The current president has performed better than recent polls have indicated, but the radical is heading to the second round by a small margin against the direct opponent.
This Sunday (10/4) after the first round of the French presidential election – which has characterized President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen from the radical right – defeated candidates from different strata of the political spectrum, from communism to the traditional right. The rulers of the country called on their voters to vote for Macron.
The aim is to prevent Le Pen’s party from coming to power. This is what is called the “republican front” in France, a kind of national coalition against the radical right.
According to estimates, Macron, who performed better than expected in the latest polls, where the current president has been declining, took the lead in the first round, taking about 28% of the vote.
Le Pen would get about 23 percent of the vote.
According to estimates, this Sunday’s election was marked by strong abstention from 25% to 26% of voters. Yet both recorded better results than the first round of the 2017 presidential election, where they received 24% and 21.3% of the vote, respectively.
Ten more candidates took part in the election, and these candidates did not spare Macron criticism during their campaign.
The current mayor of Paris, Socialist Anne Hidalgo, was the first to take a stance in favor of the current president and urge her voters to vote “against the far right” after the exit polls were announced and the second round approved.
Ecologist Yannick Jadot made a similar statement. Communist Fabien Roussel said he would “never allow Le Pen to seize power” and called for “the entire French people to use the only ballot available to defeat Le Pen in the second round”.
He announced that he would vote for Valérie Pécresse de Macron, the candidate of the right-wing Republicans (former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy), who were harshly critical of the current president’s administration during the election campaign.
“Despite my deep differences with Macron, whom I beat during my campaign, I will conscientiously vote for him to prevent Marine Le Pen from coming to power,” he said, adding that Le Pen’s eventual victory is “conflicting France.” and in the background on the European and international stage”.
Pécresse also noted Le Pen’s “historical ties” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, which he said would prevent him from defending France’s interests.
Image: Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
The third-place candidate, Jean-Luc Mélénchon of the France Insubmissive – who received about 20 percent of the vote according to polls – did not directly appeal to voters from the radical left to vote for Macron, but he also said: “They should not give Marine Le Pen a single vote. “.
Philippe Poutou of the New Anticapitalist Party also positioned himself as Mélenchon, emphasizing that Le Pen should not be “voted no”.
In his speech after the first-round projections were announced at a gathering of hundreds of supporters, Macron advocated the idea of a “great movement of unity and action” that would bring together “diverse (political)” elements. ) sensitivities”.
Until recently, polls had indicated that Macron would win the election by a good margin against his radical right opponent. But his favoritism began to wane in mid-March, with projections showing Macron a much weaker advantage over Le Pen in the second round, within the margin of error, unheard of for a radical right party. Presidential elections in France.
In 2017, Macron beat Le Pen by 32 points.
A poll released by the Ifop institute on Sunday night, after the results of the first round were announced, reinforces the notion that the dispute was too fierce: Macron would win the second round, scheduled for April 24, with 51% of the vote. The votes are within the margin of error, just two points more than Le Pen.
Even if Macron remained the favourite, he would never have sided with the former Front National (Le Pen’s party, which changed its name to Rassemblement National) – whether Marine Le Pen in 2017 or his father Jean-Marie Le Pen – in 2002 (which is the party). did not have a representative. The record advanced to the second round with one abstention) – benefited from such a positive configuration in the second round”, wrote Le Monde.
Marine Le Pen managed to improve her first-round result despite rivalry from extremist Éric Zemmour, who is known for his controversial statements that won him a court conviction for fomenting racial and religious hatred.
According to estimates, Zemmour, who received 7% of the votes, announced his support for Le Pen in the second round.
The Ifop poll, released on Sunday, shows that 44% of Mélénchon voters would avoid voting in the runoff. One third of those who will vote will prefer Macron, 23 percent will prefer Le Pen.
Le Pen’s economic program has many similarities with that of Mélenchon on the radical left. In this campaign, the National Assembly candidate put aside the issues of immigration, Islam and security, his party’s extremist historical projects, and focused his speeches on economic issues, especially on measures related to purchasing power, which was the biggest topic of discussion. The interests of the French today.
political reorganization
The radical right gave an unprecedented performance in this first round. Adding the 7 percent of the Reconquista extremists Éric Zemmour and Reconquista, and the estimated votes of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who will be just under 2 percent, the radical right won almost a third of the votes.
The two traditional parties of the right (Republicans) and the left (Socialist, PS) that have ruled France in recent years have performed worse than ever before and are in danger of disappearing from the French political scene.
First of all PS: Prospective Anne Hidalgo received only 1.7% of the votes according to the estimates. In 2017 the PS had only 6.3% of the vote.
Mélenchon, who has been calling for “useful voting” in this arena, would likely qualify for the runoff if there weren’t so many left-wing candidates.
Valérie Pécresse, an Os Republican, had less than 5% of the vote, or about 4.7%. In 2017, the right-wing Republican candidate took third place with 20% of the votes in the first round.
“The tremendous failure of the Socialist party and the Republicans is leading them to marginalization. A new political landscape is emerging. There is a new distribution of political power in France,” says political analyst Brice Teinturier, executive director of the Ipsos institute. .
source: Noticias
