a second Macron-Le Pen duel very different from the first

Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. The announcement will not surprise those who remained, for weeks, their eyes riveted on the polls, but it does not have at all the same implications as five years ago. One became President of the Republic, the other had to find a new strategy to come back in force. In five years, the two adversaries have maneuvered politically to build their credibility, while avoiding as much as possible to look alike. Today, the gap in voting intentions in the second round between the two candidates has never been so narrow and everything is still possible.

Gone from afar

Five years ago, the National Rally (RN), at the time National Front, hoped to become the first political force in the country. Marine Le Pen had called for him when Emmanuel Macron’s victory was announced on May 7, 2017: ” The French have designated the patriotic and republican alliance as the first opposition force to the project of the new president. »

However, in its own ranks, doubt existed. Some said it was over, after his terrible performance during the debate between the two rounds. Under the half-stunned, half-amused eye of Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen had collapsed live, losing her means, looking in her files. Many then considered that the RN candidate was definitively burying her chances of winning, and the results in the second round proved them right: two thirds of the voters chose Emmanuel Macron.

In the legislative elections of June 2017, the National Rally won six deputies. Difficult to assert the status of the first opposition party in these conditions: The Republicans have 93, France insoumise (LFI) 17. Where Marine Le Pen is the most emblematic deputy of the RN, LFI can highlight Jean- Luc Mélenchon, but also Adrien Quatennens, Alexis Corbière, or even François Ruffin, very audible in the contestation of the power newly in place. For its part, the steamroller LaREM, with more than 300 affiliated deputies, gave Emmanuel Macron full freedom of action.

Change picture

The following year, the far-right party began its transformation and its president a rebirth. Change of name, change of visuals, Marine Le Pen tries, like her party, to soften her nationalist flame. A strategy perfectly suited for her, a little less for her training. After rather successful European elections, where the National Rally won votes (two million more than in the legislative elections of 2017), but did not increase in proportion (23.31%, against 23.86% in 2014), the party is stagnating in the 2020 municipal elections.

Marine Le Pen, from a personal point of view, avoids media slippages and puts herself in the spotlight on a daily basis, where Emmanuel Macron, naturally more exposed, struggles to shed his image of “president of the rich”. If the election results are not as good as hoped, the president of the far-right party can count on the vagaries of the news. The former President of the Republic François Hollande had to face the wave of attacks of 2015, Emmanuel Macron will have the social movement of “yellow vests” in November 2018 and the Covid-19 pandemic. Two complicated crises to manage for the President of the Republic, which will give Marine Le Pen full latitude to criticize his main opponent.

Crossroads

Emmanuel Macron came to power at the expense of two major political forces: the Socialist Party and Les Républicains. Proclaiming neither left nor right, the candidate tries for a time to govern as a tightrope walker, before assuming a policy classified on the right. Reduction of APL for students, abandonment of wealth tax, reform of the SNCF and the labor code… his measures are not intended for a left-wing electorate. He will nevertheless fail to pass his pension reform, slowed down by popular protests and the health crisis.

Seizing on the themes of immigration and security, dear to the far right, he denounces the Islamization of society after the assassination of Professor Samuel Paty, and in the process bans many associations accused of Islamism. . Its Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin defends a hard line on immigration, which is transcribed on the ground.

Emmanuel Macron relies even more on his right wing by giving, in October 2019, an interview to Current Values, far-right title, a first for a President of the Republic. In an attempt to give pledges to the left, his government legislated on PMA (medically assisted procreation) for all, created the culture pass for 15 to 18 year olds and offered environmentalists the end of the airport extension project. Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in Brittany. A simple posture for environmental activists: at the same time, Emmanuel Macron also reassures hunters, a reservoir of several million votes, by lowering the price of the hunting license and promising the opening of hunting to certain protected birds. His revival of the nuclear industry and a citizens’ Convention for the climate without a future will end up consuming the credit of the president in the eyes of environmentalists.

Based on this centrist will of the Head of State, Marine Le Pen and her party regularly accuse Emmanuel Macron of “immobility”. Understand: if you want to go left and right, you’re not going anywhere. While Emmanuel Macron pitched to the right, Marine Le Pen smoothed his radical image. With the arrival of the troublemaker Éric Zemmour, who monopolizes the themes of immigration and security, the National Rally is betting everything on purchasing power and proximity, rurality. Symbol of this strategy, the twenty National Rally buses, which have been crisscrossing the metropolitan territory since February 5, when Emmanuel Macron decided to reduce the sails on the presidential election, to focus on the war in Ukraine.

A more uncertain duel than expected

Many analysts thought that a second round against Marine Le Pen would suit the outgoing president, no one is risking it today. The image of the far-right figure benefited against all expectations from the sensational entry of Éric Zemmour into the campaign. With his radical positions, the polemicist has widened the window of Overton, which defines what is acceptable or not to debate in the political space. More controversial, more controversial, Eric Zemmour offers Marine Le Pen a beautiful gift: a personality more radical than herself. A Kantar study carried out for Le Monde and FranceInfo showed that in the eyes of the French, the image of the candidate had softened.

Another proof of the success of the transformation started in 2017, for the first time, on March 30, 2022, the curve of voting intentions for Marine Le Pen fell within the margin of error of that of Emmanuel Macron in the polls on a potential second round. If the RN candidate won on April 24, France would face a doubly unprecedented situation: a woman and a far-right figure in power for the first time.

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