Emmanuel Macron re-elected for a second term with 58.8% of the vote against 41.2% for Marine Le Pen, according to our Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimate

“We did not project ourselves into failure”, boasted a few days before the first round a Macronist leader. It is now done. Emmanuel Macron will stay five more years at the Elysée. He won a second term on Sunday, April 24, against Marine Le Pen with 58.8% of the vote against 41.2% for the far-right candidate, according to a first Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimate for France Télévisions, Radio France , France 24, parliamentary channels and The Parisian. Marine Le Pen is progressing by 7.3 points compared to 2017.

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For this return match, the former Minister of Economy of François Hollande is doing less well than five years ago, when he had totaled 66.1% of the vote. This significant tightening testifies to the progress of Marine Le Pen’s ideas in the French electorate, despite this third failure of his camp in the second round of the presidential election. It also sounds like a serious warning for Emmanuel Macron and his troops, as the hope of a victory for the far right remains among some, in view of the next presidential election, in 2027.

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With this re-election, the LREM candidate succeeds where his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy (in 2012) and François Hollande (in 2017) had failed. As for François Mitterrand in 1988, and Jacques Chirac in 2002, they had been re-elected after a period of cohabitation.

“At each election, there is the temptation of alternation, the outgoing is always in an unfavorable situationbook the historian Mathias Bernard, president of the University Clermont Auvergne. Unlike local elections, where there is a bonus for leaving, in the presidential election, there is a bonus for change. This is what brought Emmanuel Macron to power in 2017. Admittedly, the outgoing president at the time, François Hollande, was not a candidate for re-election, but the founder of En Marche! knew how to embody the novelty, advocating overcoming the left-right divide to the detriment of the traditional parties.

His re-election does not bear, this time, the mark of change, even less of alternation. It is explained by political but also economic reasons. First ingredient of Emmanuel Macron’s success: the persistence of a republican front against the far right, despite the demonization initiated long ago by Marine Le Pen. If the Republican front has no “not the same vigor as in 2002 and in 2017, he nevertheless played”, supports Mathias Bernard.

“The fear and hatred of the far right is nevertheless stronger than the hatred that Emmanuel Macron could inspire in certain people”engages Jérémie Peltier, director of studies at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation. “Marine Le Pen remains worrying for more than one in two French people”recalls the Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard, citing a study by his institute on the subject.

From Valérie Pécresse to Yannick Jadot via Anne Hidalgo and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, many of the candidates eliminated in the first round called for a blockade of the far right, either by calling to vote directly for Emmanuel Macron, or by asking that no vote goes to the candidate of the RN. The two former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande also called for a Macron ballot to be put in the ballot box. Civil society, whether sportsmen, artists or activists, has also mobilized to prevent Marine Le Pen’s accession to power.

Another asset of the tenant of the Elysée: an electorate that he knew how to consolidate. The outgoing head of state “reinforced its majority base during its five-year term by conquering the moderate right”, analyzes Mathias Bernard. We saw it in the 2019 Europeans where Les Républicains won 8.48% of the vote, we saw it again in the first round of this presidential election where Emmanuel Macron siphoned off the electorate of Valérie Pécresse (4.78%) .

“Emmanuel Macron has politically and sociologically consolidated his electorate.”

Mathias Bernard, historian

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In the first round, the Head of State had thus strengthened his score by gaining three points (27.85% in 2022 against 24.01% in 2017). “We are talking about a trial of illegitimacy, but he made 28% when a Chirac made 19”supports a minister.

Candidate Macron has also taken advantage of the succession of crises that have marked his mandate: social crisis with the movement of “yellow vests”, health and economic crisis with the Covid-19 pandemic and international crisis with the war in Ukraine. “In the eyes of a good part of the public, Emmanuel Macron has managed these crises well.confirms Mathieu Gallard. Above all, there is the feeling that none of his opponents would have been able to do better than him.”

The emergence of the war in Ukraine in the countryside had also boosted voting intentions in favor of Emmanuel Macron. “The international danger favors the outgoing. We take less risk of the unknown and of rupture”, assures Mathias Bernard. According to the specialists, the French did not really want to fall into uncertainty with Marine Le Pen. “There is an aspiration to return to normal life, outside of Covid and outside of war”according to Jérémie Peltier.