(Paris) Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on Sunday as President of the Republic with around 58% of the vote against Marine Le Pen (around 42%) according to initial estimates, a clear victory tempered by the unprecedented score of the far right and high abstention (28%).
Posted at 11:42
Updated at 2:00 p.m.
Given a long-time favorite to his own estate, Emmanuel Macron becomes at only 44 years old the first outgoing president reappointed outside cohabitation, since the adoption of direct universal suffrage in 1962. He is also the third president of the Fifth Republic to carry out a second term after François Mitterrand (1981-1995) and Jacques Chirac (1995-2007).
Marine Le Pen improves her 2017 score by some eight points, when she won 33.9% of the vote. The RN candidate comes in particular well ahead in the West Indies and Guyana.
“The ideas that we represent are reaching new heights for a second round of the presidential election,” she declared in front of her supporters gathered at the Armenonville pavilion, in the Bois de Boulogne, shortly after 8 p.m., seeing in her own score “a resounding victory” and the manifestation of the “wish” of the French for “a strong counter-power to Emmanuel Macron”.
She thus immediately launched “the great electoral battle of the legislative elections” which will take place in June.
For Emmanuel Macron, his re-election is a form of achievement after a first five-year term, however marked by crises, from “yellow vests” to COVID-19. Its victory places the country in continuity on its main economic orientations, on its role in the European Union and in international relations.
He will celebrate it at the Champ-de-Mars, opposite the Eiffel Tower, where several thousand people had gathered at 8 p.m., waving hundreds of French and European flags.
However, this victory does not give him a blank check for the next five years, when colossal challenges await him, against a backdrop of war in Ukraine and galloping inflation.
Thus 46% of French people express “a negative feeling” about this re-election, according to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll released on Sunday evening.
Already, the president-candidate has promised to renew himself in depth, both in form and in substance. A necessity at the head of a France cut in half, or even in three in view of the number of voters among the 48.7 million called to the polls who chose to shun the voting booths on Sunday, in this 2017 remake organized while the three school zones are on vacation.
Coming to power 5 years ago “by breaking and entering”, in his own words, Mr. Macron continues his meteoric personal trajectory, both classic and unclassifiable in a political landscape that he has dynamited.
But he, who had promised on the evening of his victory in May 2017 to “do everything” so that voters “no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes” did not succeed in curbing the rise of Marine Le Pen. .
The RN candidate, who has relied heavily on purchasing power to stand out, will have managed to smooth her image, without giving in to the radicalism of her project on immigration or security.
End of the “glass ceiling”
Twenty years after the surprise emergence of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the 2002 presidential election (17.79% of the vote), the far right has never come so close to power under the Fifth Republic.
“As for the glass ceiling, I think we can no longer talk about it,” notes Laurent Jacobelli, one of the spokespersons for Mme The pen.
“This ability to capture anger to make voices is progressing”, also observed this week with AFP the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, drawing a parallel with “the success of Trump (in the United States), of Bolsonaro (in Brazil), Orban (in Hungary)”.
For Marine Le Pen, it’s time to take stock after a third failure in the race for the Élysée.
« Tout ce qui en dessous de 50 est une déception », commentait avant les résultats Thierry Mariani au pavillon d’Armenonville.
« C’est difficile de se remettre d’une troisième défaite » mais « dans le paysage des oppositions très éclaté aujourd’hui […] Marine Le Pen occupies the dominant position with the National Rally and she will remain the chief opponent, ”anticipated political scientist Pascal Perrineau Friday on Public Senate.
This divide is however far from satisfying the French as evidenced by the level of abstention, estimated at 28%, more than in 2017 (25.44%), and a record since the presidential election of 1969 (31%).
Example among many others, Emmeline Picard, a young woman of 28 looking for a job, interviewed in La Possession, a town in the west of the island of Reunion, who chose to ignore it. “I don’t see the point, I’m going to quietly spend my Sunday with my family,” she said.
The contingent of blank and invalid votes, which in 2017 reached an unprecedented level of 4 million, should also be provided.
A sign that it was difficult for Mr. Macron as for Mr.me Le Pen to convince the orphans of the first round, including part of the 7 million voters of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who came in third position on April 10 with nearly 22% of the vote.
Place for the “third rounds”
Playing the unity card in advance, Mr. Macron, who has triangulated a lot on the right in this election, has consented to changes in his project to seduce the left: more consultation on the postponement to 65 of the age retirement, and more ecology too, with the promise of planning in this area directly entrusted to the future Prime Minister.
The date of his formal inauguration is not yet known but will necessarily take place before May 13. This should then trigger the resignation of Jean Castex – not before 1er May, Mr. Macron warned on Thursday-then the appointment of a new prime minister and the formation of the government.
Above all, the legislative elections (June 12 and 19) are on the horizon, during which the Head of State will try to maintain his majority, with deputies from La République en Marche, Modem and other partners.
A battle eagerly awaited by Mr. Mélenchon, who asked this week “the French to (l) ‘elect Prime Minister” by voting for a “majority of rebels” and “members of the Popular Union”.
Another “third round” could also take place in the street where all those dissatisfied with the presidential election are likely to converge, on the still hot embers of the “yellow vests” crisis.