“In the second round of the presidential elections we will see what project the French prefer: mine or that of Le Pen,” said Julio Jean-Luc Mélenchon in an interview with an interview with Italian newspaper The repubblica. It is the same message as the founder of the French left party Insumisa (LFI) had launched a few days before in the Plaza de la República in Paris, the night of the first round of the legislative elections, before the supporters who came to support him. “It’s them or us, there is nothing in the middle.”
That first round was a force test of the French extreme right, which came to the head in the vote percentage, followed by the progressive alliance of the new Popular Front. He also found the enormous setback of the center and the coalition of parties that supports Emmanuel Macron since 2017. Only an electoral pact of center and left candidates for the second round prevented Marine Le Pen’s party from achieving most seats ( 192 NFP deputies, 164 centrist and 143 of the extreme right).
The political blockage resulting from the legislative, together with the continuation of the fall of the central block, are part of the arguments of the leader of France Insumisa to accelerate the electoral calendar. In December, the National Assembly demolished with a motion of censure to Michel Barnier – with the votes of the entire left and the extreme right – and the future of its successor, François Bayrou, depends on the socialists in the vote that faces this week.
Mélenchon hopes that if the prime minister will fall again, the pressure so that Macron does not reach the end of his mandate, scheduled in 2027. Therefore, in recent months the members of LFI multiply the calls to the resignation of the president and They have activated the process of dismissal against the Head of State provided by the Constitution, a complex procedure that would require a joint vote of assembly and Senate). And that is why the leader of LFI presses the Socialists to vote for censorship presented this week against Bayrou for his party.
Left leader
“If a certain stability around the government is not achieved, the president will have to face the responsibilities; If the disorder is installed, the resignation is possible. That is the situation that Jean-Luc Mélenchon wants, ”says the political scientist Olivier Rouquan, associate professor at the Center for Studies and Research of Administrative and Political Sciences (Cersa) in Paris. “Although this scenario cannot be ruled out, today is not the most likely, because France needs to endow budgets and, under international pressure, demonstrate that it is governed.”
Meanwhile, Mélenchon is already preparing for a possible change in the electoral calendar. On January 28, he presented the LFI electoral program for future presidential elections. “This is the beginning of the campaign,” he announced. “We want to show that we are prepared in any circumstance.”
Advancing the elections this year would present an important advantage for the insumiso leader. Although the latest electoral appointments have allowed a certain recovery of the Socialist Party, today it does not seem to have any candidate that can compete at the national scale with Mélenchon.
This context encourages the PS not to accelerate the electoral calendar and prefer that Macron reaches the end of his mandate. “Stability” is one of the factors that socialist leaders are invoking these days to justify the announcement that they will not vote with the rest of progressive parties in favor of the motion of censure against Bayrou.
Main beneficiaries
Marine Le Pen and her allies, on the other hand, have made in recent months a diagnosis similar to Mélenchon’s about Macron’s future. In December, deputies of the National Group requested the resignation of the president, although the extreme right leader opted for a more moderate tone. “We will have to follow the normal functioning of the institutions,” said Le Pen a I monde In November. “If a government falls, then a second, then a third … then we will have to ask ourselves what constitutional options the president has.”
All analysis suggests that Mélenchon and Le Pen would be the main beneficiaries in case of electoral advance. Although after Macron’s victory in 2022 both gave speeches with Farewell airspolitical instability and the possibility of early elections has given them a new impulse.
Now they trust that the rejection of Macron (which cannot be presented to a third consecutive mandate) and its policy is a ballast from which the center cannot recover. Both have the experience of three presidential elections and are the most consolidated figures of their respective blocks.
The surveys predict that, for Marine Le Pen, a second round against Mélenchon would be the most viable option to get to the presidency. And vice versa. “It is clear that for both a face to face is, a priorithe best scenario. Marine Le Pen can estimate that the strong rejection of Mélenchon and LFI in public opinion will overcome the threshold of 50% of the votes by weakening the Republican Front, ”Mathieu Gallard, director of Ipsos Studies France, tells this medium.
