This post includes political opinion. Sources for non-opinion content at bottom of post.
The first round of the French Presidential election took place on Sunday 9th April. France as I have stated before in my France Government System post uses a two round absolute majority system for presidential elections.
What this means is that in the first round if no candidate gets an absolute majority of the votes, then the top two candidates will advance to a 2nd round or run-off election held at a later date. Quite as was expected no candidate got an absolute majority and so a second round will be held on Sunday 24th April.
As it stands France is one of the elections to watch due to a close challenge once again from Marine Le Pen who made shockwaves in 2017 by managing to make it into the second round amidst the downward spiral of the two mainstream parties – the Socialists and the Republicans.
But back then polls widely predicted that Emmanuel Macron, an earthquake himself within the election, would win in the second round of which he quite easily did. The electorate decided to go with the centrist over the far-rightist, which is the sensible and expected approach.
Many were hoping Macron would be the change the electorate were hoping for, but over the years many have once again become dissatisfied and Macron’s energetic support has been decreasing.
For the first round of the election polls had been predicting that despite an initial short-lived boost from Macron’s diplomatic efforts in the Ukraine crisis and war, his support had since fallen back while Marine Le Pen’s had climbed.
Some polls suggested that the first election was within the margin of error with Macron slightly ahead, but many others also gave Macron a lead just outside of that margin of error as well, but that neither would secure the 50% majority required to win outright. These polls were overall correct, with Macron slightly over-performing predictions while for Marine Le Pen polls were practically spot on.
The fact that Macron managed to get almost 29% of the vote has given supporters a boost of hope that he has a good chance of securing a win in the second round against Marine Le Pen. Polling suggests that a second-round win for Macron will be much closer than in 2017 against Le Pen.
When comparing first round results Marine Le Pen improved upon her vote share by around 2 points while Macron improved by around 5 points. Macron does have the advantage of being the incumbent here which he did not have in the previous election, so an improvement on his first-round vote share in that regard is not really unexpected, even in the face of his growing unpopularity.
In the first round in 2017 Marine Le Pen only managed to scrape into the second-round pool by around 1 point, with the Republicans candidate in a close third. But even though Marine Le Pen has improved upon her vote share since 2017 she still only managed to get into the second round by about 1 point again, with the far-left candidate Melenchon coming up in 3rd, having improved on his vote share by around 2 points, out-performing polling expectations by around 3-4 points.
The two mainstream parties on the other hand… well, I think we may have to consider for how much longer we call them mainstream parties, neither have recovered since 2017 with the Socialists performing especially bad. I think if anything this election once again shows the discontent among the electorate who hunger for a change and are willing to back candidates like Marine Le Pen and Melenchon to try and get it.
The Socialists candidate did not even make it as one of the top six candidates. Instead, the top six were the centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron of Republic on the Move; far-right Marine Le Pen of National Rally; centre-right Valerie Pecresse of the Republicans; far-left Jean-Luc Melenchon of France Unbowed; far-right Eric Zemmour of Reconquest; and environmentalist left-wing Yannick Jadot of the Greens.
When you see above that half of the top candidates are far right/left populists it once again goes to show the level of discontent among the electorate that the presence of such candidates rivals those candidates which would be considered more centrist mainstream forces. I wonder if this will continue to be the case in French politics, and if so, how long it may take for one of them to eventually win.
Now, when it comes to polling for the second round, we have to keep in mind that there is a degree of sensationalism to reporting on them. Many news outlets will pick up outlier polls that show the race to be within the margin of error while ignoring other polls that give Macron a larger lead over Marine Le Pen.
Now, of course it is important to take note of a potential outlier that may signal a potential change or upset, but it is also just as important to look at the overall trend. Macron still appears to be the favourite to win at least by around 4-5 points which is a bit a above the margin of error, not the most comfortable but also not exactly panic stations. His decent 1st round performance is also a good sign for Macron that he has a decent chance to win in the 2nd round.
It will naturally come down to how voters split off from the other candidates that are now out of the race. One of the interesting candidate voters that are being focused on are Melenchon’s. It appears a good chunk of them may be planning to switch their vote over to Le Pen in the second round, while others will forego voting for any candidate.
It is important that Macron wins a good degree of Melenchon’s voters and it does appear that he is on track to win more of them over than Marine Le Pen. But the amount of those voters who may also go over to Marine Le Pen is quite staggering when you consider these are far-left voters going over to a far-right candidate – I think this shows more than anything the level of discontent these voters have for what they consider the establishment and who they view as the wealthy elite.
You can go to this Guardian page here to view a neat diagram predicting where voters will go to in the second round (scroll down on page).
Macron’s image has become increasingly tarred by accusations of him being the ‘President of the rich’ and these kinds of comments will not help his image with Melenchon voters who may swallow their far-left stances and vote for a far-right candidate just because they see Macron as more of an established wealthy elitist who focuses on the interests of the rich more than those of the common man. We see it time and again.
It is to be noted that Melenchon has called for his voters to not vote for Le Pen but also did not directly endorse Macron. Most of the other candidates from the first round have given their direct backing to Macron except for Eric Zemmour who gave his endorsement to Marine Le Pen. We shall have to see if it has an effect, but it is a good sign for Macron that he is receiving multipartisan support, which will connect to my next tangent a bit later.
Back to Macron’s image… it shows us that even someone who comes from outside of the mainstream and completely uproots the political fabric of the country can still fall into becoming the new mainstream and being seen as ‘same old, same old’. The thing is, how does this issue get solved in a way that can prevent radical candidates from potentially winning?
