[Frajedo]

> Out of curiosity: What is/was your motivation behind this and how does it correlate to elections?

What motivated me is the simple fact that during this presidential campaign we would have one candidate saying that his presidential balance has been "very good", and on the other side all the opponents have been constantly stating that it has been a "disaster". During these last months, I have been unable to find a "neutral" and global way of see the impact Macron has had during the last 5 years. I therefore wanted to build this website in order to have a dashboard showing national statistics on key topics.

> Showing election dates of French presidents looks like a classic and rather obvious case of correlation does not imply causation.

I wanted to show the presidential election dates precisely to showcase this: It really almost doesn't matter which president France has. I believe that the macroeconomic variations follow World/European variations. And unfortunately, I feel that too many people believe that the presidents are "destroying" or "saving" the country.

> Might well be that I don't have the full picture though and I was not following French campaigns. Is there a public debate/ general public opinion in France that presidents had significant influence on these indicators shown?

I guess that there has probably been debates and studies about this, but from my experience I can say that presidents cannot influence too much the trends that the country is following.

[xwolfi]

As a French abroad, so maybe more detached, I agree with you ! Maybe the president could have an impact if he did anything a bit revolutionary, but since they never do and simply soft manage the country to prevent any huge swing, it seems like they dont matter.

I guess we could say this is an accomplishment to manage to stick to european averages, one president could pull and Erdogan, move back to the Franc and explode the inflation or someth :D

[turbinerneiter]

I don't believe this to be a good thing. If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact?

Just as an example: in Germany there is now a SPD led government, with the Greens and the FDP, after a long time of CDU led government. Many people voted to see some real changes, e.g. when it comes to environmental policies or social topics like wealth gaps, low minimum wage, ... If after 4 years of an SPD led government, the people don't see and feel any real change, the only thing they can do is move to more extremist parties.

There is also some weird mental gymnastics going on when it comes to the power of the state. During the election campaigns, all candidates promise big changes. Once elected, they will tell you that they don't have the power to actually do it, and claim some outside forces are stopping them. People also at the same time expect politicians to be able to mage big changes, but don't actually believe that it is possible. The only big changes I can remember that were actually made were mostly negative.

[yorwba]

> If voting differently doesn't make a difference, then why vote? Is it actually a democracy if elections don't have any impact?

It's not that elections don't have an impact, they do, but you shouldn't expect that impact to manifest itself as large swings in aggregate statistics, for two reasons:

1. Those statistics measure the aggregate behavior of many individuals, most of which are not elected officials but ordinary people. Unless the government adopts a command economy and micromanages everything, they have only limited influence on what ordinary people are doing.

2. The people voting in each election are mostly the same and they're not going to suddenly vote all that differently.

If you want to know what kind of impact an election outcome had, look at things the government influences directly, where there are widely divergent opinions on what to do, and where the election coincides with a change in which opinion has majority support.

[tough]

This is actually the same in the US where you have a false choice between red/blue teams both always led by old white dudes lobbied into oblivion (legally) by capital.

Or in spain, where you have the red/blue dichotomy, and a -constitutional democracy-, and a king. All living under the umbrella of the mere appointment of the past dictator from 70y ago... and all doing the same pillaging and corruption no matter their -supposed- ideologies you're supposed to vote for.

I think we've been sold democracy as a one size fits all solution, and it might have worked for the greek polis (where btw, democracy co-lived with slavery too) but might be a flawed thing in the 21st century of globalisation and mass media and corps much bigger and powerful than nation states...

YMMV

[xwolfi]

Because it's a fallacy to think "change" is the purpose. If we cant fix the french mindset bar a terrible crisis, then the best to do is to soft manage the country like all presidents did since the americans showered us with money and made us believe we didnt have to work for it.

We could change, but how many decades of instability to move towards capitalism away from the nanny state ? Knowing us we d be communist before being individualist. I think Macron got it and is trying very slowly, that s good enough and I vote satisfied. Why always revolt and break everything ?

[turbinerneiter]

Why do you think the french mindset is wrong?

I didn't find a great up to date source, but the latest number I saw - French median wealth is almost 3 times Germany. That's with the Germans earning more on average, working more, working longer and getting lower pensions.

Look at the decline of labour share.

We are outcompeting us to death. If French people work more, what are the Germans to do? Work even more? We will end up in a spiral.

How do you motivate people to work harder for less money? Just to make the economy happy? What's in it for the people?

[thenaturalist]

Thank you very much for sharing this context, it's really helpful!

I just had a conversation with a French friend whose opinion on the election and the design of the institutions closely matches what you're describing.

I'm a little ashamed to say that albeit having learned French quite a long time in school and considering myself to be interested in the affairs of your country as a German neighbour I had hardly a notion of how polar your presedential election process and the public discours around it and related policies by candidates seems to be set up.

Thanks again for building this!