In a direct duel, the activation of a new ‘sanitary cord’ against the extreme right in favor of Mélenchon would be the key element. “On the opposite side, Mélenchon can also think that a second round against Le Pen offers him the only possible perspective of victory, precisely when reactivating the Republican Front that was still effective in July’s legislative elections,” Gallard confirms.
The unknown of the Republican Front
Facing the first round of the presidential, the last polls confirm that Mélenchon is the great favorite among the leftist candidates. But most surveys grant him between 12%and 15%, still far from Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe – who sound like possible center -right candidates – who would exceed 20%. And far from Marine Le Pen to which a IFOP survey He placed in December far ahead of his rivals, with 38%.
For the second round, another survey placed the leader of the extreme right clearly ahead of Mélenchon (64%-36%) in case of direct grief. And everything indicates that the insumiso leader would have even more difficult in case of confronting a centrist candidate, like Philippe; The French double lap system favors moderate candidates, particularly those who are able to weave alliances.
Although the image of the LFI leader mobilizes a part of the leftist electorate, restless in the rest of the categories. In fact, the Ipsos political barometers They place Mélenchon as the politician who raises the most rejection (ahead of the ultra Éric Zemmour). In that context, a new activation of the Republican Front is uncertain.
“The image of Jean-Luc Mélenchon has become a repellent for a majority of voters. He has failed to moderate his image to seduce part of the middle class that values the order a lot, ”says Olivier Rouquan. “And also a significant part of the economic and institutional elite today considers it much more acceptable to Le Pen than him.”
Mobilization of abstentionists
To cut distances and cross the barriers that separate him from the presidency, Mélenchon has his demonstrated campaign skill, with the popular rejection of the heirs of Macron and unlocking a new electorate. “We have to mobilize the young people and the popular neighborhoods,” explained a few months agoduring a demonstration against Michel Barnier. “It is there where the mass of people interested in leftist policies is located. Let us forget everything else, because if we are not wasting time. ”
“There is a significant part of the electorate that does not vote and that the candidates hope to attract,” confirms Mathieu Gallard. “The most widespread idea is that these voters tend to the left, something that seems confirmed by the fact that in the last presidential elections (2017 and 2022) Mélenchon progressed in the polls as the campaign was advancing and that the voters – especially in popular neighborhoods – they were interested in it. ”
However, Gallard points out that the presidential ones are historically high participation elections and that the impact of abstentionists on the vote on the left could be less than expected. “They may even be tempted by another anti -system candidacy, such as Marine Le Pen, who tries to attract a politically little committed electorate.”
That electoral strategy to focus on the mobilization of a young, popular and urban vote has created tensions in LFI, with a part of deputies accusing the insumiso leader of abandoning the working class of other more rural territories or of areas that have suffered from the deindustrialization, particularly in the north. The dissidents ended up leaving the party to what they consider a lack of internal democracy.
‘Conflict’ vs normalization
On the other hand, the strategy of “conflict” of public life, theorized by Mélenchon himself – a amplification of the debates as a method to mobilize the electorate and to advance his ideas -, worries the figures outside of France Insumisa. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon becomes illusions of radicality,” the former socialist prime minister lamented Lionel Jospin in a recent interview on public radio. “He believes that the situation in France is somewhat revolutionary. If there is a danger today, it is a counterrevolutionary risk. ”
In this sense, Marine Le Pen can take advantage of the contrast of the deputies of LFI – whose presence is noted in the National Assembly -, with those of the extreme right – which have moderated the forms, although not the background – to feed their strategy of standardization of the Ultra Party, with which he tries to make up the racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic legacy of his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front. Marine Le Pen hopes that this allows you to win the vote in new categories of voters, in particular pensioners, a segment of the population that voted massively in favor of Macron in 2017 and 2022.
All this on condition that the courts do not give the fret with all these scenarios through the verdict in the case of the parliamentary assistants of the Lepenist party. Provided for March 31, it could prevent Marine Le Pen from presenting as a candidate for the next presidential elections in case of immediate effect.
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