France held the first round of its presidential election on 23 April, with Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen making it to the second round. The centrist Macron is projected to have won 23.8 percent of the vote, while the Front National’s leader Le Pen came second with 21.5 percent. For the first time since the 1970s, no candidate from either mainstream party has made it through to the run-off, pointing at the possibility of a radical realignment in French politics. Keep an eye on this page for more expert reactions coming in throughout the day. Marta Lorimer: “Macron is expected to win the election, but it is still unclear whether he will be able to govern” Thomas Vitiello: “The recomposition of the French left has started” David Lees: “It would be unwise to write off Le Pen just yet” Andrew Glencross: “Neither candidate would have made it this far if it was not for the confluence of short-term and long-term crises in French society” Nick Parsons: “The blurring of ideological divisions may make the run-off vote closer than expected

Glencross, Andrew

Lees, David

Lorimer, Marta

Parsons, Nick

Vitiello, Thomas

LSE Research Online

2017-4-24Experts react: Macron and Le Pen advance to the run-off inthe French presidential electionblogs.lse.ac.uk /europpblog/2017/04/24/experts-react-first-round-french-presidential-election/France held the first round of its presidential election on 23 April, with Emmanuel Macron and Marine LePen making it to the second round. The centrist Macron is projected to have won 23.8 percent of the vote, while theFront National’s leader Le Pen came second with 21.5 percent. For the first time since the 1970s, no candidate fromeither mainstream party has made it through to the run-off, pointing at the possibility of a radical realignment inFrench politics.Keep an eye on this page for more expert reactions coming in throughout the day. Marta Lorimer: “Macron is expected to win the election, but it is still unclear whether he will be able togovern”Thomas Vitiello: “The recomposition of the French left has started”David Lees: “It would be unwise to write off Le Pen just yet”Andrew Glencross: “Neither candidate would have made it this far if it was not for the confluence ofshort-term and long-term crises in French society”Nick Parsons: “The blurring of ideological divisions may make the run-off vote closer than expected ”Marta Lorimer: “Macron is expected to win the election, but it is still unclear whether he willbe able to govern”The results from the first round largely confirmed what pollsters had been expecting as the mostlikely outcome: a second round between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. There are,however, some interesting takeaways from the election. First, while Le Pen had been expected tomake it into the second round, she had also been expected to do so with a better score than theone she achieved. The key challenge for her now is to get a good score in the second round. While1/5few expect her to win, she needs a good score to consolidate her leadership. Not all members of the FN were fullyconvinced with her strategy of ‘de-demonisation’ cum economic protectionism, and failing to deliver could harm herposition as leader of the party.Second, while Macron is expected to win the presidential election, it is still unclear whether he will be able to govern.France is a semi-presidential system, and to govern effectively, Macron needs a parliamentary majority. If he fails towin a majority in the legislative election in June – which could be a challenge, since he is still in the process ofbuilding his party – he could face an extended period of ‘co-habitation’ with a party whose support he does not fullycommand. In other words, he would have very little possibility to enact measures in his programme and in the longterm, this could lead to even higher levels of disillusionment among the electorate.Third, just like in Austria last year, neither of the established mainstream parties made it into the run-off. The run-offwill pit a nationalist and protectionist candidate against a liberal Europeanist, suggesting that there may be a newcleavage emerging in France – one that goes beyond Left and Right and which entails a contest between ‘closed’and ‘open’ visions of society. It will be interesting to see if this is confirmed in the legislative elections, but for now, itlooks like a major shift in French (and European) politics is taking place.Marta Lorimer – LSEMarta Lorimer is a PhD candidate at the European Institute, London School of Economics. She holds a degree inEuropean Studies from Sciences Po Paris and the LSE. Her research interests include far right parties, Europeanpolitics and ideas of ‘Europe’.