The duel for the French Presidency between Emmanuel Macron, 44, and Marine Le Pen, 53, will bring to the second round ballots on the 24th the names of the same candidates who competed for a mandate for the Élysée Palace in 2017.
The vote last Sunday (10) allows us to infer, however, that the last five years have brought about significant changes in the French political scenario. Part of the transformation is due to the set of crises that Macron has had to deal with since he was elected, especially those of the last two years: first, the coronavirus pandemic and, more recently, the war in Ukraine.
Here are some key points from the presidential elections in France.
Macron and Le Pen repeat dispute, but both are stronger
According to the final count released by the French Ministry of the Interior, the current president won 27.8% of the votes, against 23.2% for the far-right – who is running for a position at the Elysée for the third time. In 2017, 24% of voters chose Macron in the first round and 21.3% preferred Le Pen.
The fact that both received a greater proportion of votes compared to the previous election shows, among other factors, that the traditional left and right lost even more space in France.
Macron took office promising to be a name “neither right nor left” – although his political performance is classified as center-right. Le Pen, on the other hand, personifies among the French a nationalist, and sometimes extreme, ideal.
The candidate, however, showed political flexibility in the final stretch of the campaign by moderating her speech to attract a portion of the electorate by touching her pocket — or, more specifically, the purchasing power of the French, which is falling due to high inflation.
Zemmour aimed high but fell short of expectations
The far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, 63, was skyrocketing in voting intentions and was second only to Macron when he formalized his candidacy for the presidency in November last year.
He made a name for himself by radicalizing his speech against feminism, Islam, immigration and multiculturalism, which is why he was often compared to former US President Donald Trump.
In practice, however, Zemmour plummeted in the polls — in part due to past comments in support of Vladimir Putin, which took a backseat in the context of the ongoing war — and ended the first round in fourth place, with 7.07% of the vote.
“I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen, but there is a man standing up to her who let 2 million immigrants in. [na França] and it would do worse if he were reelected,” Zemmour said, urging his voters to vote for the candidate with whom he shares the same spectrum.
Mélenchon surprised and almost reached the 2nd round
Considered the biggest surprise of the 1st round of voting, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 70, won 21.95% of the votes. The radical left was therefore 1.2 points behind Le Pen — the equivalent of just over 420,000 votes.
Part of his good performance is due to the electorate’s realization that he would be the only viable name in the divided left, which still had the green Yannick Jadot, the communist Fabien Roussel and the socialist Anne Hidalgo — not to mention other midgets. Alone, Mélenchon had more than twice as many votes as those three other leftists combined.
Macron and Le Pen are now courting the significant portion of voters who chose the representative of the Insubmissive France party. Mélenchon asked his base to support the current president, but according to a survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion (Ifop), only 33% indicated they would follow the guideline.
Most (44%) are those who intend to abstain, vote blank or cancel participation, and the other 23% will cross the political spectrum to vote for Le Pen.
Absence of ideals in debate led to high abstention
Of the last 11 presidential elections in France, spanning a period of almost 60 years, this one had the second highest abstention rate.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, 25.1% of French people did not turn up at the polls. The rate was not higher than that of the 2002 election, of 28.4%.
This Sunday, there were more French people giving up their right to vote — a non-mandatory right in the country — than voting for Le Pen, for example.
For analysts, the low turnout is due, at least in part, to the absence of great ideals at stake in the election. While the 2017 election accentuated polarization and, as a result, mobilized voters more, the current campaign has been overshadowed by the Ukraine war.
Macron, ahead in the race, held a single rally and only confirmed his candidacy on the eve of the deadline. The current president and his opponent did not have any direct public clash and have limited themselves to bartering through interviews, pronouncements and publications on social networks.
War in Ukraine had little impact on the campaign
Since before the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Macron has sought to project himself as a kind of spokesperson for Europe when negotiating with President Vladimir Putin. Throughout the conflict, his role as a mediator brought to a certain extent a more global character to the election in France.
Le Pen’s focus, in turn, has always been nationalist discourse. But even his former pro-Putin comments, in the same tone as those that compromised Zemmour, did not impose political wear and tear on him due to his agility in condemning the Russian invasion of the current conflict.
