She had been waiting for it for five years: Marine Le Pen will face, on Sunday April 24, Emmanuel Macron for the return match of the 2017 presidential election. For this second round, the candidate of the National Rally hopes to achieve a much better score than the 33 9% in his first “final”. With 23.15% of the vote in the first round, can she circumvent the Republican front which has reconstituted itself against her? Will it seduce a significant part of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s support and will it gather the votes of voters disappointed with Eric Zemmour?
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Franceinfo looked at the dynamic in favor of Marine Le Pen with Gilles Ivaldi, researcher at CNRS and Cevipof (Sciences Po). The researcher, author of the note “Marine Le Pen, Éric Zemmour: social-populism against popular capitalism” (in PDF) last March, looks back on the campaign of the far-right candidate and analyzes her strengths and weaknesses in view of the second round.
Franceinfo: What is the main lesson of the first round of the presidential election for Marine Le Pen?
Gilles Ivaldi: It is first of all a victory, insofar as his campaign had started badly. She was very weak and had started a campaign with a party in great financial difficulty. She was coming out of the regional elections last year, a sequence during which her party had experienced quite significant setbacks. It suffered from competition from Eric Zemmour who made a very good start to the campaign. It was said to be almost dead politically, so it is rather a success.
Is this success incomplete?
Admittedly, Marine Le Pen is qualified, but she may not have been able to trigger the dynamic as much as she would have hoped. In the last moments of the campaign, we saw the curves get closer to the point where Marine Le Pen cherished the hope of taking the lead in front of Emmanuel Macron. Finally, she comes in second position and there is a relatively large gap with the President of the Republic. She is closely followed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with around 400,000 votes between them. It is a middle position for Marine Le Pen, a mixed success.
Did she benefit from a useful voting logic against Eric Zemmour?
He finally suffered from two things: the first is that he made a campaign of excess and provocation, positioning himself on very extreme themes. He chained errors, such as his statements on the Bataclan, the middle finger in Marseille, comments on disabled children or on the war in Ukraine.
“Eric Zemmour showed that he had little credibility and that he worried a lot.”
Gilles Ivaldi, researcher at CNRS and Cevipofat franceinfo
The second factor in its decline dates back to early March, when purchasing power began to dominate the debates. This is the main issue on which people voted. On this, Marine Le Pen positioned herself very early when he did not feel the importance of it as well. Eric Zemmour began to lose ground in the polls at the start of the year and there the phenomenon of the useful vote came into play. We have seen very clearly how the Lepenist voters of 2017 gradually returned to the fold. At the beginning of January, Marine Le Pen only brought back around 60% of her voters from five years ago; according to surveys published on Sunday, she finally gathered almost 80% of her electorate.
By adding the votes obtained by Marine Le Pen and those obtained by Eric Zemmour, can we say that the far right has never been so strong in France?
The far right is very strong. This reflects several distinct dynamics. First, Marine Le Pen consolidated her electoral base, which had moved away from her. During the Covid-19 crisis, the far-right parties rather retreated, with a return of voters to the executive in place, as we saw in the regional elections. Then it progressed into the lower middle classes. Previously, there was a larger gap between his score among workers, very strong, and employees.
“The other dynamic at work is that of Eric Zemmour. He has attracted fillonist voters, more bourgeois and more traditionalist on values, to the camp of the far right.”
Gilles Ivaldiat franceinfo
These dynamics create something larger and more heterogeneous. The extreme right, or rather the extreme right, is stronger than before.
Do you think they can meet in the second round?
Clearly, yes. Today, polls show that around 80% of Eric Zemmour’s electorate should vote for Marine Le Pen on April 24. Eric Zemmour’s electorate is also deeply anti-Macron. At the same time, if she displays a softened and respectable face, Marine Le Pen is still a candidate who has very radical positions on immigration, which pleases the Zemmour camp. In this logic, the fusion of the extreme right is quite clear and obvious.
Should she make a lot of effort to attract the votes of Eric Zemmour’s voters?
