Merci
The results: Macron beats Le Pen in presidential election
Projections show that Emmanuel Macron has secured a clear victory over far-right rival Marine Le Pen.
Macron sweeps away far-right rival
This is a dramatic victory for the sitting president, and a historic one at that.
Make no mistake, this was Marine Le Pen’s best chance of victory and yet it didn’t happen. Her campaign was slick, her focus on the cost of living chimed with the voters, and she performed well in the big TV duel days ago.
Macron didn’t even enter the election until eight days before the first round, prompting accusations of arrogance. But when he did take part, the voters clearly listened. Even though Le Pen offered tax cuts and no rise in the pension age, they decided his proposals were more realistic and they rejected hers. Softer they may have been, but they were still far right.
Not for 20 years has France backed a president for two terms, and never before has a president been re-elected with a majority in parliament.
Allons enfants.
Today’s ‘conservative’ is yesterday’s ‘progressive.’ Otherwise modern ‘conservatives’ would be out there campaigning to turn back the clock in favour of absolute monarchy, and votes for nobody; never mind just votes for women*. Also on the ‘conservatives’ list: French and other ‘conservatives’ would want the reintroduction of feudalism, chattel slavery, public executions, public floggings, burnings at the stake, and long prison terms or exile to Devil’s Island for those seeking to change the existing political and economic arrangements: all of which got swept into history’s garbage bin along with whole colleges of Marine Le Pens and Donald Trumps (don’t for Chrissake forget the Trumps!) by the progressives of the day.
C’est vrai, n’est pas?’
*And please note: I speak as the proud grandson of a suffragette who got herself banged up in Holloway Gaol, London, for her inclination to get an inch or maybe a mile too far up the nose of the Establishment of her day.
Like many Brits I open my insular eyes at French politics when they (a) start rioting; (b) get near to electing a fascist. Then they stop rioting and the French voters decide the bad is better than the worse; they don’t elect the Fascist, and I close my eyes again.
@Omar #1:
Isn’t that exactly what far too many of America’s “conservatives” want (Self-ID is always a bad idea)?
Hell, you’ve got some people that Thiel is backing that are monarchists.
“and never before has a president been re-elected with a majority in parliament.”
This is gross: they pretend Macron was reelected with a majority. While technically true, the current majority is the previous one (elected in June 2017), and the next legislative election is expected next June and the odds Macron keeps a majority are somewhat low. If they write this, they should have acknowledged that this is not the first time such a thing happens (reelection with majority in parliament). They try to make it pass as a success at the price of distorting reality in a way that is really dishonest.
There is currently an absolute majority for “En Marche” in the parliament, and that’s also a bit problematic, as it is known to function in a cult-like manner. In 2018, the opposition leader (Mélenchon) approved (“for once”, as he said it) a proposal issued from “En Marche” during the debates and as a result they voted against their own proposal, which was thus rejected.
I am curious, Laurent, as to how France is at the point of choosing between a center-right and a Nationalist candidate. Did Sarkozy so damage the left in France that they can’t reach a runoff election?
Mike, #5:
This is simple: there were 12 candidates for the first round, 3 of which from nationalist far right, 3 of which from right wing (among which I count Macron, which is characterised as center right in the international press but really mostly governs typical of right wing), and… the remaining 6 candidates from various left standpoints. Given that each of these political tribes (far right, right/center right, and broad left) grossly accounts for one third of votes, this explains why the two best candidates were not among the Left. Mélenchon came fairly close, though, with 21% in the first round compared to 22% to Le Pen, so the dispute for second place was close to a hair cut. If you add all the votes interspersed to the Left, it is bigger in absolute number to 22%, so dispersion of votes played a role in the Left missing the second round.
Actually, there are several people making the point that the second round was staged. It is true that the actual votes count in the first round was dramatically underestimated during estimate censuses for Mélenchon in the previous weeks, in a statistically significant fashion actually, and the media predicted the second round well before it happened, and never discussed the possibility of another kind of second round. This lack of awareness suprised everyone at the evening of first round counting, when it became clear that Mélenchon might actually do it and went very close to selection.
Sarkozy never damaged the Left, I would rather say it damaged itself, but so is the case of traditional Right Wing too. There is clearly a recomposition of the political landscape in France.
Thanks for the explanation. We don’t get very much coverage of French politics in the States even though we’ve been close allies since the Revolutionary War. So, mostly only when our Presidents visit or when there is a national election.
You’re Welcome Mike!
The main issue with the French Left is that the traditional government party (The Socialist Party, from which Macron was propelled) never managed its transition into social democracy in a way that spoke to citizens. Indeed, it would have required retaining a Left wing approach to social and economic issues that be marked enough or even sloganized for the sake of basic communication. Instead, the PS became softer and softer and working class voters felt betrayed each time, because they rarely explored social concerns once governing.
There are ways to maintain Left wing sensibility and leaning outside of purely collectivist and unionist approaches, but the PS lacked it completely. This is possibly due to representative politics which encourages professionalization of politics, therefore candidates are mostly interested in their elective careers and lost a sense of being closer to citizen concerns, if at all.
As a result, Left wing politics is essentially provided by the historically radical Left, which renders any Left wing argument, however reasonable it is, stamped as leftism (and an awful lot of citizens fear it, as it is reminiscent of communism). Mélenchon for example, is often stereotyped as ultra Left when it is simply Left wing.
Both traditional Left and Right government parties in France have evaporated in the last decade though, with a clear shift to the Right in general, including populist and xenophobic nationalism. The end result is the probable disappearance of traditional bi-partite dispute in elections, in favour of a triad of political poles for which little is known with regard to long term effects.
It is worth noting at least two of the current poles (those lead by Macron and Mélenchon) are movements broadly defined but not political parties, so there are open questions regarding their existence in the long term.
I tried to be as factual and neutral as possible and this comment only suggests hypotheses about current French political landscape and do not reflect my own position.