For Julie, the blow is hard to take. In the main room of the Parisian restaurant Le Poinçon, where the election evening of the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo takes place, the activist needs a few minutes to pull herself together. “I feel a great sadness for my country. There, it’s a little hard,” she confides, with tears in her eyes. “Frankly, until when will it be necessary to block the extremes?” The young woman points to the giant screen installed by the teams of the Socialist Party a few hours earlier. The face of Emmanuel Macron appears in the lead, with 28.4% of the vote, followed by that of Marine Le Pen, with 23.4%, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with 21.1%. The candidate that Julie had come to support only comes in 10th position. Anne Hidalgo won 1.8% of the vote (provisional figures) – a little less than what the latest polls gave her. “To seduce barely 2% of the French, it is not possible… But there is no one to blame. Everyone is finally a little responsible”, analyzes Julie, quoting in turn the tenors of the party, activists, the vagaries of current events or the quality of the campaign. “Now we will have to fight against the extreme right, because it represents everything in which I do not believe. And then we will have to rebuild everything”.
Annoyed, Jordan joins her with a sigh. “Frankly, I thought we would go further,” breathes the young 21-year-old socialist. A few minutes earlier, he confided “still believe in it”, hoping that Anne Hidalgo would do “at least better” than his predecessor, Benoît Hamon, who in 2017 had won 6.36% of the vote. “Of course, I have friends who left to vote Mélenchon advocating the useful vote, but for me, the only useful vote was that of convictions. I thought that we would be a little more to think like that.” The mobilization of PS voters was not enough. After a disastrous campaign, Anne Hidalgo’s low score will not allow her to escape the title of “worst result in history” for a Socialist Party candidate in a presidential election, since Gaston Defferre’s meager 5% in 1969. “It’s hard, but at least she went all the way,” notes Jordan. On April 3, the mayor of Paris still gathered an audience of more than 1,800 people at the Cirque d’Hiver in the capital. “Vote according to your heart and your convictions”, she then advised her activists, seven days before the fateful date of the first round.
“Forget each other’s egos”
On April 10, Anne Hidalgo has lost none of her determination. A handful of seconds after the announcement of the results – and the light white that followed them – she descended the grand wrought iron staircase of the Poinçon, to the applause of a hundred activists. With a serious face, she first wishes to warmly thank her audience, aware of the disappointment caused by her score. “I know how disappointed you are tonight, we will draw all the balance sheets in an objective way”, she announces from the outset. Before continuing calmly with a clear instruction for its voters: Sunday April 24, it will be necessary to vote Emmanuel Macron.
“So that France does not fall into hatred of everyone against everything, I invite you to vote against the extreme right of Marine Le Pen using your Emmanuel Macron ballot”, she says, provoking the applause from the room. “This Republican vote is a vote of accountability.” Faced with her audience, inevitably disappointed, the mayor of Paris also promises “to be there” for the future, confirming her wish to rebuild a “strong, creative, popular” left, in order to give her “the strength to embody a new hope and a new alternative for tomorrow”. “Long live the Republic, and long live France”, she concludes before slipping away.
Ignoring the ambient hubbub and camera flashes, Jordan isolates himself against the bar. For him, the urgency is first to affirm his next vote. “It will be Emmanuel Macron, because I don’t want a world where Marine Le Pen could be president. For me, that’s not possible,” he says. Next comes an unavoidable question. “Are you going to ask me what will happen to the PS?”, ahead of the young man. “For me, he’s not dead. Because if that were the case, we wouldn’t score as we do locally, and we wouldn’t have such strong figures within it,” defends the activist . “Now, we just have to take the time to rebuild all of this, forgetting each other’s egos.”
“Find another alternative”
On the side of the great figures of the party, the observation is the same. “It’s a major blow and it’s a disappointing score”, admits Patrick Kanner, the boss of the socialist senators, who immediately recalls the urgency of blocking Marine Le Pen. “But this failure also forces us to prepare for the future. This is only the end of a process, we must now find a winning strategy,” he adds. Asked about the question of the reimbursement of campaign expenses for candidate Anne Hidalgo – the party having obtained less than 5% of the vote, only 800,000 euros will be granted to it – the senator also sweeps away any financial risk with one sentence. “It’s not a problem for us”, he guarantees.
A few meters from him, the PS mayor of Nancy Mathieu Klein confirms. “We will continue to do what we have succeeded in doing in many territories of France, and to bring the French people together around our values”, he assures, aware despite everything of “the violence of the message sent by the voters” . “Tonight’s results require families on the left to come to an agreement for the future. No one can do it alone,” he concludes, nevertheless excluding Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Les Insoumis from a possible alliance. “They are not part of the spectrum of those with whom we want to govern tomorrow,” he argues. From the back of the room, Julie nods. “We no longer want a democratic life motivated by extremes. We must now find another alternative,” she says, categorical.