>For the vast majority of it's existence, the 5th republic has had proportional representation in the legislature (only changed with Sarkozy, who instituted 2-round elections - IIRC).
Uh, no. The Fifth has has two round legislative elections since its beginning. The entire reason for it was that the Fourth and Third showed what an overly powerful parliament caused, as well as the relative instability of having only a single round to elect députés.
Hence, the Fifth was started by a former general who thought that putting immense amounts of power in the president was a good idea. Because clearly counter powers are overrated.
Additionally, french legislative elections can have a very peculiar situation where the second round has three candidates, but that requires a specific amount of votes and to all be extremely close. I believe there's 10 of them planned this year according to polls, over 577 circonscriptions.
I stand corrected. Apparently proportional representation only happened in the 1986 elections when Mitterrand made that change for that single election [1]. Amusing reading back on what happened vs. what I heard about from others.
Regarding the 3 candidates in 2nd round - yes that's only possible because France allows 3 & 4 candidates to go into 2nd round if they have over 12.5%. This is usually not the case, so 3-rounds are very limited but as you indicate they do present a plurality win possibility.
Uh, no. The Fifth has has two round legislative elections since its beginning. The entire reason for it was that the Fourth and Third showed what an overly powerful parliament caused, as well as the relative instability of having only a single round to elect députés.
Hence, the Fifth was started by a former general who thought that putting immense amounts of power in the president was a good idea. Because clearly counter powers are overrated.
Additionally, french legislative elections can have a very peculiar situation where the second round has three candidates, but that requires a specific amount of votes and to all be extremely close. I believe there's 10 of them planned this year according to polls, over 577 circonscriptions.