Or should certain radical candidates have to win to truly bring in needed change? Perhaps someone like Melenchon could solve this issue, maybe someone like that is needed to shock the system into the right direction again. A fleeting moment of radicalism that either directly or indirectly leads to longer-term social and economic improvement that will bring people’s trust and caring back to politics. It is the bad times create good times saying.
But should it really need to be that extreme? I really do not think so, I mean Donald Trump’s term has not really shocked the system towards something better, and despite everything he remains a strong force that could win again in the future. I think politics needs to become less partisan to fix these issues. Politics now a days seem to be as divided as ever between different parties and political leanings.
Partisan politics more times than not causes stagnation and delay, and to many people it seems that nothing can get done, or that nothing changes. I think if less radical forces could work together to an acceptable level so that it can bring needed change, then people won’t desperately resort to voting in a radical candidate to try and fix things. Perhaps we should learn from history and not let things repeat. Poor, weak and stale governments and hard times lead to radicalism.
The hard times of this period are terrorism, the coronavirus pandemic and rising economic hardship. The pandemic itself was one of the major contributors to increasing economic hardship even further, as well as the crisis and war in Ukraine having a knock-on effect that will continue on.
Multipartisan politics can be a force used to fix fundamental and deep-rooted political issues that exist within a state. Continually ignoring such things in favour of partisan politics and cheap point scoring is only going to lead to greater dissatisfaction and a mix of apathy and desperation, and as such radical choices by the electorate that are more likely to win.
Macron did promise to bring about a multipartisan field between the centre-right and centre-left, but it seems he has since not achieved enough on that front.
The biggest issues of this election for France focus on the rising cost of living, such as rising bills and price rises in shops and fuel. The other big topics influencing the election are security, in light of recent terrorist attacks, pensions, immigration and the environment.
Marine Le Pen has played into some of these big issues, particularly on the cost of living and security, which has enabled her to climb in the polls. In the five years since 2017 Marine Le Pen has worked to rebrand her political party and also soften rhetoric as to appear electable and more moderate, while keeping the same or similar policies that have been molded to appeal.
Some of her big policies include strict immigration controls but at the same time willing to allow Ukrainian refugees in (so it is molded to appeal) and a dig into her far-right challenger Eric Zemmour’s blunder on the same topic; a French-first policy on housing, jobs and benefits; and banning the Muslim headscarf in public places.
She has also dropped her plan of leaving the European Union instead focusing on trying to reform it (molded to appeal and also not too dissimilar to Macron when taken at face-value). Macron is also for remaining in the European Union but had also promised to pursue reform within the bloc, something that as we have since seen is incredibly difficult to achieve, in such a big bureaucratic institution.
Macron views his biggest achievements during his term as lowering unemployment, lowering taxes, and spending more on security. He also made it so companies could more easily fire workers and brought in tough new terrorism laws.
It seems even though Macron put a decent focus on security, it still remains one of the top issues. It is a sign he failed to capitalize on these policy achievements. It is often overlooked that much of the populace do not follow politics closely most of the time, and so can miss crucial things like this which leads to the spread of misinformation. That’s why regularly highlighting these things should be a major importance.
Macron also started his campaign later due to needing to focus on the Ukraine crisis, and he has failed to capitalize on the big issues at the heart of the election unlike Marine Le Pen, and instead people have identified his policies on increasing the retirement age to 65 and linking teacher’s pay to their effort of work for reasons not to vote for him in light of the economic hardship issues.
One of his low points was of course the Gilets Jaunes or Yellow Vest protests, some of which were violent and widespread. They came about in response to a new fuel tax and these protests led to the scrapping of that proposal. But more than that these protests turned into a general outcry on economic and social inequality. They may not have achieved much beyond ending the fuel tax proposal, but they certainly served to make Macron more unpopular, especially with the left.
Originally Eric Zemmour was a danger to Marine Le Pen’s chances of entering into the second round. Given he is a far-right candidate he could very well have stolen a large chunk of her voting base. But Marine Le Pen was skilled enough to politically out-maneuver him. Zemmour’s pro-Russia stance was one of the things that led to his downfall, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine having taken place.
There was the small potential that either he would go into the second round over Le Pen or perhaps the larger potential that he would split the far-right vote to the point someone else would get in instead, such as Melenchon. But following the invasion of Ukraine, and other mistakes made by Zemmour and his campaign that Le Pen took advantage of, his polling numbers declined to the benefit of Le Pen.
Zemmour was also useful in that he managed to attract traditional right-wing voters to him, which was thanks to him having been a journalist for a right-wing broadsheet. It is believed many of these voters may and have now also moved over to Marine Le Pen as well, whose policies are also not seen as far to the right as Zemmour’s. It is thought that Zemmour in this has broken the wall between traditional right and far-right and made Marine Le Pen more palatable.
Marine Le Pen has managed to successfully distance herself from Russia and Vladimir Putin, who she and her party were originally close with. Her party is even still paying off a loan to Russia even as this election takes place. It just goes to show that being smart and rising the biggest topics serves to hide the less desirable parts.
With things like BREXIT and Trump still riding in people’s minds, there is of course going to be a lot of anxiety for something similar taking place in France. Polls suggest that Macron will be the most likely winner on the 24th April, but there is no doubt the race is much closer than last time. Whereby last time second round polls gave Macron a clear victory, showing him consistently around 20 points ahead of Le Pen, this time he is only ahead by less than 10 points.
Even if Macron does win, unless something changes, I doubt this will be the last we see of radical candidates doing well and potentially winning in future French elections. Big problems require big solutions, big solutions require multipartisan politics.
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