A car exploded outside the French embassy in the Libyan capital Tripoli Tuesday morning in what was likely a planned attack. No group has claimed responsibility for the explosion, which wounded two French security guards and damaged part of the embassy’s compound.
French President Francois Hollande has called on Libya to investigate the bombing, which reportedly killed nobody, but injured three: “France expects the Libyan authorities to shed the fullest light on this unacceptable act, so that the perpetrators are identified and brought to justice.”
I just want to say thank you from myself and the people of Mali - Vive la France! I hope Francois Hollande continues to help us and that that we can stay free like this.Timbuktu resident Bena Abdel Kadir • Praising France and President Francois Hollande for approving military engagement in Mali, where the French have been fighting, aided by Malian forces, to uproot an Islamic rebel movement now contained in their lone remaining stronghold, the northeastern city of Kidal. Timbuktu, also in northern Mali, was freed from rebel control by this collaboration, and reports of the scene when Hollande visited suggest a great deal of jubilance towards the French leader, who pledged to keep troops in Mali “as long as necessary,” until state sovereignty has been restored. In other words, an open-ended military engagement, the sort of which has become dubiously familiar to the international community over the last decade. source
Sometimes a photo tells the whole story: ”Torn election posters of French President and UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy are seen in Paris Sunday, May 6, 2012. France voted in a presidential run-off election Sunday expected to see Socialist challenger Francois Hollande defeat incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy by capitalizing on public anger over spending cuts and a Europe-wide push for austerity.” Sarkozy has conceded defeat in the election, wishing his opponent “good luck.” (Photo by Francois Mori/AP)
Paris, 8pm: OFFICIAL - FRANCOIS HOLLANDE ELECTED PRESIDENT OF FRANCE
Becomes first Socialist President since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1988.
Incroyable.
I will not grant my trust, or a mandate, to these two candidates. … On Sunday, I will cast a blank ballot.Marine Le Pen • Speaking about her plans to endorse no candidate in the second round of the French presidential election — a huge blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has taken some isolationist cues from Le Pen’s party and needs those votes to top Socialist Francois Hollande, who won the first round. While Le Pen didn’t encourage other voters to do likewise, her decision does have the potential to influence 6.4 million voters to do the same.
France had the first round of its presidential election today. To no one’s surprise, Socialist candidate Francois Hollande leads incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy in the exit polls. However, horrible far-right Marine Le Pen is doing way better than was predicted by polling. What happened here? Was this a random sampling mishap, or are voters lying about their choice?
On Friday, five separate polling agencies released polls based on samples taken over Wednesday and Thursday (available here, here, here, here, and here). These should be reasonably close to how people actually voted, and since they’re all polling all of France at the same time they should be sampling the same distribution of voters. So based on those polls, what’s the likelihood of the exit poll outcome we saw today?
Oh the graph above, the bell curves represent what the last five polls predict, and the horizontal dashed lines indicate the actual exit poll results. For Hollande and Sarkozy, then polling did a good job; the polls are pretty close to the middle of the bell curve. For (despicable bigot) Le Pen, though, the actual vote share was way higher than what the polls predicted. What happened here? There are three possibilities:
- The polling agencies all just randomly picked a sample without very many Le Pen voters. As you can see from this graph, this possibility is so far out at the end of the bell curve that it barely even registers.
- Lots of people changed their votes over the weekend. Millions of French people woke up Sunday morning with their mind totally changed and marched out to vote for Le Pen even though previously they’d been set on another candidate. This is definitely possible, although Le Pen never touched 20% support in any poll in the last two months.
- Voters are lying to pollsters because they don’t want to admit (even to a stranger) that they are the pathetic small-minded racists who would vote for Le Pen.
Almost certain that #3 is what’s going on here. This has scary implications for polling European elections, because it indicates that as voter dissatisfaction with the eurozone and the response of the mainstream parties to the ongoing crisis grows we might see some really unpleasant surprise election results over the next couple years.
Great analysis of the French presidential election. Of note — Le Pen toppled the first-round score her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, scored in 2002, a showing which her party suggests solidifies her long-term potential. Read up more on the election over here.
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