coalition. There is practically no benefit. And it is impossible to call third place a victory for the RN given the expectation of an absolute majority.
What to make of this? As in Britain, there is a certain level of anti-incumbency at work: most French voters resented Macron and made it clear at the ballot box. But at the same time, they clearly still despise the far-right — leading the center and (especially) the left will do better than they think.
Anglo-French election week did not tell the story of the rise of any particular ideology. More than anything else, they tell us that people in Britain and France don’t particularly like any of the options on offer.
Real Facts: Electoral Systems and Party Strategy
The best way to think through the British and French systems is through their electoral similarities.
Like the United States, both countries elect legislative candidates based on who wins a majority in certain districts—a system known as first-past-the-post. This is in contrast to the proportional system, where parties are awarded a percentage of seats reflecting their share of the popular vote.
But unlike the United States, both countries currently have more than two parties represented in national elections. This arrangement creates opportunities for electoral gamesmanship: for parties and their supporters to make district-by-district strategic choices designed to elevate a rival against a more odious alternative.
That’s right What happened in the two countries?.
In the UK, Labor and the Liberal Democrats implicitly encouraged”Strategic voting“against the Conservatives. In a district where Labor was well-placed to defeat the Conservatives, Liberal Democrat voters crossed over to vote for them – and vice versa. Despite a slight improvement in the national popular vote, this appears to be decisive in both parties performing unusually well in Parliament. being
France has a two-stage electoral system, with the first vote (which takes place a week earlier) favoring weaker candidates to create two- or three-person races. Between the first and second round, Hundreds of candidates Strategic withdrawal from Renaissance or NFP to field another party’s candidate to challenge the RN in districts where they were well positioned to win. By making this deal to reduce vote-splitting, both parties ended up performing better than expected — at the expense of the far-right.
The point here is that elections are not just about public mood or grand ideological narratives. They often come down to which party can game the electoral system better and whether the center and left can overcome their differences to cooperate against the radical right.
So what should Americans take from this?
For Americans worried about the rise of our own far-right, the main lesson from England and France is not some grand truth about ideological positions or the fate of far-right movements.
Rather, it is those systems that matter—as party leaders make choices about how to adapt to those systems.
Unlike France and Britain, the United States has only two viable options: center-left Democrats and far-right Republicans. And when it comes to the most powerful jobs in our system, it’s currently a choice between two men: Biden and Trump.
Biden cannot count on the help of other parties to boost him the way he helped Labor or the NFP; Polling suggests that he actually does slightly worse when third parties are on the ballot. Instead, he and his team will be forced to face an electorate who – like their French and British peers – are not particularly happy with any of the choices on offer. These polls also indicate that, in such elections, incumbents perform poorly.
In their system, the French and British had a strategy for solving their problems: sacrificing marginal legislative candidates to the greater good of defeating the right. But in the American system, sacrificing marginal candidates will not be enough to overcome the effects of popular discontent and anti-incumbency.
Here, the ticket is defined by the president – a person increasingly seen as elderly that cannot be trusted to address their concerns for the public. America’s center-left may need a more radical kind of political sacrifice to defeat the right: a shift at the very top of the ticket.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Democrats will win the election if they cut bait on Biden. But this reading of the development of our peer democracy—that the center-left needs creative and dispassionate strategic thinking to defeat the far-right—is far more accurate than the conclusion that the right-left wave is floating of its own accord.
