In the French presidential election on April 24, Emmanuel Macron was re-elected with 58.54% of the vote. He is the first president in 20 years since Jacques Chirac in 2002. However, a formidable negative opinion is detected. In a poll conducted right after the election by Ipsos-Sopra Steria, an opinion polling company, 46% of the people said they felt “negative” about Macron’s presidency. The turnout in the presidential election, which had been above 80% for the past several decades, was also only 71.99% this time. It is the lowest turnout since 1969. 42% of respondents said they had voted for President Macron to stop RN candidate Marine Le Pen. Protests with the slogan “Ni Macron Ni Le Pen” (Ni Macron Ni Le Pen) followed in various places in France, including the capital Paris, Rennes in the west, and Toulouse in the south.
Even President Macron seems to be conscious of this. “I know you voted for me not to support my ideology, but to stop the far-right ideology,” he said in a speech shortly after the election. (…) I will become a president for everyone.” President Macron’s immediate task for the smooth running of the state is the general election in June. The goal is to win a majority of seats along with the ruling party ‘Advanced Republic (LREM)’, along with center-leaning parties such as the Horizons and MoDem led by former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. If this goal is not achieved, a ‘cohabitation government’ that runs state affairs with the opposition prime minister may be established.
It was a close fight. In the first round of voting held on April 10, President Macron took the lead with 27.84%. However, as Marine Le Pen of the National Coalition received 23.15% of the votes, many voices were concerned about the victory of the far-right in the final. In the first round, Jean-Luc Melanchon, candidate of ‘France that does not yield (LFI)’ won 21.95%. Candidate Melanchon received a whopping 65% of the votes among the 25-34 year-olds. According to a survey of voting results by constituency analyzed by Radio France Info on April 11, Marine Le Pen took the lead in more than 20,000 constituencies. Macron has won 12,000 constituencies.
Except for the three candidates, the percentage of votes for each of the small candidates did not exceed single digits. Erik Zemur, a new political rookie from the Reconquête, a far-right party with an anti-immigrant policy, has 7.07 percent, and Valery Pekres of the Republican Party (LR), who won the right-wing unification primary with 4.78 percent. The European Green Party (EELV) candidate Yannick Zado, who had made great strides, received 4.63% of the vote, and Paris mayor and Socialist Party (PS) candidate Ahn Hidalgo received 1.75% of the vote.
It was also shocking that the existing giant bipartisan candidates (Republican and Socialist Party), Pecres and Hidalgo, obtained less than 5% of the votes, which can be reimbursed for election expenses. In the 2017 presidential election, Republican (LR) candidate François Fillon received 20.01% of the vote, and Socialist (PS) candidate Benoit Armond received 6.3% of the vote.
On April 11, the day after the first round of voting, President Macron marched in the northern Eau de France, an area where Le Pen had a dominant position. He offered an appeasement to the austere pension reforms that had been criticized throughout his tenure. Le Pen appeared on Radio France Interère on April 12 and criticized Jean-Luc Melanchon. He argued that Melanchon’s remarks to his supporters “don’t cast a single vote on Marine Le Pen” were “a betrayal of the electorate who wanted to be protected.” On the other hand, he said, “I want to focus on policies that help the lives of the socially disadvantaged.”
Marine Le Pen’s ‘De-Devil’ Election Strategy
After the results of the first round of voting were announced, predictions were divided over who would win the final. On April 11th, political sociologist Erwan Le Coeur appeared on the radio French radio show and predicted Marine Le Pen’s dominance. He mentioned Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is Le Pen’s father and who is called France’s ‘original far-right politician’. When Jean-Marie Le Pen emerged, Le Coeur assessed that the ‘Front Républicain’, a rallying point for far-right voters, no longer existed. The fact that the politician representing the far-right camp is not one of the Le Pen candidates was also predicted to be a favorable situation for Le Pen. As a far-right politician who overlaps with Le Pen in his political orientation, Candidate Erik Zemur, who won 7.07% in the first round, declared, “There are political differences, but please support Marine Le Pen.” “Marine Le Pen has been enlightened by the mistakes of the past,” said Le Coeur. It means that it took a different step from the past for the ‘long-awaited’.
