The French Presidential election campaign has just begun
Macron's disastrous showing in the regional election doesn't undermine his presidential bid but...
The first round of the regional elections in France this weekend has formally kickstarted the French Presidential and general election. While most people are focused on the forthcoming German elections (September 21st), the reality is that the French election is both more uncertain and more significant for the future course of Europe (I will write about the German elections soon).
The first round of the regional election saw a record low level of participation, which has somewhat upset the normally good predictions of public polls. The Rassemblement National (RN, Marine Lepen’s party) is not doing as well as expected, the left wing taken together (Socialist Party, Greens and far-left (France Insoumise) is doing better than expected nationwide but this is also somewhat distorted by the strong showing of incumbents. And the Republicains (LR) are doing better than expected.
The main take-away is the extraordinary weakness and widespread defeat of LREM (Macron’s party). But this is hardly a surprise, in reality since its creation LREM has never been a party with the mission to become truly national with deep local roots, it serves merely as an extraordinary PR agency for the President. The reality is that the party has entirely failed to enlist a new generation of political leaders and empower them to lead locally, and this is not an accident but largely the result of a conscious or unconscious choice to mobilise all its resources to the benefit of Emmanuel Macron alone.
This genuine LREM debacle doesn’t however endanger Macron’s presidential bid itself. Indeed, the presidential strategy to divide and conquer continues to operate and rather well. The left-wing is too divided to become a real threat and the right wing remains leaderless and somewhat divided too. Indeed, a significant part of Sarkozy’s former networks are now fully embedded in the Macron government and are therefore likely to remain loyal to him.
Macron attempted to weaken his chief opponent on the right, Xavier Bertrand, the President of the region Haut de France, has failed. By trying to create enough support for Macron’s party in the region to force Bertrand into a deal to secure his victory, Macron thought he would durably undermine Bertrand’s presidential bid. He sent 5 Ministers of his government to campaign there, but this failed to raise LREM’s showing above the 10% threshold that is necessary to go to the second round of the election (the list only did 9.1%). As a result, Bertrand doesn’t need Macron’s support for his re-election and will certainly come out emboldened from this election.
However, the Republicains party is yet to agree on a process to nominate its candidate, and this is likely to be a drawn out and acrimonious fight that will certainly weaken the candidate whoever it might be.
All in all, this first round of the regional election leaves the central scenario for the presidential election largely intact: Macron and Lepen coming out on top of the first round and fighting a tight battle in the second. If anything, this election has shown less momentum for the far right than what could be feared, which might be read positively in the Elysée. The real danger is that in the coming month, the far right broadens its support, if not by Lepen energizing its base, by new entrants in the first round that could provide much needed voters in the second round.
On June 9th, IFOP tested for the first time Eric Zemmour, a leading far right TV anchor, as a candidate for the presidential election. What is striking is that his potential entry into the race would not weaken Lepen’s showing in the first round at all (still standing at 28% 2 points ahead of Macron at 26%), suggesting Zemmour would either mobilise new far right voters or gather supporters from the traditional right-wing parties (the poll suggest it is rather the former). In this configuration, a far-right block of candidates in the first round could coalesce in the second and make it a much more contested second round.
Hence, the main source of concern is not Macron’s terribly weak political party, he has proven that he didn’t need one to win a presidential election, but the weakness of potential support in the second round and the potential transfer of votes Lepen could benefit from.
To be monitored… closely.