Not really. Marine Le Pen knows that she must seek votes elsewhere because Eric Zemmour’s reservoir is acquired. In the same way, she has no interest in displaying herself too much with him, because she knows that he has become a scarecrow, whereas she must show that she is credible and unifying. In fact, she wants to speak to three categories of voters: abstentionists, her main reserve; what remains of right-wing voters, with Valérie Pécresse, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Jean Lassalle; and the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. However, she is facing a difficulty because the LFI candidate has called for her to be beaten.
However, part of the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon could vote for her in the second round. This could go up to 30%, according to an Ifop survey…
In 2017, according to our surveys at Cevipof, this figure was around 12% of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters. There, a 25% to 30% transfer of votes to her would be huge!
What levers does it have to rally them?
They are triple. First, for her, we must continue the demonization and appear as the most moderate, the most acceptable. She undertook this work for a long time and on Sunday she was extremely soft to position itself as a candidate almost mainstream.
“Marine Le Pen will focus on the social, because she knows she has a card to play.”
Gilles Ivaldiat franceinfo
Finally, where Emmanuel Macron will reactivate the republican front, Marine Le Pen will try to form an anti-Macron front. She is quite well equipped to do so, because she has the ability to make people forget who she is. On Sunday, Jean-Luc Mélenchon also took care to remind his voters who they were dealing with to dissuade them from giving in to the sirens of the social-populism of Marine Le Pen because, behind, there is an extreme right program .
These two electorates do not seem to vote for the same reasons, do they?
In our surveys, we had three main blocks of emotions: concern, which carried the Macron vote, especially that of the oldest; weariness, which is found in significant abstention; and anger, which is reflected in the Le Pen and Mélenchon vote. Today, Emmanuel Macron will continue to mobilize the electorate of concern, while Marine Le Pen will mobilize the electorate of anger. Both are now targeting the weariness electorate, who have turned away from the ballot box for a multitude of reasons.
With a softened image and an emphasis on purchasing power, Marine Le Pen refutes the qualifier “extreme right”. What is it really ?
The best definition of a party like the National Rally is national-populism. In Europe, these parties combine two main characteristics. On the one hand, they are populists, because they think the centrality of the confrontation between people and elites, going beyond the left-right divide. On the other hand, they are for nationalism and against immigration. In France, Marine Le Pen has colored classic national-populism with a very social, very left-leaning discourse on the economy. However, if she has put a lot of emphasis on her cats and her private life, her program on immigration has not changed.
“Eric Zemmour no doubt did her a favor by donning the clothes of the far-right scarecrow, but Marine Le Pen is no more balanced.”
Gilles Ivaldiat franceinfo
His proposal for a constitutional referendum is still there. During the campaign, she masked her nationalism, which remains very anti-European. She was a direct and frontal opponent to Europe, now she does not say a word on this subject. She ran a smart, stealth-mode campaign. However, she remains on the central idea of her father, which is the exit from federal Europe for a Europe of free and independent nations. His project remains a permanent arm wrestling project with the European institutions. Marine Le Pen’s France would refuse European decisions that it deems contrary to its interests. This would create a deep crisis with the European Union.
What allies would it have in Europe?
Its allies are clearly far-right parties and personalities: today, it is allied with the AfD in Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria or Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy. Apart from the fact that her great role model was and truly remains Vladimir Poutine, she would turn first to Viktor Orban if she were elected. The leader of the Hungarian government is creating an autocratic regime. Marine Le Pen finds that Viktor Orban is the privileged character to unravel the European Union in a rather drastic way.
Passed “in stealth mode”, is Marine Le Pen more difficult to fight for Emmanuel Macron?
This is the great difficulty for Emmanuel Macron. First, he attacked it on the far right, by associating Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, to redemonize them. The change of image has nevertheless taken place, so it will be more difficult to remobilize the Republican front. However, I think Emmanuel Macron can get there because most leaders, like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, help him. Then, everything will depend on Emmanuel Macron’s ability to send a message to the left-wing electorate, who may have felt betrayed and neglected during the five-year term. In 2017, when people were asked to place Emmanuel Macron on the right-left axis, a third of French people placed him on the right. This year, this proportion has increased to 60%. Subjectively, it is perceived as more to the right. The challenge, for him, is to speak again to the social-democratic lefts and to part of the Mélenchonist left.