“On the left, all the candidates are Lilliputian. Six months before the presidential election, this ruthless judgment is not that of a tenor of the right. It is the one worn by former President François Hollande on his own camp when he publishes a book that spares no one (Confront, Stock). While the possible candidacy of the essayist Éric Zemmour polarizes all the debates and that President Macron multiplies the announcements with electoral flavor, never have the left parties seemed so absent from the French political debate.
Between a presidential candidate who remains in the lead and contenders Zemmour and Le Pen who are vying for second place, no left-wing candidate has been able to make his mark since the start of the September school year. After a good performance in the European and municipal elections, all observers nevertheless expected to see the candidacy of the ecologist Yannick Jadot, who narrowly won in the primary of Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV) on radical ecologist Sandrine Rousseau. No poll grants him more than 10% of the vote.
An image of “bobo”
It must be said that the new green mayors have multiplied unpopular measures. Between the removal of the Christmas trees and the denunciations of the sexism of the Tour de France, it is not surprising that EELV mainly recruits its voters from the privileged classes. A survey revealed that only 13% of workers had a good image of Yannick Jadot, against 30% of executives. However, there is no indication for the moment that he will be able to reverse this trend.
The Socialists have bet on Anne Hidalgo. However, since her inauguration, the mayoress of Paris has made a more than sluggish entry into the campaign, even making François Hollande say that there was “no entry into the campaign”. Unlike the other left-wing candidates, only 30% of Socialist sympathizers say they find themselves in this candidacy. They are even 24% to feel closer to the former minister of Holland, the sovereignist Arnaud Montebourg, who does not exceed 2% in the polls. Faced with this finding of division, 38% of supporters do not hesitate to say that their candidate should withdraw in favor of the environmental candidate. After the humiliating defeat of Benoît Hamon in 2017 (6.36%), this would practically sign the death warrant of François Mitterrand’s big party.
From the former candidate Ségolène Royal to the former spokesperson for Hollande Gaspar Gantzer, the heavyweights of the party are reluctant to line up behind Hidalgo. The mayoress of Paris seems trapped in an image “Parisian, bobo, and far from the concerns of the French”, explained in West France the pollster Gaël Sliman. As if to illustrate this point, the first electoral promise of the socialist candidate consisted in proposing to double the salaries of teachers. A promise which even François Hollande judged that it deserved “to be … reworked”.
If his candidacy does not take off, a large number of Socialists will not wait for a possible rally to join Yannick Jadot. This is also what has just done one of the heavyweights of the PS, the former minister François Lamy, formerly close to Martine Aubry.
“A burden for the left”
The only one on the left who seems for the moment able to cross the 10% mark remains Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But for lack of having been able to win for five years as the opposition against the National Rally, La France insoumise (LFI) is far from repeating its excellent score of 2017 (19.58%), while its leader even believed his time of arrival. This year, the one who is in his third (and last?) Presidential election is launching into the campaign without the support of the Communists who had rallied five years ago. They will therefore present their own candidate, Fabien Roussel.
In his book, François Hollande qualifies Mélenchon as a “burden for the left”. The former socialist senator approaches this campaign with a degraded image. In question, its frontal opposition to a police search in 2018, but also the reversal of its positions on secularism. “He cannot win until he has broken with left-wing populism and wokism, he can only be the leader of radicalism”, declared to the magazine The Obs the former secretary general of the PS Jean-Christophe Cambadélis.
Despite his nods to the most radical environmentalists, no one believes in Mélenchon’s ability to rally the left. His best move was to agree to debate on BFMTV with essayist Éric Zemmour. The audience came close to four million viewers. But this rise in the polls was short-lived. In an interview on Paris Première, the elected Clémentine Autain (LFI) did not hide that she was there for the future. As if she was in mourning for 2022.
France on the right
This campaign comes in a context where French society has never been so right-wing, revealed a recent Fondapol poll. According to the foundation, 37% of French voters consider themselves to be on the right, against only 20% on the left. Even those who say they are in the center are in decline: 18%, against 20% in 2017. The director of Fondapol, Dominique Reynié, speaks of “a sociological defeat” of the left since, he says, the more voters have having difficulty making ends meet, the less left-wing they are.
An observation shared by the former socialist minister Stéphane Le Foll, mayor of Le Mans. According to him, “with less than 30% of voting intentions: she [la gauche] is unable today to win the presidential election. Because it is mistaken and no longer knows how to respond to the whole of a class that I call insecure, viscerally attached to the value of work ”.
Faced with this desolation, many suspect François Hollande of not having abandoned all presidential ambition. An unpublished poll on which Le Figaro put the hand did not give him more than 2% of the vote.