Through the French presidential elections in April and the parliamentary elections in June, I'll be posting here the latest updates, my ruminations, and a sense of just where we are and where we might be going in this landmark series of votes—landmark for the French, for Europe and for the entire western alliance, especially the United States. Follow along with me….stay tuned!
9 January 2022
On Sunday, newspaper readers across France woke up to quite an extraordinary poll from the nation's lone Sunday newspaper, Le Journal du Dimanche, popularly known as JDD.
To break it down, what it all means is this. Valérie Pécresse, the center-right candidate of Les Republicains (the Republicans); Marine Le Pen, the far-right perpetual candidate of her own party, the National Rally; and Éric Zemmour, the Tucker-Carlson-on-steroids candidate of the Reconquest Party are all fighting it out for the one place on the ballot in the second round elections to face down the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron who is standing for a second, and last five-year term.
To help you understand, there are two rounds in most French elections. There's. the first round for everyone who can meet the requirements (more on that in a moment) for a spot on the ballot. Then, if no one gets a majority (no one ever has), there's a second round with just the top two.
The last time, it was pretty close. Macron won 24 percent, Le Pen came in second with 21 percent and François Fillon, standard-bearer of the party that has nominated Pécresse this time, came in third with 20 percent. The far-left Jean Luc Mélenchon came in fourth with 19.6 percent. Then everyone else fell off a cliff, with the Socialist candidate arriving distant fifth with barely 6 percent of the vote. A reminder: Macron's predecessor as president, François Hollande was himself the Socialist candidate. This time, in 2017, they didn't even reach the level of votes that would have qualified them for the state financing the others won handily. The Socialists had to sell their lavish headquarters (across the street from my apartment in Paris on the rue de Solferino in the seventh arrondissement) and move to the outskirts.
But what's most significant is that in the second round, Macron overwhelmed Le Pen 66 percent to 34 percent.
All this is a prelude to JDD's poll this morning. The pie charts show how each of the multiplicity of candidates fared on three different subjects. Covid, the overwhelmingly dominant issue, at least at this point in the campaign, shows that Le Pen and Pécresse are tied at 12 percent among voters who think they're handling this well. But the "none of these candidates"—and that's effectively Macron himself since he is the only candidate not mentioned—hauls in 58 percent. The numbers are only slightly less dramatic for law-and-order-terrorism and the economy.
Then drop down to the bar chart. How would each of the leaders do, going up against Macron one-on-one in the second round? Pécresse is the closest with 46 percent. Zemmour isn't even around the far turn in this horse-race with 21 percent. And Le Pen comes at almost precisely the level she did five years ago. All of which suggests to me on overwhelming reality: The French are not prepared to turn over their beloved nation to any far-right candidate. There is still a very very long memory of what France was like under the rule of the Vichy puppet government enslaved to the Nazis during World War II. Never again.
So, one final little thought. There is one other quirk in the French electoral system which is quite extraordinary and approaches the craziness of America's electoral college. Every candidate, to even be able to appear on the ballot, must have the signatures of 500 French mayors with no more than 50 coming from the same district (there are 30 districts in France). That would seem to be an all but insurmountable hurdle. Until you realize that there are 35,502 mayors in France, more than in other European country and indeed comprising 40 percent of all the mayors of Europe.
They've already begun this first battle. Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo, the roundly disliked mayor of Paris who the socialists inexplicably nominated this time in another apparent death-wish, observed cheekily this morning on national television that if other candidates—particularly Le Pen and Zemmour, didn't get their 500 signatures it was "because they don't deserve to present themselves" to voters. Of course, there are still enough Socialist mayors that she should have little trouble. But then, the latest Le Monde poll shows her with just 4.5 percent of the vote. But why should this dissuade her from crowing?
Vive la France.