The campaign for 2022 French presidency it has been unique. On the one hand, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has overshadowed it, while at the same time it has influenced voting intentions due to its economic effects on Europe and also due to the sympathy professed by some of the contenders for Vladimir Putin.
To this are added the predictions of analysts, who point out that it is possible that abstention will reach historical figures. Nor can it be forgotten that the pandemic and its aftermath are still in force, and even less so that it was preceded by the social movement that shook France for several months on behalf of the yellow vests.
In this context, and despite criticism for his management of both the pandemic and the social protests, Emmanuel Macron has led the polls. His campaign has been discreet, with communication measured to the millimeter, absence in the debates and proposals that have been revealed little by little, almost according to the needs of the moment.
This is what happened with the measures proposed to provide France with the gas it imports from Russia, despite the fact that it is the country in Europe that depends less on this input, thanks to its nuclear energy structures. Another recent measure seeks to provide government aid in the face of the rising price of fuel — at the origin of the yellow vest uprisings —, to relieve the pockets of the rural population, dependent on the use of the car to work. This is the same population that reproaches him for having governed these five years in favor of the Parisian elites and to the detriment of the less favored.
Even so, Macron enjoys a voting intention that points to 27 percent for today. A figure similar to the one he reached in the first round of 2017 and that led him to compete for the presidency with the far-right Marine Le Pen, whom he practically doubled in votes in the second round.
That same scenario could repeat itself today, with the only difference being that Le Pen’s popularity has continued to rise in recent weeks. In fact, a few days ago the Harris poll attributed a narrow difference to them for these first ballots; he led with 26.5 percent (two points below the latest poll) and she with 23 (two points above). While another survey positioned her with a favorability of 48.5 for the second part of the elections and him with 51.5, it is therefore anticipated that the two weeks that separate the first from the second round will be decisive between the opinion public.
Hence, the media, analysts and politicians from different sectors set off the alarms. The newspaper Libération had on its front page last Thursday a photograph of Le Pen under the headline: “Extreme right – A danger more than ever”; likewise, Le Monde opened on Friday, with an “Extreme right, abstention. The dangers of the first presidential round”. And days before, Edouard Philippe, former Prime Minister of the Macron administration, warned in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper: “If Marine Le Pen wins, things would be, believe me, seriously different for the country. And not better. Her program is dangerous.”
Worthy daughter of her father
The positioning of Marine Le Pen, 53, is explained by two factors: the first is that she has gained experience thanks to her two previous campaigns, in which she obtained not insignificant results.
The first was in 2012 and she won 18 percent of the electorate, thus achieving the best result in the history of the National Front party, of which she had taken the reins only a year before and which had been founded in 1972 by her father Jean -Marie Le Pen, famous for having publicly assured that the gas chambers were only “a detail of the history of the Second World War”, for which he was sentenced in a Versailles court for incurring a “banalization of crimes against humanity”.
In this way he achieved a “de-diabolization”, which confirmed a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, in which it was specified that he softened his forms, but not his background.
He emerged from the 2017 contest defeated but not defeated, since having reached the second round gave him the impetus to propose a reorganization the following year of his party, which since then has been called National Regrouping (RN), with the aim of making evolve your line.
In addition, he learned the lessons of his previous campaigns, which is why he currently avoids topics that are refractory to the French population, which explains why his will to make a “Franxit” has disappeared from his campaign promises; that is, to take France out of the European Union, just as happened with Brexit in Great Britain.
He also moderated his speech. In fact, both in the 2017 campaign and in the current one, he does not use his father’s last name, he introduces himself simply as Marine, and in his public appearances he stopped being excessively belligerent, an attitude that on the last occasion earned him comparison with Donald Trump.
In this way he achieved a “de-diabolization”, which confirmed a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, in which it was specified that he softened his forms, but not his background. Although he has carried out a “proximity” campaign,
That is the reason why he proposes a series of harsh measures to fight against immigration and why his well-known hostility against Islamism has an important role, from which this proposal that appears in his campaign brochure is derived: “ I will wage war against Islamism by closing radical mosques or expelling foreigners with an S file”, which is attributed to those who are suspected of having terrorist purposes or compromising State security.
The rise of the far right
However, this “de-demonization” would not have been so well received if it had not been for the second and more decisive factor: Éric Zemmour, one of his contenders, also from the extreme right and partly responsible for his rise, since his radical positions anti-Islamic, anti-immigration and anti-gender equality allowed it to attract ultra-right voters.
More than as a candidate, he has distinguished himself as a “polemicist”, for his intransigent and incendiary way of referring to the solutions he considers urgent for France, despite the fact that he does not represent any party, that he comes from the writing of editorials and essays , and that his experience in politics is minimal. In fact, his name began to appear in 2019, when he was convicted of inciting religious hatred after an anti-immigration speech he gave during a right-wing convention organized by Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece and Zemmour ally. .
His program centers on his desire not to “reform”, but rather to “save” France from “decadence”, through “Bonapartist”, traditional and nationalist principles. He has spoken of the need to build a wall that prevents the passage of immigrants, considering that there is too much black and Muslim population in the country and that for this reason the French identity must be “reestablished”, education reformed so that children learn give priority to the glorious moments of France and have a perfect command of Molière’s language. It also seeks to force immigrants to change their names of origin for Christian “French” names.
That is why, in front of him, Le Pen seems conventional and moderate. In any case, with these proposals Zemmour managed to position himself at the beginning of the year in third place, after Macron and Le Pen, there was even speculation about the possibility of a second Macron-Zemour round.
But soon the statistics placed him in fifth place, with 9.5 percent, after the soulless right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse, from the Republican party, who has the same percentage of voting intentions, despite her long career in politics and being a pupil of Jacques Chirac, one of the most appreciated presidents of the country.
Right in the middle of those first five places is the veteran leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, from the La France Insumisa party, with 17 percent, which is due to the fact that he is the only speaker, so in full control of the word and the ideas that he promulgates, that he has managed to seduce young voters and progressives who see in him the only possible option.
It is for them that today the balance could tip in their favor, since they could take the so-called “useful vote”, that is, that of the followers of the moderate left of the party of environmentalists and that of the socialists, represented respectively by Yannich Jadot (5%) and Anne Hidalgo (2%). Both have very little chance, which is why his followers prefer to stick with Mélenchon, to counterbalance Le Pen and, why not, get into the second round.
Even so, they know that they have a difficult time because of Mélenchon’s Eurosceptic positions, which would imply significant risks for France and, above all, because of several lenient and even favorable positions towards Putin. Although he is not the only one, “in February, Le Pen was still proud to print her campaign flyers with a photo of her with Putin. And Zemmour has never hidden his admiration for the Russian dictator, even declaring in 2018: ‘I dream of a French Putin’”, political scientist Clément Viktorovitch recently recalled on the Franceinfo network.
So, In the face of the invasion of Ukraine, these candidates have had to juggle their sympathy for Putin and emerge favored in the race, whose second round will be on April 24 and could confirm Macron’s second term or the dreaded rise to power of Le Pen, which would mean not only the first term of a woman, but also the extreme right.
MELISSA SERRATO RAMIREZ
For the time
Paris
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