Marine Le Pen has been trying to change her image after losing the 2017 presidential election. In 2018, the party’s name was changed from ‘National Front’ to ‘National Union’, and in the 2019 European Parliament elections, the 23-year-old current party leader, Jordan Bardella, took the lead. It was a so-called ‘Dédiabolisation’ strategy, which distanced herself from the militant and instrumental figure of her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. In addition, Le Pen kept a certain distance from the candidate Zemur, who appeared in the media every day, referring to her extreme nationalist policy. Her Le Pen campaign was a ‘5000 field campaign’ around France. Shortly after receiving the report card that she complied with in the first round of voting, National Union member Sebastien Schnuu said, “Le Pen, who went to meet the people in person, was right in choosing to go to meet the people in person rather than arguing about Eric Seemur, who is receiving the attention of the press.” In addition to this, her Le Pen also talks about her childhood as a child of her politician, her quarrels with her father, and her difficulties in raising a child as a single parent, trying to gain a friendly image to her general voters. did.
In terms of policy, the principle of people’s livelihood was put first. In an interview with the daily newspaper Le Figaro on February 3, Le Pen said, “I was exhausted from the controversy and anger. We want efficiency and composure.” When he became president, he said he would focus on ‘improving the purchasing power’ of the French people. While he was committed to the development of French territorial-centric industrialism, he called it ‘economic patriotism’. He also made ‘people’s livelihood pledges’, including cutting the energy sector value-added tax (TVA) from 20% to 5.5% and lowering tolls.
Among Le Pen’s promises, there are policies that are quite different from the image associated with the ‘far-right’. For companies that raise the wages of low-wage workers by 10%, the promise to reduce the ’employee-side contribution (including health insurance, unemployment benefit, industrial accident insurance, etc.)’ . Considering the fact that ‘purchasing power (58%)’ was the most important consideration for voters in the first round of a poll conducted by Ipsos-Sopra Steria, a daily newspaper published on April 10, and published by Le Parisien on April 10. Le Pen’s focus on economic policy was rational.
There is another policy that deviates from the far-right image. It showed a feminist side by adding serious sexual harassment perpetrators to the sex offenders file and increasing support for single mothers. According to a survey by the French Opinion Research Institute (Ifop) published on April 22 by the JDD, French women said that Le Pen (49%) was ‘more feminist’ than President Macron (30%). Contrary to this trend, about 40 feminist group members reported on April 15 to the Sunday Newspaper, “Being a woman is not enough to become a feminist. The gender equality presented by Le Pen is just one aspect that hides its intention to criticize and exclude foreign and migrant women.”
The ‘Russia issue’ that emerged as an issue at the end of the election
Since the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, Le Pen has avoided direct mention of ‘Russian sanctions’. However, as he nears the finals, he opposes economic sanctions, including a ban on imports from Russia, stating that “there should be a minimum possibility of communication[with President Vladimir Putin].” In a bilateral debate for the finalists on April 20, President Macron said, “(Le Peni) Russia It is dependent on power and on President Putin.” He also pointed out that the National Coalition supported Russia’s forced annexation of Crimea in 2014. “It’s because the French banks didn’t give me all the loans,” Le Pen said. In a poll published by
There are several analyzes of the failure of Marine Le Pen’s third presidential run. Terra Nova, a policy research institute, criticized Le Pen’s promise of exempting youth under 30 from income tax as an underrated youth policy. “Low-income young people do not have enough income to pay a lot of income tax, so it is difficult to see them as actually beneficiaries. Only high-educated, high-paid young executives will benefit.” There is an opinion that the public thought that Le Pen’s election would cause confusion. It is said that if Le Pen, who has an unprecedented far-right policy stance, becomes French president, the international situation and the domestic economy do not know where they will drift. Jeremy Peltier, director of the Jean-Gorée Institute for Policy Studies, said this in an interview with Radio France Info on April 24. “The French have a desire to end the war against COVID-19 and return to their normal lives.”
In his victory speech on the election results, Marine Le Pen said, “The result of April 24 (which got about 13 million votes) is a huge victory in itself.” Le Pen’s National Coalition, which won the most votes of any far-right candidate of all time, plans to put her all-outs into the upcoming parliamentary elections in June.
© EPN