Marine Le Pen failed to take her revenge facing Emmanuel Macron. The candidate of the National Rally (RN) failed, Sunday, April 24, to beat the outgoing president, who will spend the next five years at the Elysée. Certainly, it improves its score compared to 2017, with 41.45% of the vote, according to the final results published by the Ministry of the Interior. “Despite two weeks of unfair, brutal and violent methods, the ideas we represent are reaching new heights one evening in the second round of the presidential election. Tonight’s result is in itself a resounding victory”reacted Marine Le Pen just after the announcement of the results.
Nevertheless, it ends well behind Emmanuel Macron. The latter gathers 58.55% of the votes. The far right thus suffered a third defeat in as many participations in the second round of the presidential election, after 2002 and 2017.
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For the 53-year-old MP for Pas-de-Calais, the disappointment lives up to the expectations her camp had before the first round. “If I had been told six months ago that Marine Le Pen would score better than in 2017, I would have immediately signed with both hands”, welcomed Louis Aliot, the RN mayor of Perpignan, when the results of April 10 were announced. In two weeks, the candidate saw her Elysian dreams evaporate, under the combined effect of several factors.
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Because she faced an always effective Republican front
He was said to be weakened, living his last hours. But on the evening of the first round, the Republican front against the far right reactivated. Valerie Pécresse (4.78%), Yannick Jadot (4.63%), Fabien Roussel (2.28%) and Anne Hidalgo (1.75%) explicitly called for voting for Emmanuel Macron in the second round. “Not a voice should go to the far right and Marine Le Pen”proclaimed, in unison, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (21.95%) and Philippe Poutou (0.77%). Only Eric Zemmour (7.07%) and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (2.06%) called for the RN candidate to be chosen two weeks later, in an openly “anti-Macron” front.
Very quickly, the Le Pen camp tried to seduce those who had slipped a La France insoumise bulletin into the ballot box. “I say to the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, be real rebellious, (…) do not save Emmanuel Macron’s head, do not sign for retirement at 65 or for the social damage of public service “, launches the deputy RN Sébastien Chenu, from Sunday April 10, on LCI. It is no coincidence that Marine Le Pen seeks to form an “anti-Macron front” with rebellious voices: for Brice Teinturier, deputy director of the Ipsos institute, to maximize the transfer of these voices from the radical left to the he extreme right was one of the necessary conditions for Marine Le Pen to defeat Emmanuel Macron.
Because many personalities have called for her to be beaten
Throughout the between-two-rounds, Emmanuel Macron has not ceased to insist on the danger of the ideas of Marine Le Pen. “We are twenty years after what was a shock for our democracy. We must not get used to the rise of far-right ideas”, said the outgoing president the day after the debate between the two rounds on Thursday. After the elimination of Eric Zemmour, who had played for her the role of“scarecrow”, according to political scientist Gilles Ivaldi, Marine Le Pen sees her program dissected and criticized from all sides. While she had campaigned “in stealth mode” according to the researcher, here it is directly exposed.
For two weeks, the stands calling for Marine Le Pen to be beaten by voting Emmanuel Macron in the second round are multiplying. Athletes, artists, foreign heads of state, caregivers and other personalities are using their voices to reactivate the republican front against the far right. Demonstrations, admittedly much less massive than after April 21, 2002, brought together tens of thousands of people in France on Saturday April 16. Even Alexeï Navalny urges the French to vote for Emmanuel Macron. The Russian opponent of Vladimir Putin accuses Marine Le Pen of having used a Russian bank which would be “a well-known money laundering agency created at the instigation of Putin”. On the judicial level, the European Anti-Fraud Office (Olaf) accuses the RN candidate of having personally embezzled nearly 137,000 euros of public money between 2004 and 2017, as revealed by Mediapart. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirms having received the report from Olaf on March 11, 2022.
Because she took few risks and lacked clarity on the substance
Marine Le Pen has increased her travels to small towns, most of which are committed to her cause, such as Vienne (Isère) at the end of February, in Hauts-de-France on several occasions or even in Saint-Pierre-en-Auge (Calvados ) during the interval between rounds. The objective: to avoid being heckled in front of the cameras by his opponents and to continue to unfold his strategy of demonization without incident.
“She is the only candidate who meets the French everywhere in the country, far from Paris, to make them real proposals on purchasing power”welcomed Sébastien Chenu, RN deputy for the North, on a plane to Perpignan (Eastern Pyrenees), just before the first round.
But this zero-risk strategy has not always paid off. During a stroll on a market in Pertuis (Vaucluse), on April 15, the candidate sins for lack of clarity on substantive subjects such as the referendum on the death penalty or even on Europe. Arrested by a woman wearing a white hijab, the candidate then finds it difficult to assume her positions on the banning of the veil in public space. Favorable a few days earlier to a fine for wearing this religious sign outside the private sphere, Marine Le Pen assures on April 16, in Saint-Rémy-sur-Avre (Eure-et-Loir), not “not be obtuse” and returns this “complex problem” to the “discussion” in Parliament, then a citizens’ initiative referendum.
Because she suffered the campaign between the two rounds and the televised debate
On the evening of the first round, a completely different campaign begins for Marine Le Pen. Emmanuel Macron imposes his favorite themes in front of the cameras. He forces his opponent to respond systematically to his attacks, on pensions, but also on the environment, accusing Marine Le Pen, during a meeting in Marseille, of being “climatosceptic”.
A balance of power which amplifies during the televised debate between the two contenders for the Elysée. Curtly sent back to her approximations and her record as an MP, Marine Le Pen is once again on the defensive. She had however made this highlight of the inter-round a priority, hammering that she had prepared it for a long time so as not to fall back into the trap of the failed debate of 2017.
According to a survey carried out by Ipsos-Sopra Steria for franceinfo and Le Parisien-Today in France, 43% of respondents believe that Emmanuel Macron was the most convincing, against 24% for Marine Le Pen. A third think that the two candidates were as much one as the other. Marine Le Pen was therefore unable to seize this moment to relaunch her half-hearted end to the campaign. And be present at the rendezvous she had given to the French.