A clash of worldviews: What’s shaping the Macron-Le Pen presidential stand-off?
When French voters head to the polls on Sunday to choose their next president, will the result mirror that of the 2017 election? Five years ago, the same Macron-Le Pen matchup resulted in a blowout, with Macron winning with 66% of the vote against Le Pen’s 34%. The perennial phenomenon of the French “Republican Front” struck again. In other words, all other first-round voters cast their ballots against Le Pen rather than for Macron. Older French voters in particular have an inherent fear of the “far right,” and overwhelmingly vote reflexively against it. But why is this the case?
It all started when the predecessor of Le Pen’s National Rally party – the National Front, led by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen – benefited from former Socialist French President François Mitterrand’s openness to smaller parties’ electoral participation in the 1985 legislative elections, and ended up winning 35 seats in the National Assembly. Mitterrand has long been accused of opening the doors to the corridors of power to the far right as a clever ploy to permanently divide the establishment right, thereby ensuring many years of dominance by his conventional left Socialist Party.
But much has changed since then. The conventional right and left have both fully imploded. After failing to obtain the minimum 5% of votes necessary for state reimbursement of campaign expenses in the first round of this year’s election, conventional right Republican Party candidate Valérie Pécresse is currently appealing for donations from the French public to avoid having to cover €7 million worth of expenses (including €5 million from her own pocket). On the traditional left, the Socialist Party led by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo only mustered 1.7% support.