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Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron appeared seemingly out of nowhere to become president of France.
Though he had never before held elective office, the then 39-year-old’s charm, vigor and self-confidence won over voters, who elected him the country’s youngest leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.
As French voters head to the polls on Sunday, Macron is no longer the fresh-faced rookie of 2017, but he is still trying to seduce voters. Seeking re-election, a feat no president has accomplished in two decades, Macron casts himself as the daring navigator who will guide France through difficult times.
His five-year term, the “five-year term,” has been plagued by extraordinary challenges: the coronavirus, the war in Ukraine, Brexit and Donald Trump in the White House.
Macron has handled each of these deftly, while pushing through reforms aimed at modernizing the French economy. Despite the setbacks, France is better positioned than most as it rebuilds from the pandemic, while Macron has raised the country’s profile on the world stage.
However, his re-election is far from assured. While he remains the clear favorite, the polls have shifted in recent months and his lead is shrinking. Just a few weeks ago, he hit 33.5 percent, more than double his closest rival, far-right leader Marine Le Pen. But on Thursday, an IFOP poll put him at 26.5 per cent, a first-round lead over Le Pen of just 2.5 per cent.
While this would be a better first-round result for Macron in 2017, when his score was 24 per cent to Le Pen’s 21.3 per cent, it is the second round that will concern him.
If they repeat the runoff from five years ago, polls predict he would only win 51.5 percent to Le Pen’s 48.5, down from the decisive 66 to 34 percent victory he won in 2017.
Macron has recognized the danger. Speaking last weekend at a campaign rally in a 35,000-seat stadium outside Paris, he warned of the risk of a Brexit-style deaf election.
“Don’t believe the pollsters and the experts who tell you that it’s impossible, unthinkable, that the election is over, that everything will be fine,” he told the crowd of flag-waving supporters.
“Look at us! Five years ago, they said it was impossible. Look at Brexit and so many elections, all of that seemed unlikely and yet it happened. Nothing is impossible.”
Though unlikely, a Le Pen victory would plunge both France and Europe into crisis. While he has softened his far-right stances since 2017, he remains fiercely anti-immigrant and critical of the European Union.
Last year, it looked like her tougher rival, pundit and polemicist Éric Zemmour, would overtake her on the right, who sells the big replacement, or great replacementa white nationalist conspiracy theory about how ethnic minorities are driving out supposedly born French with the complicity of elites.
But Zemmour’s racism and Islamophobia had the effect of making Le Pen’s nationalism seem more moderate. She has surged in the polls in recent weeks after focusing her messaging on basic issues like the cost-of-living crisis and campaigning tirelessly in small towns and villages in the heart of the country, known as deep France.
He has distanced himself from his toxic father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, changing the name of his racist National Front party to National Grouping.
Ms Le Pen has also highlighted her personal story as a single mother and cat enthusiast, and even supported welcoming Ukrainian refugees to France. Meanwhile, the other candidates in the field have faded.
Zemmour, who was second in the polls last October, is now in fifth place with about 8 percent. In third place is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left, skilled polemicist and leader of the France Unbowed movement, with 18 percent.
In fourth place with 9 percent is conservative mainstream leader Valérie Pécresse, who defeated Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to secure the GOP nomination. She has veered hard to the right, echoing the lines of the great replacement theory, and failed even to win the support of the last conservative president, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Macron has become testy at times, criticizing the “lazy” and “illiterate” holding the country back.
As for the socialists, they have almost fallen into oblivion. With François Hollande and François Mitterrand, they held the presidency for 19 years from 1981, but their current candidate, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, is in ninth place, with 2 percent in the polls.
The decline of the Republicans and the Socialists, the two main parties, is testimony to Macron’s extraordinary reshaping of French politics.
In the first round of the 2012 elections, Hollande and Sarkozy together won 55 percent of the vote. Now his political heirs poll a combined 11 percent.
However, Macron’s feat of making the system seem out of place and irrelevant is now being thrown in his face. While he is charismatic, he can seem aloof and indifferent, a trait that helped fuel the biggest threat to his presidency, in 2018. yellow vests or anti-government demonstrations of yellow vests against a fuel tax.
Arriving at the Elysee Palace in 2017, he spoke of a “Jupiterian” presidency, where he would take a lofty and assertive position as king of the gods. But he has become testy at times, speaking in a harsh voice that “lazy” and “illiterate” hold the country back. In January, he stated that he wanted piss offor piss off, those who refused to be vaccinated.
As Macron’s commitment to the electorate has eroded, it has spawned cynicism. The narrowing margins are widely attributed to a general apathy, reflected in a boring election campaign that lacks fresh ideas or inspiration. Macron himself delayed until early March before officially announcing his candidacy.
He had seen a rise in the polls after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, giving him a platform to cast himself as Europe’s greatest statesman, filling the gap left by last year’s departure of former German chancellor Angela Merkel. But that shine has faded: Voters complain that he seems too preoccupied with the war to be distracted by mundane domestic matters like the campaign.
Now, Macron’s entourage is worried about a growing apathy. Polls predict a record 31 percent of eligible voters won’t bother casting ballots this year, with almost half of France’s young people skipping the vote altogether.
The infamous Gallic shrug, the bof, could be a crucial factor in this election. Both complacency and Le Pen’s rise are shaking Macron’s team.
“I am not hiding the fact that we will have to work harder,” Macron said in his speech last weekend. But on Sunday you will know if it is enough.
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