Presidential elections in France
Nationalist support widens Macron’s victory in the French-Basque Country
Iparralde has once again become a retaining wall for the extreme right in the presidential elections on Sunday in which Emmanuel Macron prevailed with crystal clear clarity, with 64.5% of the vote compared to 34.5% for Marine Le Pen. The ultra-rightist obtained 55,000 votes, agglutinated the vote that in the first round was the extremist Éric Zemmour, and attracted another ten thousand more votes in the waters of discontent. And the candidate-president surpassed the barrier of one hundred thousand ballots. On this occasion, the electoral mobilization has been decisive.
In fact, Macron has achieved six percentage points higher in the Iparralde vote than in the rest of France, which is explained, to a large extent, by the increase in participation in a very similar proportion, up to 75%. To understand the keys to this overwhelming victory, we must underline the progressive influence that the nationalist options have, around 10% of the electorate, with an increasingly hinge function, and that has long since disrupted the local political landscape and the traditional balances. The nationalists have been decisive in tipping the balance and stopping a candidacy that has wrapped itself in the banner of national anti-European populism.
The other key to Macron’s results has been the activation of a part of the electorate of the leftist Jean-Luz Mélenchon, who came second in the French-Basque Country in the first round 15 days ago. A sector of that electoral sociology, especially young university students, have mobilized to stop the extreme right at the polls. The call for the ‘republican front’ has still been effective in Iparralde, although the shadow of its erosion looms on the horizon and rides like a threat for the future, with a diverse front of discontent that can considerably complicate the next five years of the winner at the polls.
Another factor that has caused confusion in the Department of Pyrénées-Atlantiques is the movement of Jean Laserre, from Béarn, candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in the first round, a centrist who wraps himself in the flag of rural France in front of the conventional political establishment. Lasarre has surprised by announcing now before the elections on Sunday that he was going to abstain in the elections, which contravenes the slogan of the republican vote, until now a sacred principle in Gallic centrism to which the extreme right sounds like the marshal’s collaborationist imaginary Petain. Well, Laserre has broken the taboo and has explained his abstention as a complaint against the dynamics of the campaign. His gesture contains depth and perhaps shows the tip of the iceberg of a deeper discomfort with the polarization between Macron and Le Pen, the result of an electoral system that is based on the election of the ‘lesser evil’.
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