France: Haircut country

By Costas Raptis

For French President Emanuel Macron, the ballot boxes for the presidential election came as early as necessary. The result was a halt to the decline in his candidacy over the past month (ie after the announcement of his program with a central element in the pursuit of pension reform) and the upward trend known to the far-right Marin Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melancholy of the radical left. The former lead of twelve percentage points was reduced to five points for the tenant of Elysium, but again giving him the first place and a certain safety distance from his competitor in the second round of April 24.

Beyond these three candidacies that correspond to the three main poles of the reformed French political scene … chaos prevails. The result has been humiliating for the two once-key parties, the center-right Republicans and the Socialists already wounded by 2017, disappointing to environmentalists hoping for more due to the climate and energy crisis, and landing for the emerging star of the extremist Z.

More specifically, according to the first results, Macron received 28.4% of the vote (compared to 24% in the first round in 2017), Le Pen 23.4% (compared to 21.3%), Melanson 21.1%, Zemour 7%, Valerie Pecres of the Republicans 4.7% (compared to 20% of François Fillon in 2017), Yannick Zando of the Ecologists 4.5%, the independent farmer Jean Lassalle 3.2%, the Fabian Russell of the French Communist Party 2.4%, the (far) right-wing Philippe Dupont-Ainian 2.1%, the mayor of Paris and Socialist candidate An Indalgo 1.8%, and the Trotskyists Philip Putu and Natalie Arto 0.8% and 0.6% respectively.

The turnout was 26%, the lowest level since 2002, when the “shock” of Father Lepen qualifying for the second round.

President Macron has a clear lead in the run-up to April 24. However, unlike Jacques Chirac in 2002, he will not have the luxury of a “pan-democratic counter-threat to the far right” this time around. will prefer abstention and 25% in Le Pen), while the current “anyone but Macron” is widespread in a significant (mainly Plebian) section of French society, after a five-year period marked by the Yellow Vest movement, its management pandemic and the previous attempt at pension reform. And most importantly: Le Pen is no longer scared to the same degree – the “demonization” that was its strategy in previous years has largely succeeded.

It is interesting that the leader of the National Alarm did not see a decrease in her percentages, despite the appearance of competitors in her field, while if her performance is combined with those of Zemour and Dupont-Ainian, who are going to support her in the second round, it turns out that the entire far right has the preference of one third of the electorate. In addition, Republican executives have already stated that they are unable to support Macron at the next ballot box.

The diffusion of the rhetoric of “threatened Islamization” and “law and order” into a wider section of the political scene, with Zemour and Pekres at the forefront, left Lepen the freedom to imagine (without denying her “nature”) comparatively more modest and to campaign for the French standard of living.

Of course, the above is not enough to indicate where France is heading tomorrow. Not only because we do not know the kind of correlation that will be recorded in the second round, but also because it has not been seen how the political forces will be reorganized in the parliamentary elections that will follow immediately after. Even those who were abducted still have local mechanisms that will allow them to possibly perform well. The question of the composition of the new parliamentary majority therefore remains open.

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