.

May 30, 2005 7:38 AM

Red State/Blue state France. Les résultats département par département. Remarkable that the U.S. isn't the only country that's split down the geographic middle. No translation, but the picture speaks for itself.
posted by jfuller (22 comments total)

Color me either 1. Blue 2. Red 3. Unimpressed

Indeed the color contrast between blue and red is misleading. I remember looking at this U.S. map showing the division between east, west and center is more or less a pundit bipartisan hate trick.
posted by elpapacito at 7:55 AM on May 30, 2005

apophenia
posted by Kattullus at 8:00 AM on May 30, 2005

wow you mean propaganda works in france's rural areas just like it does in the states! who would have guessed it?
posted by nola at 8:02 AM on May 30, 2005

What elpapacito said. It's surprising to see anyone still using the red/blue thing as an accurate portrayal of a country "split down the geographic middle." Here's my fave correction. Did you never see this page, jfuller?
posted by mediareport at 8:12 AM on May 30, 2005

Top right: Strasbourg, one of the cities the European Parliament resides. Was very poor (closed-coal-mining territory) until that happened, so they are probably very pro-european.
Left: Bretagne and Normandy. They got lots of European subsidies to reform their ailing agriculture economies. Promises of more coming.
Middle: Île de France (Paris and surroundings). Don't know why they voted for the constitution, maybe because they were actually able to read it.
posted by kika at 8:17 AM on May 30, 2005

jfuller: I see a sea of Non with few spots of Oui... Where's the divide?
posted by talos at 8:23 AM on May 30, 2005

> I remember looking at this U.S. map showing the division between east, west
> and center is more or less a pundit bipartisan hate trick.

You overlooked the fact that the linked Le Monde map is not a two-color dichotomy but rather shows proportionate voting, exactly as your red-blue-purple map does. The key is over on the left side of the image. Jeez.
posted by jfuller at 8:42 AM on May 30, 2005

It's interesting. It's not jfuller's fault that Le Monde doesn't have an English edition.
posted by raysmj at 8:52 AM on May 30, 2005

Btw, talos' comment from last week's post about the upcoming vote is worth a look if anyone missed it. And an April piece in the Economist looked at the future if France voted no [ad req'd for day pass].
posted by mediareport at 8:53 AM on May 30, 2005

Well then. That's a nice way of putting it. You know, one could argue they're all red. Those pinko commie subversives!!

[ps. sorry about all that Flash]
posted by gsb at 8:55 AM on May 30, 2005

wow you mean propaganda works in france's rural areas just like it does in the states! who would have guessed it?


Except (almost) all of the state propaganda was for a yes vote
posted by ZippityBuddha at 8:55 AM on May 30, 2005

I think (and please Parisians do correct me if I'm wrong) that the divisions in Paris seem to be corresponding to income divisions (West and Center -> richer -> vote "oui", North and East - > poorer -> vote for "Non"). Right?
posted by talos at 9:40 AM on May 30, 2005

jfuller : jeez I notice the graduality...and you still maintain it's divided in the middle like U.S. that isn't divided to being with ?

HELLLO the red/blue geographic dicotomy is a false one.
posted by elpapacito at 10:37 AM on May 30, 2005

Except (almost) all of the state propaganda was for a yes vote

Yeah, but there were many, many posters in the streets for the "non", which painted a picture of a militaristic, unsocial and destructively capitalist Europe if the "oui" were to win...

talos: Yes, that seems to be a valid analysis, even for the individual arrondissments in Paris itself. For example, compare the rich 16ème (80-20) with the poorer 20ème (53-47). But there is also correlation with education level, employment and age...
posted by ltl at 10:45 AM on May 30, 2005

The "red/blue" state thing is mostly because of our Electoral collage system. Winning states is all that matters. Similarly, for british parlement, winning a (whatevery they call political districts) means an MP, regardless of the margin.
posted by delmoi at 11:41 AM on May 30, 2005

Breton areas might also have expected more language/cultural autonomy? Just a guess.
posted by gimonca at 12:38 PM on May 30, 2005

delmoi: Did you mean to call the system that led to a '"red/blue" state thing' a collage? 'Cause that would certainly lead to red and blue states side by each...
posted by birdsquared at 2:37 PM on May 30, 2005

Very interesting. Things look more pronounced, i.e., polarized in France than the US. In any case, this doesn't disprove that most of France has been rendered stupid by generations of socialism and pessimism.

Lets all hope that this is the beginning of the end of the EU as statist economic nightmare.
posted by ParisParamus at 11:33 AM on May 31, 2005

And, would Chirac retire already! Unbelievable!
posted by ParisParamus at 11:41 AM on May 31, 2005

Nice map and all, but both the radical right and the radical left opposed this measure. So the red/blue thing doesn't have any political relation to the red/blue election map in the U.S.

Basically, on the one side you have folks that want the nation state to reemerge (and to keep the willing-to-work-for-low-pay foreigners out), and on the other side you have folks that thought the constitution was too "market-oriented" and didn't offer enough protections for their lifestyle (and to keep the willing-to-work-for-lower-pay foreigners out). And both sides wanted to punish the current government for the 10% unemployment rate.

Answer me this though: the margin was 55% - 45%, or something close to that, yet I continually read that this was a huge rejection. And I remember a certain election where 51%-49%, or something close to that, was seen as giving the winner a "mandate." Now, it's been a while since I took a statistics class, but these hardly seem like wide ratios to me. Have we lost all sense of proportion, or has it always been like this, where people consider winning a little more than half the vote a landslide?
posted by moonbiter at 12:22 PM on May 31, 2005

Things look more pronounced, i.e., polarized in France than the US.

That's just silly, Paris, given moonbiter's first point. And it wasn't just folks on the "radical" fringes that opposed this thing, as the coverage has clearly shown. There were a ton of reasons to vote no, among them revulsion - from across the spectrum - at the perception it was being shoved down the throat of the people by the government. Yet that translates into more polarization than in the last U.S. election?
posted by mediareport at 8:24 PM on May 31, 2005

ParisParamus kneejerked:

>this doesn't disprove that most of France has been rendered stupid by generations of socialism and pessimism.

What the Fuck, Indeed
posted by gsb at 11:28 PM on May 31, 2005