A clash of worldviews: What’s shaping the Macron-Le Pen presidential stand-off?
By: Rachel Marsden
Older voters who prefer the status quo, or young dissatisfied ones – who is more motivated?
When French voters head to the polls on Sunday to choose their next
president, will the result mirror that of the 2017 election? Five years ago, the
same Macron-Le Pen matchup resulted in a blowout, with Macron winning with 66%
of the vote against Le Pen’s 34%. The perennial phenomenon of the French
“Republican Front” struck again. In other words, all other first-round voters
cast their ballots against Le Pen rather than for Macron. Older French voters in
particular have an inherent fear of the “far right,” and overwhelmingly vote
reflexively against it. But why is this the case?
It all started when the predecessor of Le Pen’s National Rally party – the
National Front, led by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen – benefited from former
Socialist French President François Mitterrand’s openness to smaller parties’
electoral participation in the 1985 legislative elections, and ended up winning
35 seats in the National Assembly. Mitterrand has long been accused of opening
the doors to the corridors of power to the far right as a clever ploy to
permanently divide the establishment right, thereby ensuring many years of
dominance by his conventional left Socialist Party.
But much has changed since then. The conventional right and left have both fully
imploded. After failing to obtain the minimum 5% of votes necessary for state
reimbursement of campaign expenses in the first round of this year’s election,
conventional right Republican Party candidate Valérie Pécresse is currently
appealing for donations from the French public to avoid having to cover €7
million worth of expenses (including €5 million from her own pocket). On the
traditional left, the Socialist Party led by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo only
mustered 1.7% support.
Today, Macron has cobbled together conventional figures from both the right
and the left and successfully branded them as centrist and pragmatic defenders
of the French and European establishment status quo. Not that the French are
thrilled with his performance. Polls consistently show Macron’s popularity
hovering around 40%.Macron’s approval is highest among retirees and lowest among
young people ages 25-34, according to an Odoxa poll, and also among the
non-executive working class.
This should hardly come as a surprise since the figures reflect the impact of
the two biggest crises that Macron has managed during his first five-year term:
the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict. Retirees are the least
negatively impacted by – and arguably the biggest beneficiaries of – Macron’s
heavy-handed pandemic management and vaccine mandates, which have resulted in
working-class job loss for noncompliance. The older demographic is also
unaffected by Macron’s vow to raise the retirement age to 65. They’re more risk
averse and susceptible to the suggestion, often cited by analysts in the French
press, that a vote for Le Pen could bring political instability and unforeseen
consequences for both France and for Europe. Meanwhile, younger, working people
with families are feeling the pinch of Macron’s policies which have helped
antagonize Russia over its military operation in Ukraine in the absence of a
plan to manage the blowback to the French and EU economies as a result of
anti-Russia sanctions.
Younger and working-class French voters are therefore more willing to take a
risk on something new, given Macron’s evident failure to mitigate chaos over the
past five years.
According to a new Democracy Institute survey of French voters, the most
important issue for them, by far, is inflation, with more respondents
disapproving of Macron’s handling of the Ukraine crisis that has contributed to
it, and more than half asserting that the European Union sanctions against
Russia, championed by Macron, hurt France more than they did Russia. Only 20% of
respondents consider Russia to be “the greatest threat to France” (with China
and terrorism ranking ahead), and more French voters agree than disagree with Le
Pen’s position that France should re-exit the NATO integrated command.
So, in reality, even with older voters overwhelmingly backing Macron, Le
Pen’s more unconventional and non-establishment postures are nonetheless
seducing French voters who aren’t thrilled about Macron’s leadership,
particularly in the economic realm.
Scandals are also playing a role in the waning days of the campaign. Macron has
been attempting to justify the increased use of global “big consulting” firms by
the French government under his leadership, to the tune of hundreds of millions
of euros of taxpayer funds, according to a French senate report. These
facilitators of globalism advised the French government on Covid vaccines while
also representing big tech and big pharma vaccine makers, for example. It’s not
difficult to imagine how such conflicts of interest can result in
government-imposed mandates that favor special interests over science to the
detriment of democracy and basic freedoms.
But Le Pen is also facing an inconvenient disclosure ahead of the final round.
The European Union’s fraud agency has just accused her of misusing public funds
during her time as a Member of the European Parliament. The move is the
culmination of an investigation that has been dragging on for years, which has
raised suspicions about political motivations over the timing of the
announcement.
Le Pen is known for her pushback against supranational top-down EU governance –
in contrast to Macron’s cooperation with it – and has been consistently
outspoken about the need for France to regain more independence and sovereignty.
Her far-left opponent, Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the France Unbowed party, has a
similar position to Le Pen’s on the EU. And if all of his first-round voters
backed Le Pen in a grand anti-establishment coalition to defeat Macron, it would
cause a political earthquake. Both candidates have insisted on lesser blind
cooperation with the EU to the detriment of French citizens, while Macron has
spent the past five years behaving like its greatest cheerleader, all while
refusing to protect the interests of its citizens from the impact of American
military and economic ambitions.
Both Mélenchon and Le Pen also converge on the need for less obedience to
Washington. Mélenchon favors a socialist safety net while Le Pen has gradually
been moving towards more laissez-faire policies that achieve similar results
with less government interference. For instance, while Macron favors
government-issued “cheques” to offset increased energy and food prices, Le Pen
has vowed to reduce sales tax on such items in order to leave more money in
consumers’ pockets.
Yet, despite the similarities in their objectives, Mélenchon has called on his
backers not to give Le Pen a single vote in the second round. His longstanding
view is that Le Pen – who is against Macron’s Covid mandates and has come out
against Macron’s position of arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine – must be opposed at
all costs. As a result, 30% of the votes from Mélenchon’s close third-place
finish to Le Pen’s second-round qualification (22% vs 23%) are projected to go
to Macron, according to a new BVA poll, compared to just 18% to Le Pen. An
estimated 52% of Mélenchon voters either plan to abstain or cast a blank ballot
in the final round.
And it’s precisely this abstention, blank, or undeclared vote where this
election could play out. According to the Financial Times’ weighted average of
all polls available to date, just 7% separates Macron from Le Pen heading into
Sunday’s vote. So, it looks like the result may ultimately come down to voter
motivation. Will French people over the age of 65 who view Macron’s conventional
approach be more motivated to go vote in order to maintain the status quo at any
cost, despite disappointment with the general direction of the country? Or will
younger, working-class voters mobilize to seize the right to try something new
with the only chance they’ll have to do so for the next five years?
COPYRIGHT 2022 RACHEL MARSDEN