The French presidential election: to where is Marianne drifting?

Results of the first round of the election in France. Le Monde calls the victory that Emmanuel Macron won in the first round victory "with a bitter taste". A month ago, polls showed a more serious gap between the incumbent president and his main rival Marine Le Pen.

At the beginning of March, 30.5% of voters were ready to vote for Macron, while 14.5% of French people were going to vote for Le Pen (Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll).

But there are other features of the situation:

1. 12 candidates applied for the highest post, six of whom participated in the presidential race for the first time.

2. In comparison with the first round of the 2017 presidential election, and especially in comparison with the 2012 election, there is a significant decrease in the activity of "voters" in 2022.

According to BFMTV, approximately 27% of voters did not participate in the French presidential election.

"This is the first election with so many people who until recently did not know who they would vote for, or changed their minds: about every second French person," the political scientist Pascal Perrineau noted in a comment to AFP.

3. The results of the first round of the election revealed a new political configuration of France. The success of Marine Le Pen’s party, which is considered right-wing one but has adopted the slogans of the left parties (almost 22%) and of Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon’s one, testifies to the left-wing sentiments gaining strength in France.

There is another important indicator: Melenchon, who did not progress to the second round of the election, showed the best result in the metropolitan region. 30.24% of voters voted for him, while the current president of the country, Emmanuel Macron, received 30.19%. Despite the fact that only 13% of voters voted for Marine Le Pen here. It can be stated that there is a great demand in the capital for new faces in French politics.

The political failure of the far-right candidate Eric Zemmour (7.07%), who came in fourth place, and the centre-right party of Valerie Pécresse (4.7%) who obtained fifth place, means a departure of the Gaullist project, once the most influential political force in the country, from the political scene and shifting the main focus of the interests of the French towards solving not geopolitical, but acute internal socio-economic problems.

Now the preliminary conclusions.

1. Most likely, Macron will win in the second round. On average, according to opinion polls, 54% of voters are ready to vote for the president, 46% for Le Pen. If this happens, Macron will do something that no French president has been able to do since Jacques Chirac, he will be re-elected for a second term.

In general, the current presidential election repeats the scenario of 2017, when Macron and Le Pen went to the second round of voting. But this time the gap between the rivals is not as big as before.

After the victory, Macron will have to reckon with the request of French citizens for greater social justice.

2. More than half of the French - supporters of Le Pen, Melenchon, and Zemmour - now prefer parties that are opposed to NATO, the United States and the European Union.

There was probably a sigh of relief in Brussels and other European capitals after the first round of voting. The option of Le Pen as President with the strengthening of anti-European slogans and the arrival of "Putin's friend" at the Elysee Palace would be a nightmare for them. And the exuberant enthusiasm for Macron's leadership in the first round ultimately showed the depth of uncertainty among his supporters.

Washington and Brussels are already afraid of the emergence of an "anti-NATO and more pro-Russian France”. But, even if Macron wins the second round, the situation shows how divided French society is, and with it the entire West.