Through the French presidential elections in April and the parliamentary elections in June, I'm 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!
[ UPDATING WITH ACTUAL RETURNS AT 6 am MONDAY IN PARIS ]
PARIS—The polls opened at 8 o’clock Sunday morning across France, at least for those who planned to vote, who had not departed (already) on their Easter break (and hadn’t forgotten to give their ballot to a friend, relative, or neighbor to cast). For a full day, since midnight Friday, there was not a single mention of the election, not a single poll was taken, not a single leaflet handed out at a metro stop and, mercifully, not a single push recording arrived at my home phone from a single candidate. France was plunging headlong into the process of choosing its next president.
The French television networks counted down the seconds until it was 8 o’clock Sunday evening, the polls in the major cities closed (in the countryside an hour earlier). Then, across every TV screen in France, two images, the two winners: Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen. Both will head into a second round to decide who will be president. No real surprise here as to who the front runners would be. But the numbers below their names were surprising. Despite the tense final weeks of the campaign, there was the late arrival to the circuit by the incumbent president, Macron, his attention and energies diverted into dealing with Europe’s biggest war in three-quarters of century, now seeking a second term that no French president has managed in two decades. Still, despite the surge at the same time in popularity of the extreme right-wing Le Pen, Macron managed a better score this year than he did five years ago when he also went into the second round against her.
The first exit polls showed Macron with 28.1% and Le Pen 23.3%. By early Monday, Macron had pared his lead and Le Pen raised hers fractionally. Still, the 27.60% vs 23.41% (based on 97% of the actual paper ballots, each one counted by hand in every precinct of France) was a larger first-round gap than five years ago when the pair last faced off. Most surprisingly, however, was how close the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon came to upsetting Le Pen and winning a slot in the two-person runoff. He came within 1.46% of edging her out. Indeed, as Mélenchon’s campaign manager pointed out Monday morning on the French all-news cable channel BFM-TV, the vote alone for Fabien Roussel, the candidate of the all-but defunct Communist Party, once a pillar of the French left, would have been enough to send Mélenchon into the second round against Macron. Which direction Mélenchon’s embittered voters swing could well decide the outcome—and the future of France and Europe—in two weeks. Not a single vote for Le Pen, Mélenchon urged his supporters in his fiery concession speech.
Five years ago it was Macron with 24.01% and Le Pen 21.3%—a narrower result that still led in the second round to Macron with a runaway 66.1% to 33.9% result.
So what’s next? The distribution of the votes of the other 10 candidates will prove decisive in the second round in two weeks, on April 24. A suggestion of just how important this parceling out of voters for the other candidates was reflected in a parade of concession speeches. Many of these candidates have detested Macron, campaigned vigorously against him, but Sunday faced with the real horror of an extreme right-wing president who has embraced Vladimir Putin, even accepted Russian campaign money and urged French withdrawal from the European Union and NATO, many urged their voters, as the leading left-wing candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon put it, “Vous ne devez pas donner une voix a Marine Le Pen,” [You must give not a single voice to Marine Le Pen.]
Indeed, Mélenchon’s 20% of the vote could prove decisive if his supporters can be lured into Macron’s column, though he failed to provide a full-throated endorsement. But add in the broad range of France’s political spectrum, who urged their voters into the Macron camp for a second term—Valérie Pécresse of the center-right Les Republicans, Yannick Jadot of the Greens, even the Socialists’ Paris Mayor Ann Hidalgo. Together with Mélenchon, they represent some 29.5% of the first-round vote. With Macron’s own 28.1%, that would mean game over for Le Pen in the second round. Eric Zemmour, Le Pen’s far-right firebrand competitor urged his voters to turn to her in the second round. It was an all but empty pledge having eked out just 7.2% in the first round.
Still, this is no time for Macron and his “mormons,” the brain trust he’s assembled to maintain him in the Élysée for five more years, to take a victory lap. For two more weeks, the two candidates will go head-to-head as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues to rage and French inflation and gas prices continue to surge. And on April 20, both will take over every French prime time network for the only presidential debate in this entire election cycle. At this point, though, it does seem very much Emmanuel Macron’s to lose. As a very realistic president told a vast throng of his supporters in his victory speech, the rest of this campaign for the next two weeks will be “decisive for our country and for Europe. We can choose hope on the 24th of April, we can choose France and Europe together. I am counting on you.” `
And as every candidate tonight concluded his (or her) concession or victory speech….
Viva la Republique
Viva la France
[….cue the Marseillaise]
One chart that arrived late overnight was especially revelative….how the electorate divided among the top three candidates (who in total accounted for three-quarters of the votes cast)….Mélenchon captured the youth voter (though not overwhelmingly) while Macron captured the elderly (70+) overwhelmingly indeed. Macron did best among professionals and executives as well as retirees. Le Pen captured the votes of workers and employees. Equally, Le Pen and Mélenchon divided the poorest with earnings of less than 1,250 Euros per month, while Macron captured overwhelmingly those with more than 3,000 Euros in monthly earnings. Here is the breakdown from the respected French polling firm Ipsos: