French Political Parties

If you though voting in America was tough, you obviously haven’t voted in France before. Not only are there numerous parties for each of the different regions, but there are many parties that come in and out of the elections season

While the names of the true French political parties are much prettier in French, here are the names in good old English:

• New Anticapitalist Party
• Workers' Struggle
• Unitarian Left
• Left Party
• French Communist Party
• Radical Party of the Left
• Socialist Party
• Citizen and Republican Movement
• The Greens
• Democratic Movement
• New Center
• Radical Party
• Union for a Popular Movement
• National Center of Independents and Peasants
• Hunt, Fish, Nature, Traditions
• Movement for France
• National Front
• Rally for the Republic
• Liberal Democracy
• French Section of the Workers' International
• Royal Alliance (Alliance Royale)
• Nouvelle Action Royaliste
• Democratic rally (Rassemblement démocrate), moderate-centrist royalists
• Action Française
• Workers Communist Party of France (PCOF)
• Independent Workers' Party (Parti ouvrier indépendant or POI),
• Pole of Communist Rebirth in France (Pôle de Renaissance Communiste en France)
• Juche Party of France
• Ecology Generation (Génération Écologie, or GE)
• Citizenship, Action
• Union of Radical RepublicansLiberal Democratic Party (Parti libéral démocrate)
• Pirate Party (Parti Pirate)
• Abertzaleen Batasuna (Basque Country, nationalist separatist)
• Alsace d'abord (Alsace, far-right regionalist)
• Ligue savoisienne (Savoie, liberal separatist)
• Union Démocratique Bretonne (Brittany, left-wing regionalist)
• Party of the Corsican Nation (Corsica, nationalist autonomist)
• Corsica Libera (Corsica, nationalist separatist)

The Impact of Many Political Parties

When you look at all of these political parties, you can see how things might get hectic when it comes to the government. But just like so many other countries, the French seem to have certain parties that tend to be elected the most often. When this is the case, this doesn’t mean they have a two party system, but that some parties tend to be more relevant than others. This is really the trick when it comes to political parties – and having one for every thinking pattern:

• Votes are spread out – When you have a lot of political parties, it means you will have votes spread out among the different parties and it might be difficult to see the majority.
• Voices are quieter – When a lot of people are speaking at once, not all of the voices will be able to be heard, which is disappointing to those in certain smaller parties.
• Too much work for a voter – If a voter needs to look at hundreds of different candidates, they might go with the one that is the loudest or the party that has already been in power, just to make things easier.