A human tide in the street and a historic wave in the ballot box. Twenty years after Jacques Chirac’s landslide victory over Jean-Marie Le Pen, a surprise guest in the second round of the presidential election, is the Republican front still in a position to block the road to the Elysée on the far right? ? Is it a concept “everything rotten”, “that no one wants anymore”as Marine Le Pen had described it during the inter-rounds of the 2017 presidential election where, already, she faced Emmanuel Macron for the supreme function?
As the French are called to the polls on Sunday April 24, observers wonder if the rejection of the National Rally will be enough to convince those who did not choose Emmanuel Macron in the first round to vote backwards for him in the second.
What is the Republican Front called?
“It is quite simply the idea that any participation of the National Front (FN) [devenu depuis le RN] to a political majority must be blocked absolutely”, sums up Christophe Bouillaud, professor of political science at the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies. For the parties, this implies two things: on the one hand, refusing to present common lists with the FN in the elections and, on the other, “do everything so that the voters of the so-called ‘republican’ parties, in the event of a choice between an FN candidate and that of a republican party, mobilize for the second”.
This concept, which reappears with each electoral breakthrough of the extreme right, is not systematic. “In the 1980s and 1990s, some right-wing local elected officials made alliances with the FN”says Christophe Bouillaud, as during the municipal election of 1983 in Dreux (Eure-et-Loir) or during the municipal elections of 2014. The UMP had maintained its candidates in the second round against the FN in a hundred cities, preferring the “neither nor” (neither the left nor the extreme right) at the dam.
On the left too, the calls to form “democratic pacts” or some “republican withdrawals” against the far right are sometimes ignored, depending on circumstances and electoral configurations. The republican front is therefore neither a reflex nor a magic formula.
Since when does it exist?
The strategy was born at the beginning of the Third Republic (1870-1940): while the right-wing forces were still hostile to the parliamentary regime, the left-wing groups withdrew in the second round of various elections to favor the best placed among them. them and protect the nascent Republic.
But the expression appeared later, in 1955, from the pen of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, founder of The Express. It designates this time the coalition, formed by leftist forces and Gaullists in the legislative elections of 1956, against the rise of Poujadism. This far-right populist movement then included in its ranks a young politician who would later see this republican front rise up against him: a certain Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Why is the RN considered anti-republican by voters who stand up?
The question of whether the RN advocates an anti-republican model elicits different answers from specialists in this current. “This is not a party like the others. The xenophobic and anti-immigration theme is at the center of its software”observes the historian Valerie Igounetwho quotes “the relationship of the RN to foreigners, its xenophobic vision, its notion of freedoms, its notion of the Constitution, etc.” By wanting, if it comes to power, to modify the Constitution to integrate in particular the notion of “national priority”, Marine Le Pen promotes a transformation of the institutions of the Republic according to the historical markers of the extreme right.
The Secretary of State for European Affairs, Clément Beaune, described the candidate as“anti-social, anti-republican and anti-European”, Sunday April 17 on Europe1. Conversely, the RN denies being a far-right party and claims to defend the values of the Republic. “I respect the rule of law”, thus launched Marine Le Pen on BFMTV, questioned in the middle of the campaign on the proposal of her rival, Eric Zemmour, to establish a ministry of remigration: “It is totally anti-republican”, she noted.
Is the Republican front effective in blocking the far right?
It depends. During the legislative elections of 1956 – the first modern version of the Republican front – the coalition managed to weaken the influence of the Poujadist movement on the National Assembly, but the latter still won 52 seats (out of 595). Since then, the effects of these alliances of circumstances have varied greatly from one election to another: some far-right candidates triumph despite the presence of a Republican front, while others fail without any call for a blockade. be launched.
During the 2002 presidential election, the effectiveness of the mobilization against the extreme right is indisputable: against Jean-Marie Le Pen (16.86% in the first round), the RPR candidate and outgoing president, Jacques Chirac ( 19.88% in the first round), won with 82% of the vote.
In 2017, during the first Emmanuel Macron-Marine Le Pen duel, the votes of voters from the far left to the right still overwhelmingly voted for the candidate of En Marche! In total, 52% of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters in the first round and 71% of Benoît Hamon’s voters line up in the second round behind Emmanuel Macron, according to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey (in PDF). On the right, this is the case for 48% of François Fillon’s voters.
Why is the Republican front weakened today?
