French Presidental election system

Cork boy 55

Whats the point of the two round system in the french presidental election.
Whats the advantage?
Surely a PR system would acheive same result in one go?

Victor

You mean PRSTV? STV is the important bit.

Ultimately, the winner in the second round can definitely say they have a majority.

The two round system puts in place a breathing space between the first and second rounds of the election, that isn't there with PRTV. It also does away with messy counts, although that isn't necessarily the worst problem.

In the 2002 election http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2002 there was a large number of left wing candidates, which split their vote, resulting in two right wing candidates in the run-off, which makes PR-STV more advantageous. In this way, the two round system discourages minority candidates, but enables splitters.

Eliot Rosewater

PR-STV could possibly give the same result, but not definitely: Victor's example of the Left-split is potentially such a case. The two rounds could certainly be consolidated into one round with an amended PR-STV system whereby after the first round every candidate not in the top two were eliminated.

It seems the goal of the system is to ensure the president has majority support. Normal PR-STV would give the same kind of majority support to the winner. The differences between the systems are to my mind merely psychological, and I find it interesting that effectively meaningless psychological differences have framed such an important national policy.

People might be interested in the election of the speaker of the United Kingdom's House of Commons, which is fully PR-STV but in which, like the French presidential election, electors manually vote in each round.

Denerick

I quite like the French Presidential model. The first round offers a good cross section of the popular mood, with a variety of candidates from far left to far right picking up votes along the way. People don't worry about wasting their vote and hence vote with their heart. Then what normally happens is a run off election between the mainstream center left and center right candidates. PR wouldn't work because the President is effectively an elected monarch - he needs a mandate from a majority of the nation. For example, under PR single election, Hollande would have been president with less than 30% of the popular vote.

Eliot Rosewater

Well he's president and he only got 28% of the popular vote! That he got over 50% in the second round doesn't really make a difference. The majority vote he got in it is the exact same as the majority vote one gets in a PR-STV election. He isn't the most preferred of 52% of French people; he is relatively the most preferred, in comparison to Sarkozy. I don't see how holding the rounds on different weekends changes the nature of the majority vote one gets.

Cork boy 55

In terms of dollar cost

Is running two elections way more expensive than a single PRSTV count?

I would guess a single run is far cheaper and it seems to me it's the same thing at the end of the day.

I really don't see the point.