“Elected by breaking and entering, re-elected by resignation”, wrote last night Le Figaro in his very first comment posted online at 8 p.m. in Paris, when projections appeared announcing a clear victory for outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, with more than 58% of the votes cast, against less than 42% for Marine The pen.
The outgoing president therefore wins by a margin of 16 or 17 points, higher than what the latest polls announced, which gave him a 12-point lead, in a country that has perfected the art of opinion polls. .
In the normal history of presidential elections in France, such a gap of 58-42 – even if it is proportionally equivalent, in a sporting match for example, only to a score of 4 to 3 – remains high.
In this country, most of the nine presidential elections since 1974 have been decided by 51-49, 52-48 or 53-47. The scores of Le Pen, father and daughter, in the second rounds of 2002 (defeat by 82-18), 2017 (66-34) and 2022 (58-42) are out of the ordinary, because these candidacies were out of the ordinary. The “national right”, descendant of the fascism of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1970s, was and remains considered, by many, as extreme and anti-republican… thus justifying, in front of it, the famous “republican barrage”.
Seen in this way, this latest score by Marine Le Pen is unprecedented, in front of a diminished “republican barrage”. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, he propels his political family into the “40% and more” category. Which allowed him last night to declare: “The ideas that we represent reach summits […] ; this result represents in itself a resounding victory”.
However, this exceptional score will be considered a failure, because the bar of “moral victory” had been (arbitrarily) placed a little higher, in the 45 or 47%. Some spring polls, with simulations of the second round, had they not gone so far as to grant him 48 or 49%?
“Elected by breaking and entering”… It was in 2016 and 2017, when Macron, a young adviser to the king, like a parricide Brutus, had betrayed his boss, President François Hollande, the very one who had brought him up, appointing him in 2014 Minister of Economy.
The outgoing president, at the end of his mandate (2012-2017), stunned by the eruption of this conquering Brutus, was so demolished that he even gave up running, convinced by the polls that he was going to the slaughterhouse .
Having taken advantage of the openness, division and collapse of the old parties (first the Socialists, soon the Gaullists) and the breakthrough of the extreme right as a useful foil, the young wolf had slipped into doorway and had triumphed in the second round, despite a first round score and a rather modest adherence to his ideas (24%).
“Re-elected by resignation”, Macron does not really triumph, despite his score. And it is not only because it no longer has the appeal of novelty and drags behind it a mixed record of aborted reforms, with attention diverted by a succession of unexpected crises: revolt of yellow vests, COVID- 19, war in Ukraine.
Particularity of the French electoral system: this two-round system does not produce membership votes. In the second round, in this system, a lot of people “vote down”…sometimes holding their noses. This year, it was “everything, except Le Pen” versus “everything, except Macron”: the competition between two “fronts of refusal”.
The fear of an anti-republican or anti-democratic swing, with the National Rally, contradicted the deep detestation of this supposed “president of the rich”, haughty modernist technocrat, Europeanist, internationalist, etc.
Thus, a good part of Macron’s vote in the second round is a vote for the “lesser evil”, beyond the 28% who had supported him in the first round by real adherence to what he represents (openness to Europe, liberalism in economics, slimming reform of a “hypertrophied State”, etc.).
In such a context, the mathematical majority that we see today does not necessarily lead to deep legitimacy. Cruel reality that will come back to haunt Macron II, even more than Macron I.
The “third round” will take the form of legislative elections on June 12 and 19. But then the situation will be different. It is that the finalists of the presidential election – which is a contest of personalities at least as much as a fight of political parties – do not have such strong formations and electoral machines behind them.
There is a strong gap, for example, between the potential of the National Rally in the presidential election, and what it can do in regional or legislative elections, where it turns out to be much weaker. The remark also applies, although to a lesser degree, to the Republic on the move by Emmanuel Macron.
In the legislative elections, this could give a chance to the “Rebellious” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, radical tribune and “third man” (if one dares say) of the presidential election. They seem capable of mobilizing an effective team on the ground and uniting what remains of the forces of the left, to look good in the legislative elections.
If this is true, it is not at all certain that Emmanuel Macron will be able to have, once the summer arrives, a presidential majority “in his hand”.
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist at Ici Radio-Canada.
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