The French president has sold his party as a centrist force against extremism, but he now faces an uncertain election, and his strategy of pitting his presidential coalition against two extremes may no longer work with voters.
When Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France for the second time in 2022, he acknowledged that some only voted for him in the second round to counter far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
Many French people voted “not to support my (political) ideas, but to block those of the extreme right“Macron said, adding that the vote was indebted to them.
Two years later, the so-called “republican front” to prevent the extreme right from coming to power has lost strength, since the National Rally (RN) came first in the European elections and is expected to lead the elections. early legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
Macron’s movement, for its part, has seen its support drop since it lost its majority in the Lower House of Parliament, the National Assembly, in 2022, to a distant second place after the extreme rightin the European elections of last month.
The president has described his coalition as an alternative to the two extremes, But it is also trailing the far-right RN and a left-wing coalition called the New Popular Front (NFP) in polls, and some say the results could lead to a hung parliament.
So how have you rebuilt the political landscape in your country and contributed to the rise of the far right this political arsonist who burst onto the scene in 2017?
Custom power
Macron has sold himself as neither left nor right, launching a centrist movement that drew from the country’s two traditional moderate parties. However, experts say he has not been able to create a movement to fill the void he left.
“To make his personal (political) business profitable, had to convince people of the obsolete nature of the left-right divide undermining all the familiar reference points of the political space,” Cadiou said.
Now, Macron has failed to “build anything”, and There is only one political space left “under construction”according to Cadiou, since it fails to unite the two disparate sides.
The French president went from lean mainly on left-wing voters in 2017 to do more on the right in the 2022 elections. The Socialist Party (PS) experienced a huge drop in support in both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, while the right-wing Républicains (LR) plummeted in the 2022 elections.
“He bet on his experience, that his time in high public office and the private sector would serve to guarantee his legitimacy to overcome the left-right division,” explains Cadiou.
Since he was first elected, his approval rating has fallen from over 50% to less than 30%and some voters who consider themselves far-right say they are discouraged by the President.
Christian, a 67-year-old voter in the countryside near Lyon, who spoke to ‘Euronews’ in a far-right public meetinghad previously voted for Macron, but said the French president has a “way of making people angry.”
“We cannot say that nothing has been done, because it is true that we quickly forget what has been done and we focus above all on what remains to be done, but their method does not work. He has a way of presenting the topic that makes him angry.“said the former car factory worker.
Foreseeable fall
The drop in Macron’s approval rating was largely predictable in France. “The French people always get fed up with their leaders“said Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, and an expert on French politics.
“I think there is a general feeling of lassitude of the French population towards their leader,” he added.
But part of the problem for the French president is his lack of “local anchor” after centralizing power in Paris.
In the Senate, the traditional parties remain the right-wing LR and the left-wing PS, and Macron’s party also failed to secure any of the 13 regions of metropolitan France in the 2021 regional elections.
ADVERTISING“I don’t think your party has spent enough time building local anchorage because yes, they lost the European elections, but they lost all the local elections in the last seven years,” Varma said.
Cadiou added that Macron has worked to further centralize power under the Fifth Republicwhich already gives the president an unprecedented amount of power.
This was especially amplified during crises such as the Yellow Vest protests and the COVID-19 pandemicaccording to experts.
between two extremes
Macron has always sold his movement as one that is against the far right, taking on Marine Le Penfrom RN, twice in the presidential elections and trusting that voters will support him to prevent the extreme right from coming to power.
The attempts to now present the presidential coalition between “two extremes” are “quite dangerous”according to Varma, who explains that it is not a fair portrait of the left-wing coalition of the PNV.
ADVERTISINGHe says there is less public mobilization against the far-right National Group, which has known how to grow locally until it became the leading political force in France.
Varma says that next week it may be difficult for Macron to create a bloc against the extreme right in the second round of the legislative electionsafter having confronted this party with the left-wing coalition.
Mathias Bernard, president of the University of Clermont Auvergne, in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand, told ‘Euronews’ that Macron’s strategy of being the “wall against extremism” It may now be a weakness.
In 2017 and 2022, it was Macron as a bloc against an extreme right, but now this central movement is in third place.
“This center is caught between these two blocs that are each capable of (pitching votes) against the other,” he added, with Macron’s strategy of stopping extremism now a weakness.
ADVERTISING“As Macron was supposed to be the moderate and reasonable and intellectualit was really difficult, I think, for the moderate right and the moderate left to find a space in this landscape that Macron had totally blown up,” Varma said.
But now, in view of the results of the European elections, there may be “a push for the moderate left to rebuild little by little and become a little more prominent again on the French political scene,” he said.
But as France is heading towards what could be a blank parliament, the country might have to find a “more European way of doing politics” and see if it can adapt to reach compromises in a context in which the extreme right has the upper hand, he added.