Even in the name of the refusal of the far right, voting for a political adversary is not easy. “Part of the left-wing electorate is probably extremely worn out by this situation”, notes Christophe Bouillaud. Especially since these “reluctant voters” did not see their ideas permeate the politics of the representatives they had helped elect. “Macron was elected in 2017 thanks to the refusal of a large part of the electorate to vote for Le Pen, but he behaved as if he had received a full mandate for his project”he analyzes.
“Basically, the Republican front was an exceptional measure for exceptional circumstances. However, it has become commonplace”, continues Rémi Lefebvre, political scientist specializing in the Socialist Party. To use the expression of the ecologist Eric Piolle, on Twitter, by dint of building dams, “the beavers are tired”.
Ever since I was old enough to vote, we have been made to build roadblocks against the extreme right, always higher, always further away.
Tonight I say to @EmmanuelMacron that the beavers are tired. The Republic is on hold. He must realize it or no barrage will suffice. pic.twitter.com/d4tLyeK72g
— Eric Piolle (@EricPiolle) April 10, 2022
“We could see the idea take hold that the Republican front was useless, or even that it fed the phenomenon it claimed to be fighting, by giving credence to the idea that the FN was the only real anti-system party against ‘the UMPS’continues the political scientist. Many people on the left are aware of the danger of the RN, but feel that by voting Macron, they are promoting the rise of the far right.
A feeling which is accompanied, for part of the left, by a “hatred of Emmanuel Macron [qui] makes the dam difficult”, which could favor abstention or a blank vote. Five days before the second round, the gap in the polls is widening slightly to the advantage of the outgoing president, but does not reflect the construction of a republican front. And for good reason: according to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey for franceinfo and Le Parisien-Today in Franceof Tuesday April 19, 39% of Jean-Luc Mélenchon voters questioned confide that they will vote for Emmanuel Macron, a decrease of 13 points compared to the report of votes of 2017. As demonstrations against the far right were organized across France on Saturday, April 16, a slogan stole the show from the Republican front: “Neither Le Pen, nor Macron.”
Do voters take a different look at today’s far right?
The strategy of demonization initiated by Marine Le Pen in the early 2000s has borne fruit. For the historian Valérie Igounet, far-right specialist, “when we see Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour exceed 30% of the vote, we feel that those who voted want things to change and trivialize people who represent the French far right”. But the adhesion of part of the French electorate to these ideas does not automatically mean the weakening of the rejection they arouse in others. Thus, this trivialization does not operate “not necessarily in the eyes of the people who are asked to stand up as a republican” shade Remi Lefebvre.
How to explain, therefore, the temptation of abstention or white vote instead of the Republican front? Christophe Bouillaud does not exclude the generational track. Among older citizens, “The Le Pen family remains unacceptable and its definition will not change: anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial…” he lists as so many impassable dikes. But the youngest, they have mainly known the FN “demonized” by Marine Le Pen.
Who is calling on the Republican front in 2022?
In 2002, all the candidates, with the exception of Arlette Laguiller (LO), called for a vote for Jacques Chirac in order to block Jean-Marie Le Pen’s way to the Elysée. Twenty years later, Anne Hidalgo (PS), Fabien Roussel (PCF) and Yannick Jadot (EELV), on the left, and Valérie Pécresse (LR), on the right, explicitly call on their voters to put a Macron ballot in the ballot box. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Debout la France) and the polemicist Eric Zemmour (Reconquête!) call for a vote for Marine Le Pen, while Jean Lassalle and Nathalie Arthaud (LO) give no instructions. The third man in the first round, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, invites him to “not to give a single voice to Marine Le Pen”, just like Philippe Poutou (NPA).
I was too lazy to read everything, can you give me a summary?
Since the 1956 legislative elections, the Republican Front has designated a cross-party coalition aimed at preventing the extreme right from gaining power. VSAlliances take different forms from one election to another and are not always successful.
On April 21, 2002, the FN candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, went against all odds to the second round of the presidential election against Jacques Chirac (RPR). The shock is such that an overwhelming majority of the political class and citizens of all political persuasions agree to support the outgoing president, who wins with 82% of the vote.
But for twenty years, Marine Le Pen has worked for the “demonization” from the FN, then from the RN. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron beat her in the presidential election with 66.10% voices. In 2022, the poster is the same, but many voters, especially on the left, say they do not want to vote for one or the other, believing that the Macron vote does not push back the far right. This rejection of the Republican front, which is difficult to quantify, makes the outcome of the ballot uncertain.