The first round is scored. The polls are quite clear: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will go to the ballot, as in 2017. It is difficult to think of gross errors of the statistical surveys: the French have overcome the reluctance to declare their consent for the radical right, which had weighed in the past , and the numbers leave no room for misunderstanding. It is true that candidate Eric Zemmour is a significant novelty and polls may struggle to hit his results, but one cannot think of a great comeback, from the current 9%, far from 14% in mid-February.
Radical forces in comeback
The trends, moreover, are very evident. Macron is down at 25%, compared to a high of around 29% indicated by polls in mid-March, while Marine Le Pen, at around 23% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, at 17%, are at the highest levels of the latest polls, a sign very clear that the latest events are rewarding the radical forces. Indeed, it is striking to note the parallelism between the underlying tendencies, in the polls, of the consensus of the leader of the populist right and those of the leader of the radical left. Le Pen slowly gained ground on his rival, after losing him earlier in the year, but the distance remained broadly stable.
The polarization of society
If at least a part of French society is always polarized – albeit within a right / left cleavage still evidently very alive – it is not surprising the failure of the pragmatic figures of the two great camps. Valérie Pécresse, exponent of the Républicains, the neo-Gaullists, had reached 16% of the votes by undermining Marine Le Pen in winning the second round, but has now dropped to about 8%. On the left, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, who in the capital managed to bring together the different souls of the left, is unable to go beyond 2% today, but even in the happiest moments of her electoral campaign she had just touched 6%, while the Verts, the surprise of the European elections reconfirmed in the administrative ones, remain penalized by the absence of a “presidential” figure. Yadot hit 8 percent in polls, but is now around five percent.
Towards a very uncertain second round
Macron with its 25.5%, albeit down, could even claim victory: in 2017 it had obtained a 24%; but the comeback of Marine Le Pen, which could exceed the percentages of five years ago despite the competition from Zemmour, worries a lot. The second round appears at the moment too tight, too uncertain, while not many days ago – as indeed in previous months – it seemed like a walk for the outgoing president. The war in Ukraine, the rise in prices, and the scandal of consultants, including McKinsey, paid last year 893.9 million euros against 379 million, have revived old, and never completely dormant controversies: president-banker “,” the president of the rich “, the man who canceled the tax on fortunes and raised the prices of diesel and gasoline – sparking long protests by the Gilets Jaunes – the leader who did not want to listen to the pressing questions of the vast French campaigns, and proposed – and proposed again, in the election campaign – a complex reform of the complicated social security system of which only one aspect has remained in the memory of the French: the increase in the retirement age.
For Macron stable consents but no shots
Macron, moreover, has not managed to increase his support after five years of presidency, despite the fragmentation on the left and the division of the last few weeks on the right. The political leader who wanted to pay attention to the symbolic side of politics failed to really mobilize the French opponents of the opposing radicalisms. The real protagonist of today’s vote could then turn out to be abstention: it is not clear who can really help – the outcome of the first round may have an important symbolic value, in the campaign for the ballot – but it is still a non-reassuring signal for the French democracy and for the president himself.