A Guide to the French Presidential election

In France, the first round of the presidential election will take place on 10 April. This will allow the selection of the two candidates who will have obtained the best score in universal suffrage and who will face each other on 24 April, during the second round. A few weeks before this major election for the country, here is a quick presentation of the 5 main candidates and their chances of winning. 

Emmanuel Macron (La République En Marche), he benefited from an image of a unifier during the 2017 campaign where he was presented as the young candidate who wanted to go beyond the left/right divide. But in five years, times have changed! From now on, many reproach the outgoing President for being a divisive personality. At the beginning of his mandate, it was the “Yellow Vests” who accused him of being the President of the rich and the city dwellers. It was then on the issue of health measures and the vaccine against Covid-19, that a part of the French reproached him for his authoritarianism, his contempt and a certain form of brutality in his speech and the implementation of his policy. However, Macron has a solid and fairly stable electoral base. He is almost certain to be the first in the first round and his chances of victory in the second round are quite high. His voters appreciate this centrist personality, at a time when the political landscape is becoming more polarised, and with a liberal tendency from both an economic and a societal point of view. 

Marine Le Pen (Rassemblement National), she was already in the second round against Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and hopes to do it again, this time to win. The candidate, often judged as far-right, has continued to transform her programme and her party in a perspective of “de-demonisation”. She is indeed convinced that in order to win she has to soften her image so as not to scare off voters. Thus, although she continues her anti-immigration and sovereignty narrative, she has abandoned some measures of her former programme. Now, she no longer wants to leave the Euro and the European Union and her party is no longer at all conservative. Marine Le Pen is popular with an electorate that tends to be popular, working class and rural. However, Marine Le Pen is now in trouble and her place in the second round of the presidential election is no longer guaranteed since a new candidate close to her ideas has entered the campaign and challenges her.

Eric Zemmour (Reconquête) is the biggest surprise and novelty of this presidential campaign. He was not originally a politician but rather a journalist, intellectual and author who had acquired great popularity over the years with a right-wing audience. The former Figaro journalist, now a politician, made a meteoric rise in the polls at the end of 2021. He is now one of the few candidates who can possibly reach the second round. Zemmour, also considered to be far-right, is without doubt the most divisive candidate. His discourse, which some people love and others hate, is based on the theory of the Great Replacement, that is to say that massive immigration imports a foreign Islamic civilisation that competes with the European Christian civilisation and that will replace it and make it disappear. He aims for zero immigration and campaigns on the theme of order and security. His anti-immigration discourse goes further than Marine Le Pen and, unlike her, he is rather liberal on the economy and conservative. This allows him to draw his electorate from Marine Le Pen but also to seduce a part of the traditional right.

Valérie Pécresse (Les Républicains), the candidate of the traditional right, was chosen after a primary within the party where she won. While the Republican party had difficulty finding its place in the political spectrum because it was stuck between Zemmour and Le Pen on its right and Macron on its left, Valérie Pécresse benefits from a certain momentum since her nomination that could qualify her for the second round, although the contest between Zemmour, Le Pen and Pécresse is currently very close. Valérie Pécresse has a firm programme on security and immigration. She also defends important liberal economic reforms. She describes herself as: “Two thirds Merkel, one third Thatcher”! To distinguish herself from her far-right competitors, who have no experience in high positions of responsibility, she highlights the skills she acquired during her career as a minister and President of the Ile-de-France region. She benefits from a rather bourgeois and conservative vote (although she is not really so conservative).

Jean-Luc Mélenchon (La France Insoumise) is for the moment the only left-wing candidate who seems to be able to create a dynamic and achieve a good score. Indeed, the whole left is at a historically low level in the polls, with all the candidates gathering barely 25% of voting intentions. Moreover, the number of left-wing candidates has multiplied, which contributes to the dispersion of votes and makes the probability of seeing a left-wing candidate qualify for the second round very low. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represents a fairly radical, populist and ecologist left, is for the moment the left-wing candidate who, according to the polls, has the highest voting intentions. However, the right and part of the left are very critical of his vision of secularism. Mélenchon is sometimes accused of complacency towards Islam and Islamism out of electoral interest – in order to benefit from the immigrant vote and to compensate for the working class vote that he has lost and which has tended to go to Marine Le Pen over the last ten years.