Four months ago — before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — there was everything to play for in the French presidential election, with rivals jostling to prevent Emmanuel Macron from winning a second term in the Elysée at the ballot box in April.
Eric Zemmour, the television talk-show polemicist, was mounting a serious challenge to Marine Le Pen as the champion of the French extreme right. Valérie Pécresse was set to win the primary for the conservative Les Républicains party and to be briefly rated by opinion polls as the biggest threat to Macron.
But today, France is where it was a year ago, with voters likely to have a choice between Macron and Le Pen in the second round on April 24 after handing them the most votes in the first round two weeks earlier. Such an outcome would repeat the contest won by the “neither right nor left” Macron five years ago.
Macron’s dominant position is no surprise. He was already ahead in the polls before the Russian invasion and his status as a wartime leader with prominence in the media has given him a substantial boost in first-round voting intentions.
Le Pen, on the other hand, was expected to be vulnerable to the political fallout from the war. Her party was once bailed out by Russian banks with a €9.4mn loan and she was so sympathetic to Russian leader Vladimir Putin that she included a picture of them shaking hands in more than 1mn campaign leaflets that have since proved an embarrassment for her campaign.
But the latest polls put her in second place to Macron, with 17 per cent of first-round voting intentions. The president is on 30 per cent, while Zemmour, Pécresse and far left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon are on around 12-13 per cent each.
Political commentators say she is an experienced campaigner — this is her third attempt at the presidency — who has kept her head throughout the tumultuous events of Macron’s five-year presidency, including the gilets jaunes protests against the government, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war.
She has continued her drive to detoxify her Rassemblement National party since she took over from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen a decade ago, changing its name from Front National, shunning anti-Semitism and trying to eliminate overt racism.
“I am not an ideologue, I am pragmatic,” she told an audience of industrialists last week at an event addressed by leading candidates.
She has also remained relentlessly cheerful, deliberately setting herself apart from the declinism of Zemmour.
When he was asked by an industrialist at last week’s event why he wanted to deprive employers of vital immigrant labour, he held out the prospect of the destruction of France by immigrants, rising crime and the imposition of an Islamist state that would force future generations of women to wear the veil.
“Marine Le Pen has been normalised and has improved her image, thanks in large part to Eric Zemmour and her own choices,” said Chloé Morin, a political analyst at the Fondation Jean-Jaurès think-tank. “Le Pen’s image is always smiling and among the people, whereas Zemmour’s image is cold. This will benefit her against Macron as well, since some people still see him as lofty and arrogant.”
Pierre-Hadrien Bartoli, of polling group Harris Interactive, said Zemmour’s sudden emergence into the campaign last year “recentred her, made her seem more serious as he got more extreme”.
Le Pen also quickly accepted the prospect of thousands of Ukrainian refugees coming to France, while Zemmour dithered before deciding they should be granted visas because, he said, “we’re closer to European Christians” than to “Arab-Muslim” immigrants.
“She was capable of being flexible and open — not ideological as Zemmour was,” said Bartoli. “She is less obsessed with the identity and immigration issues, and more with economic issues and justice.”
Meanwhile, Pécresse has also faltered in the polls, with her campaign seen as lacklustre and her policies too close to those of Macron.
However, Le Pen may have insufficient time to close the gap on Macron before the second round of the election.
The Ukraine war has stifled debate about the main obsessions of the French far right — immigration and law and order — and allowed Macron’s supporters to declare that the conflict has vindicated the president’s push since 2017 for more European autonomy through collective defence and investment in strategic industries.
But the soaring cost of living, especially fuel and electricity prices, leaves the incumbent vulnerable to voter resentment on polling day.
His government is seeking to cushion consumers. On Sunday, Jean Castex, the prime minister, announced a 15 euro cents a litre rebate on fuel for four months from April 1, which would cost the state about €2bn and save consumers €9 for every 60 litres. That comes on top of €20bn of other aid to cut heating and electricity bills.
Macron and his supporters are already turning their attention to the calculations for the second round and warning against complacency over the president’s poll lead. “The risk is one of abstention, that people . . . will say ‘Macron has already won’ or ‘Why bother to vote?’,” said one of his campaign managers.
The fear in the Macron camp is that France will be shaken by a surprise victory for the populists, as the UK was in its 2016 referendum on leaving the EU or Donald Trump’s US election victory later that year, said one member of Macron’s government. The nightmare scenario, the person said, was that “we’ll wake up on the night of the final vote and Le Pen will have won”.
‘Pragmatic’ Le Pen re-emerges as main poll challenger to Macron
Pinoy Variant