Why France is voting again

Millions voted last Sunday. Many will vote again this Sunday. But why vote twice?

Supporters of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen wave the French flag during her election rally on May 1, 2017 in Villepinte, France. Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images

France had a presidential election two Sundays ago. It will have another one this coming Sunday. Technically, the two votes are part of the same election. But for those many millions of citizens trekking to the polling booth, to put a cross in the box next to their favourite candidate for the second time in eight days, France’s run-off electoral system can seem unnecessarily complex. How does it work?

Perhaps a better place to start is why. First-past-the-post voting systems, such as that used in the US presidential election, can mean that the winning candidate is not elected by a majority of those who vote. Since the United States is basically a two-party system, that is less of a problem, but in other countries the votes could be split among candidates, with the result that the person who becomes president only winds up with, say, just 25 per cent of the vote. A two-round system seeks to avoid that problem by ensuring that whoever wins, wins by an absolutely majority of all those who vote.

In the French first round last week, 11 candidates contested the election. Only four gained more than 6 per cent, with the front-runner Emmanuel Macron winning 24 per cent of the vote. Had he gained more than 50 per cent of the vote, he would have won outright. Instead, in the second round, he will face Marine Le Pen only, so whoever wins will do so by an absolutely majority.

Both these outcomes were on display in Egypt’s two most recent presidential elections, which also used a two-round system. In the first, in 2012, a total of 13 candidates contested the election, with some better-known candidates, such as the former foreign minister and diplomat Amr Moussa, being eliminated in the first round. Mohammed Morsi and Ahmed Shafiq went through to the second round. Everyone remembers how that ended.

Two years later, when Abdel Fattah El Sisi stood for the presidency, he won the first round with an overwhelming majority of the vote, meaning no second round was necessary.

One of the downsides of a two-round system is voter apathy. Not everyone who votes in the first round may be bothered to turn out for the second round. But in the French system, this problem rarely arises. In fact, typically voter turnout increases in the second round – many voters see that as the real election, rather than the first round.

At particularly unusual times, however, the second-round voter turnout can spike. That last happened in 2002, when Marine Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie went through to the second round. Voter turnout jumped, as many French citizens turned out to make sure his racist Front National party was kept out of power. The same could happen this Sunday, after calls for the voters to “save democracy” from the possibility of a Le Pen presidency.

Every democracy struggles to work out how best to ensure as many votes as possible actually count. None do a perfect job. The upside of a two-round system is that, in a particularly contentious election like this one, voters who don’t like the first outcome have the opportunity to vote again.