Marine Le Pen He moderated his image and opted electorally for purchasing power, instead of his extreme right-wing program, to reach the presidency of France. He didn’t make it, but his ideas attracted a larger number of voters.
In her third attempt to reach the Elysee, the 53-year-old National Group (RN) candidate obtained between 41.8% and 42.4% of the vote, according to initial estimates. almost 10 points more than in 2017 when he fell to the centrist Emmanuel Macron with 33.9% of the vote.
“Regardless” of the result, “I ran the campaign I wanted,” this training lawyer advanced on Friday, who since taking the reins of the then National Front (FN), founded by her father, in 2011, tried to erase her image as an extremist.
Jean-Marie Le Pen already reached the milestone of contesting the ballot in 2002when he lost with almost 18% of the vote once morest the conservative Jacques Chirac, but with an image of a racist, anti-Semitic party and nostalgic for colonial Algeria.
The also French deputy was separating the prominent members of these sectors, including her father, and others joined the ranks of her rival Éric Zemmour, who, according to observers, seeks to revive the traditional FN and helped her appear less radical. .
Marine was the only one of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s three daughters who initially did not want to enter politics. However, her relationship with her father always marked her political career, between rejection and search for recognition.
When he was eight years old, an attack once morest his father destroyed the facade of his house. This trauma of hers made her tougher, as she says, as did the public war of her parents’ divorce and her stage as a single mother.
Close, but not very “believable”
Although he did not achieve his dream of moving to the Elysee, he managed to partially operate the transformation. Half of the French see her as friendly and close to peopleahead of Macron, although less competent than his rival, according to a recent Elabe poll.
“The change of image will not be enough, by itself, to achieve a vote ‘for’ or to prevent a vote ‘ once morest’”, pointed out the expert Gilles Finchelstein, director of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, for whom Le Pen failed to appear “credible”.
His campaign focused on criticizing the rise in energy prices, in a context of fear regarding the loss of purchasing power, and on ensuring that he will not raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 years as Macron proposes, but advance it to 60 in some cases.
To differentiate herself from her perceived “arrogant” rival, the cat breeder, born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy city west of Paris, visited markets, climbed tractors and gave intimate interviews. ..
His attempt to trivialize the extreme right and attract the left-wing electorate, key in the ballot, made his rivals from the far-right party ¡Reconquista!, including his niece Marion Maréchal, even ask him “not to forget the values of the right”.
same program
“Their program has hardly changed from the fundamentals of the FN,” according to Cécile Alduy, a professor at Stanford University. “But she has chosen a different vocabulary to justify it: in the name of secularism and republican values, and even feminism.”
His plans were to stop migration and combat “Islamist ideology”: reserving social aid for the French, ending family reunification or banning the veil in public space. The latter confronted Macron harshly during the campaign.
After your third loss, what will you do now? “In principle I will not present myself once more, but I will continue to do what I have been doing for years: defend the French. I don’t know in what position, but in the one where I will be more decisive, ”he told the Journal du Dimanche (JDD) in March.
Le Pen faces a judicial investigation for an alleged fraud in recruiting assistants when she was an MEP. And her party must repay a millionaire debt contracted in 2014 with Russian creditors, which earned her accusations of “depending” on Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Marine Le Pen, a blonde with a firm character and clear eyes, she presents herself as a “modern woman” and single. This mother of three is twice divorced, separated from her last partner, Louis Aliot, and lives with a childhood friend whom she fostered.
