In the French presidential election, the worst case scenario could by avoided. President Macron was reelected for another five-year term. According to the French Ministry of the Interior, he kept the upper hand with 58.54% of the votes cast. His runoff contender Marine Le Pen of the far-right Rassemblement National ended up with 41,46%. France has moved further to the right.
Emmanuel Macron could increase his lead in the first round from 24.01% in 2017 to 27.85% in 2022, but so could Marine Le Pen: in the first round, she got 23.15% (2017: 21.3%). In addition, on the far-right, in the first round, you also had Eric Zemmour who ended up with 7.07% of the vote in his first presidential election participation. On the far right, you also have to add the 2.06% of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. In addition, the traditional center-right party Les Républicains has in large part moved to the right too. Even their moderate and pro-European presidential candidate Valéry Pécresse, who had temporarily left the party because, under Laurent Wauquiez, the party had moved to the far right, tried to campaign on the right, spoke of the fantasy of the grand remplacement and, therefore, lost credit with potential Macron voters, without being able to win over Zemmour or Le Pen voters because they preferred the original to the copy. Overall, over 37% of voters voted for far-right or partly far-right parties.
Already in the first round of the French presidential election 2022, the strategic vote (vote utile) played an important role. Smaller candidates with no chance to make it into the second round lost votes to the top polling politicians. Valéry Pécresse of Les Républicains ended with 4.78% of the votes cast. Because she did not make it over the 5%-threshold, the state will participate
Because Zemmour positions are even more extreme than the ones of Marine Le Pen, she looked “moderate” to many voters. The Rassemblement National has become the party of workers and employees, the party of the “average” people. Marine Le Pen was the first candidate to put emphasis on the issue of purchasing power (pouvoir d’achat) which, with rising inflation, became the key preoccupation for more than half of all voters, far ahead of any other issue.
Before the 2022 presidential debate between Macron and Le Pen, half of the French voters said that Marine Le Pen looked “presidential” although, in reality, her knowledge has not increased since the 2017 debate in which she had almost literally imploded.
Already in 2011, Marine Le Pen had started to reposition her party. Like Macron five years later, she described it as “neither on the right, nor on the left”. This operation of dédiabolisation of the former Front National of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen into the Rassemblement National has been successful. But only when it comes to the form. During the 2022 presidential campaign, you could see her shake hands with the “common” people across France, posing with her cats, giving herself a soft image, comparable to Giorgia Meloni of the Italian far-right Fratelli d’Italia. But when it comes to the hard core of her beliefs, not so much has changed. Marine Le Pen does no longer advocate to give up the euro, but the EU she envisions is one of nation states. Some goals in her electoral programs are incompatible with EU membership or at least with the EU as we know it today. Furthermore, Marine Le Pen would pull France out of NATO integrated command, if not out of NATO altogether.
After Brexit, France is the EU’s last nuclear military power, a country with second strike capability. For the first time since the 1980s, France deployed at sea simultaneously 3 of its 4 nuclear ballistic missile-carrying submarines, sending a clear message to Putin. In addition, France is the EU’s last permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Therefore, the reelection of President Macron was of geopolitical significance. Marine Le Pen’s election would have meant the end of the French Republic, the EU and NATO as we know them.
In the French presidential election 2022, not only the far-right, but also the far-left was strengthened. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the France Insoumise party ended up with 21.95% (2017: 19.58) in the first round. Add to this the votes of the Communist Fabien Roussel with 2.28% and the ones of the Trotzkyites Philippe Poutou (0.77%) the Nathalie Arthaud (0.56%), and you end up with over 25% for the extreme left. In short, the extreme right and the extreme left together united over 62% of the electorate in the first round of the French presidentiale election 2022.
In the runoff election on April 24, 2022 Marine Le Pen won over 2/5 votes cast despite the fact that, once again, she performed badly in the election debate against Macron. Furthermore, she was and surely still is a Putin-admirer aka Putinversteher. After the 2014 invasion of the Crimea by Russia, she falsely claimed that the pseudo-Crimean status referendum organized by Putin was free and fair. In return, Putin helped her indirectly through a Russian and a Hungarian bank to get credits to finance her presidential campaign. In 2022, Marine Le Pen was more “flexible” than her far-right rival Zemmour. She condemned Putin’s war, but also said that, once the war had ended, France would seek again good relations with Russia.
Macron has been reelected. This does not mean that he will be able to push through his reform agenda during his second term. The parliamentary election on June 12 and 19 will decide whether he can still count on a majority in parliament. Without a majority, he will largely be a lame duck, forced to compromise. Unfortunately, Macron never seriously tried to implement his party LREM in the regions, cities and communes.
In addition, since 2017, President Macron has polarized the country with provocative remarks. He made the last one on January 4, 2022 when he said he wanted to “piss off the unvaccinated”; in French, he used the word “shit” instead of “piss”, but you get the idea and the tone: Les non-vaccinés, j’ai très envie de les emmerder. Some remarks were “gaffes”, others such as the one regarding the unvaccinated were intentional, but not very helpful.
The French legislative election not only decides the future composition of parliament, but also the amount of public money the parties get from the state. With Emmanuel Macron’s LREM, Edouard Philippe’s Horizons, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Insoumis, four parties with strong leaders fight for power. Currently, Les Républicains are still the strongest party in the regions, cities and communes, but they lack a clear program and a strong, uncontested leader. Will they implode in the parliamenary elections as they did in the presidential election? Will their candidates try to run for LREM, Horizons or as independent candidates?
The French electoral system needs to be reformed because it favors the big parties and punishes the smaller ones (which is relative). Therefore, many voters feel disenfranchised. If you are not represented in parliament, you tend not to identify yourself with the Republic. In the runoff of the presidential election 2022, 28% abstained from voting. This becomes a problem in times of crisis.
The yellow vests protests, the pandemic and Putin’s war have slowed down Macron’s reforms. Under the economically liberal president, the public economic and financial problems have increased. France’s last annual budget surplus dates back to 1974. France registered its worst trade deficit in history in 2021 with 84.7 billion euro. Public debt is around 113% of GDP. On the positive side, the unemployment rate has decreased under Macron to 7.4% and the country has become more attractive to foreign investors. But Macron has not dared to push trough a needed pension reform. The legislative election in June will be decisive for the president’s upcoming agenda.
The president’s main rival on the center-right is his popular, former prime minister Edouard Philippe, who aims to run for president in 2027. If LREM and Horizons could together win a majority in parliament, Edouard Philippe could end up again as Macron’s PM and push through the needed reforms. If the far-right led by Led Pen and Zemmour and the far-left led by Mélenchon should be able to win a majority (together), things will get very difficult for the reelected president. Affaire à suivre.
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Photograph showing Emmanuel Macron in April 2015. Photo copyright © Claude Truong-Ngoc (via Wikipedia).
Article added on April 25, 2022 at 15:31 Paris time. Updated at 17:21.
