“Nothing has yet been decided, what will happen in the next fifteen days is decisive for France and for Europe”. Emmanuel Macron is ahead of Marine Le Pen after the first round of the French presidential elections but everything, as always, will be decided in the ballot on April 24th. “You can count on me”, says the president acclaimed by his militants at the Porte de Versailles in Paris, appealing to fellow countrymen of all political backgrounds to block the way to the far right. Macron got full votes tonight, 4% more than when he was elected in 2017, and kept the bugbear Le Pen at a distance. But everything can come back into question in 15 days and if the outgoing leader – at 28.4% against 23.4% of the challenger – can count on the support of a good part of the right and left, analysts’ calculations say that on Marine Le Pen will converge at least 7% more votes than she took in the challenge 5 years ago: those of Eric Zemmour, who tonight urged her supporters to vote for her. The first polls around April 24, however, reward Macron: according to an Ipsos Sopra Steria study for Le Parisien, he would be reconfirmed at the Elysée with 54% of the voting intentions.
The advantage attributed to him by Ifop-Fiducial for TF1 / LCI / ParisMatch / SudRadio: 51 to 49 is more narrow. moderate left, led by a socialist party whose candidate, Anne Hidalgo, is sadly at 2%. On the other hand, the popular triumph of Jean-Luc Mélenchon stands out, the tribune of the radical left, who climbed over 20% for the first time to third place. And, above all, sweeping away the fears of those who considered it possible that not a few followers of him would vote for Le Pen as an anti-Macron: “Not even a vote must go to Marine Le Pen!”, He shouted from the stage 4 times, enthusing the supporters of him.
Opposite atmosphere in the home of far-right polemicist Eric Zemmour, who in a few weeks dropped from 16% (he was head to head with Le Pen at the beginning) to 7% actually collected in the polls. He paid for his pro-Russian claims, but above all he lost the bet to supplant the president of the Rassemblement National as the leader of the far right. Le Pen took three times his votes despite the unsuccessful escapes of some of his lieutenants – including his niece Marion Maréchal – to join Reconquete!, The movement created by Zemmour. She appeared confident tonight when she appealed to the French “of all sensibilities”, “to all those who did not vote for Macron” to “join this great national and popular Rassemblement”. The other results above all describe sensational defeats, such as that of Valérie Pécresse, the first woman to run for the Elysée for the neo-Galilist Républicains, who plummeted from 16-17% initially to 5% tonight. His predecessor in the race for the Elysée, Francois Fillon, despite being crippled by the scandal of parliamentary collaborators, had won 20% five years ago. More awaited, because it had been announced by the polls for weeks now, the 2% of Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris who already in recent days anticipated her defeat by proclaiming the need for a refoundation of the PS.
Ecologists are also bad, with Yannick Jadot below the 5% threshold in the midst of a climate emergency that was the most ignored topic in the election campaign. On the left, more than ever, only Mélenchon remains, who has launched his takeover bid on the left, proposing himself as the guide of a new “popular pole”. As the French like to repeat on the evening of the first round, the battle of the second round has already begun. On the Macron front, we look at the challenge live on TV which should be confirmed in about ten days. Five years ago that discussion saw him emerge as the undisputed winner, with Marine Le Pen appearing unarmed of arguments in front of all of France. She finished 66 to 34, but times have changed. And although Valérie Pécresse has said that she will vote for him, the huge neo-Gaullist tank has suffered a 15% flight of the votes, which risk ending up partly in Le Pen. The battle is still long, the bogey Le Pen is still far from being defeated.
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