___________________________________________ Thomas Vitiello: “The recomposition of the French left has started”Two political parties have dominated French politics under the 5 th Republic: The Republicans (andits Gaullist predecessors), and the Socialist Party. In the first round of the 2017 presidential election,the combined score of their two candidates – François Fillon (20%) and Benoît Hamon (6.3%) –reached a record low of 26.3% of the votes. By comparison, their combined scores were 66% of thevote in 2007 and 55.8% in 2012. In particular, Hamon has lost more than 20 points compared toFrançois Hollande in the first round of the 2012 presidential election.One of the reasons for the shrinking electoral support for traditional parties is the emergence of new politicalmovements – “En Marche!” and “La France Insoumise ” – around the figures of Emmanuel Macron at the centre ofthe political spectrum, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left of the PS. Hamon, who is a representative of the left-wingfaction of the PS, could neither prevent social-liberal voters from drifting toward the more liberal Macron, norcompete with Mélenchon. The latter started his campaign months earlier and managed to successfully ‘own’ issuessuch as wealth redistribution and ecological transition, that is, both old and new left issues.The emergence of these two political movements and the results of yesterday’s first round are an earthquake forFrench politics and in particular for the left as Macron scored 23.8% and Mélenchon 19%. While the presidency nowseems to be in Macron’s hands, all eyes will soon look toward the parliamentary elections that will take place inJune. The two-round runoff voting system is detrimental to new political actors, whether centrist or radical: thecentrist François Bayrou in 2007 and the radical-right Marine Le Pen in 2012 both scored around 18% in thepresidential election in April but then, in the June elections, their parties (Modem and the FN) only obtained 3 and 2MPs respectively.However, the crisis in the Socialist Party and the improbable emergence of a centrist majority in the June electionswill reshuffle the cards for the recomposition of the French left. Whether it will be to the left with “La FranceInsoumise” or to the centre with “En Marche!”, is yet to be seen.2/5Thomas Vitiello – Sciences Po, ParisThomas Vitiello is a PhD student in political science at the Centre of Political Research of Sciences Po (Cevipof). Heis a former Marie Curie Fellow from Sabanci University, Istanbul-Turkey; and he is the academic lead behind theFrench voting advice application of “La Boussole présidentielle 2017”.___________________________________________ David Lees: “It would be unwise to write off Le Pen just yet”Marine Le Pen has already achieved more in the first-round of the French presidential race than anyprevious far-right candidate. Le Pen’s first-round score of 21.53% of the vote is impressive,especially given Le Pen’s fairly unambitious campaign which drew mostly on pre-establishedpolicies from the 2012 presidential elections. Le Pen has sought to play on the insecurities of theFrench public in light of last week’s terrorist attack on the Champs-Elysées and will continue toramp up her anti-immigrant rhetoric before the second-round on 7 May.Crucially, she will seek to woo voters from the camps of both the extreme-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whorefused to back either Le Pen or Emmanuel Macron in his speech on Sunday evening, and from the centre-rightFrançois Fillon, who did urge his supporters to back Macron. Le Pen will draw on the concerns over employmentand pay amongst Mélenchon voters and on traditional moral values and patriotism of Fillon supporters in order toincrease her vote in the second-round. Macron’s development of a ‘non-establishment’ image will be sorely testedby Le Pen in the next two weeks as she plays on her greater political experience and ‘woman of the people’ image inthe face of Macron’s investment banker past. With everything to play for, it would be unwise to write off Le Pen’schances just yet.David Lees – University of WarwickDavid Lees is a Teaching Fellow in French Studies at the University of Warwick.___________________________________________ Andrew Glencross: “Neither candidate would have made it this far if it was not for theconfluence of short-term and long-term crises in French society”The French presidential election is essentially a contest to fill the gaping General-de-Gaulle-sizedhole in the constitutional architecture of the Fifth Republic. In this guise, the run-off betweenEmmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen is pretty conventional: both talk big and seek to appear asprovidential figures that can serve France’s true interests. But neither candidate would have made itthis far if it was not for the confluence of short-term and long-term crises in French society.The presidency was tailor-made for de Gaulle, which helps explain why centre-right candidates normally win it, aswas originally expected this time around. After François Hollande became the first incumbent not to seek re-election(his approval ratings fell as low as 4%), François Fillon, candidate for Les Républicains, was the red hot favourite. Aseries of financial scandals proved his undoing. Yet the travails of the mainstream parties of left and right are not justthe product of short term unpopularity.Hollande’s presidential campaign was a classic tale of promising sweeping change – initially he