Emmanuel Macron was re-elected on Sunday as President of the Republic with 58.5% of the vote once morest Marine Le Pen (41.5%) according to the first Ipsos / Sopra-Steria estimates, a clear victory tempered by the noticeably tight gap with the extreme right and high abstention (28%).
Given a long time favorite to his own succession, Emmanuel Macron becomes at only 44 years old the first outgoing president reappointed outside cohabitation, since the adoption of direct universal suffrage in 1962.
A form of feat following a first five-year term yet punctuated by crises, from “yellow vests” to Covid, which inscribes the country in continuity on its main economic orientations, on its role in the European Union and in international relations.
His score on Sunday evening, which he must celebrate on the Champ-de-Mars, facing the Eiffel Tower, does not, however, offer him a blank check for the next five years, when colossal challenges await him, once morest a backdrop of war in Ukraine and galloping inflation.
The president-candidate has already promised to renew himself in depth, both in form and in substance. A necessity at the head of a France cut in half, or even in three in view of the number of voters among the 48.7 million called to the polls who chose to shun the voting booths on Sunday, in this 2017 remake organized while the three school zones are on vacation.
Arrived in power 5 years ago “by breaking and entering”, in his own words, Mr. Macron continues his meteoric personal trajectory, both classic (ENA, finance inspection, Minister of the Economy, etc.) and unclassifiable in a landscape politics he dynamited.
But he, who had promised on the evening of his victory in May 2017 to “do everything” so that voters “no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes” did not succeed in curbing the rise of Marine Le Pen. .
The candidate of the National Rally, who had gathered 33.9% of the votes in 2017, is progressing significantly at the end of a long-term and smooth campaign. Ms. Le Pen, who has relied heavily on purchasing power to stand out, will have managed to smooth her image, without giving in to the radicalism of her project on immigration or security.
End of the “glass ceiling”
Twenty years following the surprise emergence of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election (17.79% of the vote), the far right has never come so close to power under the Fifth Republic.
“As for the glass ceiling, I don’t think we can talk regarding it anymore,” notes Laurent Jacobelli, one of Ms. Le Pen’s spokespersons.
“This ability to capture anger to make voices is progressing”, also observed this week with AFP the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, drawing a parallel with “the success of Trump (in the United States), of Bolsonaro (in Brazil), Orban (in Hungary)”. “This makes me say that the political fight must continue,” he pleads once more.
For Marine Le Pen, it’s time to take stock following a third failure in the race for the Elysée.
“It’s difficult to recover from a third defeat” but “in the landscape of very fragmented oppositions today (…) Marine Le Pen occupies with the National Rally the dominant position and she will remain the chief opponent”, anticipated political scientist Pascal Perrineau Friday on Public Senate.
This divide is however far from satisfying the French as evidenced by the level of abstention, estimated at 28%, more than in 2017 (25.44%), and a record since the presidential election of 1969 (31%).
Example among many others, Emmeline Picard, a young woman of 28 looking for a job, interviewed in La Possession, a town in the west of the island of Reunion, who chose to ignore it. “I don’t see the point, I’m going to quietly spend my Sunday with my family,” she told AFP.
The contingent of blank and invalid votes, which in 2017 reached an unprecedented level of 4 million, should also be provided.
Sign that it was difficult for Mr. Macron like Mrs. Le Pen to convince the orphans of the first round, including some of the 7 million voters of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who arrived in third position on April 10 with nearly 22% of the vote.
Make way for the “third rounds”
Playing the unity card in advance, Mr. Macron, who has triangulated a lot on the right in this election, has consented to changes in his project to seduce the left: more consultation on the postponement to 65 of the age retirement, and more ecology too, with the promise of planning in this area directly entrusted to the future Prime Minister.
But before getting to the heart of the matter of his second term, Mr. Macron has ahead of him the next few weeks where institutional meetings and political maneuvers will mingle.
The date of his formal inauguration is not yet known but will necessarily take place before May 13. This should then trigger the resignation of Jean Castex – not before May 1, warned Mr. Macron on Thursday – then the appointment of a new Prime Minister and the formation of the government.
Above all, the legislative elections (June 12 and 19) are looming on the horizon, during which the Head of State will try to retain his majority, with deputies from La République en Marche, Modem and other partners.
A battle eagerly awaited by Mr. Mélenchon, who this week asked “the French to (l)’elect Prime Minister” by voting for a “majority of rebels” and “members of the Popular Union”.
Another “third round” might also take place in the street where all those dissatisfied with the presidential election are likely to converge, on the still hot embers of the “yellow vests” crisis.
