A Major Defeat for the French Left

Pierre Mendes-France was beaten at Grenoble by the former Gaullist minister Jean-Marcel Jeanneney.

Out of an electorate of about 40,000, Jeanneney’s plurality was 130. In beginning with such an example, I do not wish to pretend that all the Gaullist gains were produced by such feeble margins. But the defeat of Mendes-France underlines the long-known fact of the French system’s particular sensitivity to minor shifts in the electorate. The most important fact that was brought...