On Sunday night, I received the results to Round 1 of the by-election. They make for interesting reading!

I had to deal with it in an Excel spreadsheet and figure out who was who, but YOU get this nice handy chart:

So, there are a number of interesting conclusions I draw from this. (Note the French use a comma instead of a decimal point. Even punctuation translates.)

1. Unsurprisingly, the UMP candidate is way ahead with 40.54% compared to us in second place with 15.38%. This means that we go to the second round on Sunday, but it doesn’t look likely that we will win.

2. The Greens failed miserably. There score is way below what they should have expected considering their performance at the EU Parliament Elections. They have also (once again) refused to enter an alliance with us. In fact, in an interview a Green (not important who) said “The principles of the PS are not compatible with Europe Ecologie” – A barely veiled call to vote Right, I think.

3. The “Left” put together about 35%. I don’t know about “Modem” (Lib Dems!) but I think the Communists are willing to help.

4. Participation was 20%. Not surprising for a by-election taking place during the summer and just after the return to school, yet still despicable.

5. The Extreme Right is the really interesting one, in which I eat my own words. I had said not to worry too much about the FN because they had collapsed in 2007. You can’t argue that 8% isn’t a good performance, add it to his other fascist-friend (Nissa Identitaire) and you have a total of 16%. It seems they’re getting their act together once again.

Nevertheless, nothing is lost. Into the breach, camarades!

If you have any questions, I’ll answer them in the comments.