declared himself anenemy of finance – and then settling for desultory micro-management of public policy. A social democrat in charge ofa state with high levels of public spending and a deficit contrary to the rules governing the euro, he had very few3/5cards to play and still managed his hand badly. The centre-right was unable to profit as they laboured under theshadow of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political legacy is again one of failed promises and tainted byself-serving machinations.Hence Macron and Le Pen have been successful in large part because of who they are not. Yet Macron carries thedecades-long hopes of the centre-right and centre-left for a transformation of the economy that can satisfy unhappyvoters and allow France to regain clout in the EU vis-à-vis Germany. As an independent centrist, he is also arepublican bulwark against Le Pen’s extreme policies, as losing candidates such as Fillon and the Socialist BenoîtHamon have already stated. However, Le Pen can lose badly in the second round and still have time on her side.The Front National vote is the anti-system party with sticking power and profits each time a supposedly providentialpresident fails to live up to expectations. The fundamental unknown for Macron’s presidency is thus whether he is ina better position to deliver because he lacks the baggage of the big political parties.Andrew Glencross – Aston UniversityAndrew Glencross is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Aston Universityand a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.___________________________________________ Nick Parsons: “The blurring of ideological divisions may make the run-off vote closer thanexpected”Despite the closest electoral competition for many a year, the overall result was one predicted bythe opinion pollsters. The centrist Emmanuel Macron will face the far-right Marine Le Pen in the 7May run-off. The choice appears clear-cut, between the pro-EU, social-liberal Macron, arguing formore liberalisation and openness to rejuvenate the French economy, and the anti-EU, nationalistand protectionist Le Pen. It is notable, though, that these two candidates only secured just over45% of the vote between them, compared to 56% for the two front-runners in 2012, when Hollande ran off againstSarkozy.Normally, one would expect supporters of the traditional parties to coalesce around Macron to prevent the anti-system candidate from winning in the second ballot, as they did in 2002, when Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-MarieLe Pen with 82% of the votes. French politics, however, is now in a state of flux. Support for the two traditionalparties of government collapsed, with the Socialist Party (PS) candidate, Benoît Hamon, only gaining 6.4%, whileMacron has emerged as a political outsider despite his establishment background. One would expect the right-wingLes Républicains to ditch the scandal-mired Fillon and regroup for the legislative elections in June. The fate of thePS, however, is far less certain with internal recriminations and squabbling over the future direction of the partyseemingly inevitable between left-leaning supporters of Hamon and those that supported Macron.While Macron is expected to win the second ballot with about 60% of the vote, the blurring of ideological divisionsmay make the run-off vote closer than expected. Normally, one would expect Le Pen to struggle to extend herappeal beyond votes that went to the nationalists Dupont-Aignan and Asselineau. However, while most ofMélenchon’s supporters can be expected to support Macron, some may be attracted to Le Pen’s promises ofeconomic protectionism to create jobs and protect welfare, while more may simply abstain, finding Macron’s mix offurther economic liberalisation and austerity unpalatable. Likewise, Hamon’s support would normally translate intosupport for Macron, but many in the PS see him as a traitor, and may well seek refuge in abstention too. Fillon’svotes may well split more evenly, with his supporters divided between Le Pen’s anti-immigration policies and fear ofthe economic effects of her policies, notably the commitment to a referendum on withdrawal from the euro.The real irony of this election is that the political outsiders – Mélenchon, Le Pen and Macron – did well, while4/5traditional parties collapsed, but the likely ultimate victor on 7 May is essentially promising more of the same. Giventhe current divisions and state of flux in French politics, whether this is enough for him to secure parliamentarysupport for his presidential mandate, and whether the 2017 elections deliver strong and stable government for this,is very much still open to question.Nick Parsons – Cardiff UniversityNick Parsons is Reader in French in the School of Modern Languages, Cardiff University, and is a specialist inFrench and European industrial relations and social policy.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Chris Stubel (CC BY-SA 3.0)5/5

Experts react: Macron and Le Pen advance to the run-off in the French presidential election

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online