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French presidential election awaits ‘final second leg’

Official results of the first round French presidential election announced by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of this country has selected two “familiar” candidates for the second round on April 24.

The results from the voters’ ballot on April 10 opened a “final second leg” because it continued to be the confrontation of two candidates who entered the second round in the 2017 election: the incumbent President. Emmanuel Macron, Republican Forward (LREM) and Marine Le Pen, far-right National Rally (RN). According to Le Figaro newspaper, this is the first time in more than 40 years that two candidates have faced each other in the “final” in two consecutive French presidential elections.

French presidential election awaits 'final second leg' - photo 1

The “final second leg” between Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen promises to be fierce until the last minute

Reuters

Mr. Macron had the highest score (27.6% of the vote), ahead of Ms Le Pen (23.41%) and Mr. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the leftist France Unrelenting party (FI – 21.95%). . These are 3 candidates with a very different score compared to the remaining 9 candidates, the 4th place is Mr. Eric Zemmour of the far-right Reconquest party with only 7.05% of the vote, and the other candidates are all. score less than 5%, lower than the standard to get the government to pay for campaign expenses. The percentage of voters who did not show up to the polls in the first round was high (25.14%) but still lower than the record set in 2002 (28.4%).

New face of French politics

In 2016, when he founded the centrist political movement Forward (the predecessor of the current LREM party) and officially announced his participation in the race for the Élysée Palace a year later, Mr. changed the face of French politics, which still followed the traditional left-right political orientation, with the two oldest and strongest parties at that time, the Socialists (PS, left) and the Republicans. LR, right wing). With the official results of the first round of the French presidential election 2022, this assertion has come true. Before 2017, it was difficult for anyone to imagine that the Socialist Party had the President-elect in 2012 – Mr. François Hollande – and also won the majority in both houses of the National Assembly, 10 years later it had only 1.74% of the votes. votes (candidate Anne Hidalgo, incumbent Mayor of Paris). The LR party is not much better, when candidate Valérie Pécresse only achieved 4.79%.

There are many reasons to explain the “collapse” of PS and LR. First of all, the most recent presidents of these two parties have not really stood out, and many voters have grown tired of focusing on only two options for decades. Next, Mr. Macron’s party, with its assertion of the middle, neither left nor right, took away a significant number of votes from the two traditional parties, and also attracted many prominent names from both parties. In addition, the trend of “useful voting” also causes many PS and LR voters to vote for candidates with a higher probability of winning.

In contrast to the “traditional” parties, Mr. Macron of the LREM and Mrs Le Pen of the RN party all had an increase in points compared to 2017 (24.01% and 21.3% respectively). This is the second time after President François Mitterrand (two terms, from 1981-1995), a French President running for a second term won more votes in the first round than in the previous election. And candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon with the FI party, thanks to an impressive score, has been seen by observers as the leading political force on the left in France, replacing the PS.

Mr. Macron’s goals

Although he finished first in the first round and has many advantages to continue being the owner of the Élysée Palace for another term, Mr. Macron and his associates must put all their efforts to achieve the best results on April 24 because “for The second leg” with Ms. Le Pen is expected to be much more difficult than the “first leg final” five years ago.

Second term beckons French President Macron

The latest polls show that in the second round, the incumbent French president will win with a rate of 51-54% compared with 46-49% of the RN candidate. It is clear that Ms. Le Pen’s strategy of “meek far right” has worked as her party increasingly asserts its position in France and the gap with the leading candidate narrows.

20 years ago, the fact that Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, unexpectedly entered the second round of the presidential election with Mr. Jacques Chirac, created an “earthquake” in this country. People, especially youth, simultaneously took to the streets across France to protest the far-right candidate. The candidates who were eliminated after the first round called for Mr. Chirac to accumulate votes, and as a result, he was elected with an overwhelming margin of 82.21%. “First leg final” in 2017, Mr. Macron also won with a high rate of 66.1%, far more than the expected result of this year.

Therefore, right from April 11, the candidate of the LREM party hastily focused on the second round, in which the most important goal is to emphasize the opponent’s campaign platform to push Ms. Le Pen to the right role. role of a far-right leader, instead of a meek, friendly image to “normalize the far right”.

In fact, even before the first round, Mr. Macron was already looking forward to the second round, so instead of just focusing on introducing his campaign platform, he started making statements aimed at the RN candidate. Reply to daily newspaper Le Parisien On April 4, the incumbent French President asserted: “The social programs that Marine Le Pen promises are all lies, because she cannot figure out the budget to pay for them. “. Also just before the first round, Mr. Macron emphasized that the RN is the party that still talks about “France is being Africanized”, the racist views often seen by far-right groups.

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