“Left” Parties in France Poll above 54.4%
My tabulation of “left” and “right” may grossly oversimplify where these party’s line up. But it looks like the “left” has more voters in the aggregate.
 Emmanuel Macron LREM (LEFT) |
27.8% | 9,784,985 |
|---|---|---|
 Marine Le Pen
RN (RIGHT)
|
23.1% | 8,135,456 |
 Jean-Luc Mélenchon
LFI (LEFT)
|
22% | 7,714,574 |
 Éric Zemmour
Reconquête (RIGHT)
|
7.1% | 2,485,757 |
 Valérie Pécresse
LR (RIGHT)
|
4.8% | 1,679,359 |
 Yannick Jadot
EELV (LEFT)
|
4.6% | 1,628,249 |
 Jean Lassalle
Résistons (RIGHT)
|
3.1% | 1,101,643 |
Regarding Le Pen’s chances, our man in Paris says:
We’ll see. But I don’t think she will. Was surprised that Hidalgo (Socialist Party) endorsed him; Mèlenchon didn’t say “vote for Macron,” but he did say “don’t vote for Le Pen.” The only way Macron loses is if too many people stay home, a la Hillary, and they tend not to stay home if it looks like Le Pen will win.
The right-wing threat appears to have been overhyped by English-speaking media.
Macron/La République En Marche isn’t really left. It’s Neo-liberal. But if the other left parties would have done an ego check and coalesced around my boy Mélenchon, he’d be in the run-off instead of Le Pen. Al’s there so his feel is probably pretty accurate.
“…f the other left parties would have done an ego check..”
A very heavy lift.
You’re telling me? Lol.
As noted below, it’s not ego. It’s money. That 5% threshold they failed to meet cost them millions of euros.
This is a pretty good commentary:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/11/emmanuel-macron-far-right-le-pen-zemmour?CMP=share_btn_tw
These results represent a collapse of some traditional parties both left and right — the Socialists in particular. The way the French public financing system works, your party needs 5% to be reimbursed for what it spent. Neither Hidalgo (Socialist), Jadot (Green) nor Pécresse (equivalent of never-Trumper GOP) reached that threshold, which is going to hamper their fundraising going forward — who wants to contribute to pay off old debts? This is why they didn’t throw their support to Mélenchon before the vote.
The final result won’t be as simple as adding together these totals. Mélenchon, as REV notes, benefitted in the stretch by gathering votes from other leftist parties who didn’t want to “waste” their vote; he also picked up votes from Macron supporters who were hoping he’d nose out Le Pen for second place, which he very nearly did. Zemmour lost a couple of points at the finish, too, probably by people switching to Le Pen to keep her alive.
The main variable, as I noted earlier, is turnout. Only 75% turned out Sunday — yes, that percentage gets an “only” in France (and its few remaining overseas possessions, where, unlike in US possesions, citizens’ votes count). This was the lowest turnout since I believe 2002.
The danger, as it was for Hillary, comes If too many people figure Macron has it in the bag. But I think it will be easy to get out the vote among citizens with immigrant backgrounds, who know Le Pen will try, in effect, to revoke their full citizenship.
Is LePen’s past praise of Putin (say that five times fast) — or even Trump, I guess — coming back to hurt her this time? I’d imagine there are plenty of clips or quotes to hammer home every chance Macron gets.
I feel like no Le Pen voter would care?
Her call to fine people for wearing headscarves probably hurts her more. Street artists have already put up posters of her with a headscarf photoshopped on her. I’ll post one if I ever figure out how.