Runoff

If ever we get around to reforming the decrepit 1987 Constitution, we might learn a few things from the French about how to run presidential elections more efficiently.

On April 24, France will hold the second round of voting for president. Contending in this possibly tight contest is incumbent Emmanuel Macron and right-wing perennial candidate Marine Le Pen.

France always votes on Sundays, allowing maximum participation of those who work on ordinary days. Presidential elections are usually a two-stage process when no candidate gets over 50 percent of the vote in the initial stage. The runoff between the top two candidates happens two weeks after the first round of voting.

The runoff stage ensures the president gets a majority vote. The two-stage voting process ensures the widest participation of all groups in a multi-party system. Had we adopted a runoff process, this would at least spare us a repeat of that silly press conference held by presidential candidates last Sunday.

The 1987 Constitution, providing for a multi-party system, ought to have included a runoff stage when the commissioners decided to shift back to a presidential system at the last moment. Without a runoff provision, we have been condemned to having mere plurality presidents in all post-Edsa presidential elections. That could change this year, if the surveys correctly anticipate voter preferences.

In the 2017 elections, Macron with his newly formed La Republique en Marche party roundly beat Le Pen, garnering 66 percent of the second round vote. Analysts are expecting the second-round vote to be a bit tighter this year, even as the incumbent is decidedly at an advantage.

The French, it is said, vote in the first round with their hearts. In the second round, they vote with their brains.

Macron may have been a little overconfident this year. Preoccupied with international affairs, he began campaigning only days before the vote. He held only one political rally before the first round of voting. That might seem diffident compared to the almost daily spectacle of political rallies organized by our presidential candidates over the past few months. Most of these rallies rely on the drawing power of starlets and musicians.

Even as he started campaigning late, Macron garnered 27.84 percent of the first-round vote. That was a better outcome for him than analysts expected.

Running second, Rassemblement National candidate Le Pen took 23.15 percent of the vote. The candidate, running on a rightwing and populist platform, renamed her late father’s National Front party and softened its formerly strident platform.

It is noteworthy that the extreme left and far-right parties account for about half of the popular vote. Fortunately for France, the hard leftists and the rightists do not support each other. Macron, an investment banker, a staunch Europeanist and a product of the most elite universities, will likely attract the voters from the left.

The centrist vote is nearly monopolized by Macron. The left-of-center socialists and the right-of-center Gaullists have virtually evaporated from French politics. The broad center used to alternate in power before their voters were drawn to Macron’s newfangled party. The mayor of Paris, running for the Socialist Party, took just over 1 percent of the first round vote.

Macron is a phenomenon in French politics. He began as a protégé of former Socialist president Francois Hollande, serving as minister for the economy.

In 2017, the young Macron barged his way to the presidency, promising full employment for his people. Many of his promises remain unfulfilled as the pandemic brought havoc to the French economy. Fortunately for him, all the other parties in the broad ideological center are basically moribund.

Also to his advantage, Le Pen has had to live down her long-standing admiration for Vladimir Putin. After all that has happened in Ukraine, such affinity is a major electoral drawback.

Macron has his issues too. His pro-market policies are often portrayed as hard-edged and callous. Most recently, he proposed bringing up the retirement age to address labor shortages in the French economy.

Nevertheless, Macron is widely expected to win a second term on April 24 simply because French voters are generally saner in the runoff. They are not about to install a shrill rightwing demagogue in power.

Virtual runoff

We might have virtual second-stage runoff in our own protracted campaign period for the presidency. The demarcation between the first and second stages was very likely set by last Sunday’s bizarre press conference featuring Isko Moreno, Ping Lacson and Bert Gonzales.

What that badly conceived event tells us is that the presidential race has basically simplified into a two-candidate contest. The final subtext in that event is that the trailing candidates are now likely lost.

On the same day this silly stunt of a press conference was held, the OCTA research group released the results of their latest voter preference surveys. Bongbong Marcos retains his 57 percent share of voter preference. Leni Robredo gained a 22 percent share.

With three weeks left in the marathon campaign period, Marcos holds a majority share. Robredo is lagging way behind, needing to about double her share of the vote in the limited time left. All the others may now be dismissed as irrelevant.

Whatever gains Robredo posted, she apparently gained from the minor candidates. The minor candidates have no way to claw back the votes they lost to the survey leaders. No wonder they are whining.

As voter preferences harden, it will take nothing less than a cataclysmic event to alter the broad trend. There are no more large swing constituencies in this contest.