Macron ushers in new era of French politics with presidential election win
Sunday’s election was the first time since 1958 that both the mainstream center-left and center-right parties failed to advance a candidate to the general election run-off
By Nico Brancolini
Political neophyte Emmanuel Macron ushered in a new era of French politics on Sunday, defeating the extreme nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen in an election that was followed closely across the European continent and beyond.
Pollsters had largely predicted that voters would choose Macron to be their next president. But following elections marked by surprises on both sides of the Atlantic, nothing was certain for the 39-year-old banker, who served as Finance Minister in Socialist President Francois Hollande’s government.
Macron, who has never held elected office, won not under the Socialist Party banner but with his own En Marche! Movement, which he distinguishes from a political party. He ran as an unabashed supporter of the European Union, and his victory came as a relief to E.U. leaders.
His opponent, Le Pen, had promised to hold a referendum to leave the E.U., a move that if successful would effectively mean the Union’s demise. But E.U. leaders’ fears were allayed as Macron bested Le Pen, posting results that were better than exepcted despite his frontrunner status and capturing more than 65% of the national vote.
The election marked the first time in more than 50 years that no candidate from either the mainstream center-left or center-right party advanced to the final run-off. Macron’s victory may have been decisive, but it raises just as many questions as it answers about France’s political future.
Background and unprecedented nature of the race
France’s current republican government, called the Fifth Republic, was implemented by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 with the current French Constitution. In every presidential election since then, at least one candidate had hailed from the mainstream center-left or center-right party until Sunday’s run-off.
French presidential elections have two rounds of voting. If no candidate gets more than 50% in the first round, the top two finishes proceed to the second round. After five controversial years of the Socialist Hollande presidency, the incumbent president was so unpopular he chose not to run for reelection.
Eleven candidates ran in the first round, with four ultimately being competitive. The divided Socialists nominated Benoît Hamon, but his campaigned failed to ever gain momentum and he finished in a distant third. The opposition center-right Les Républicans nominated François Fillon, who began the race as the presumptive front-runner until he was felled by financial scandals involving his wife and children.
Both mainstream parties floundered early in the campaign creating an opportunity for three insurgent campaigns to gain steam in the run-up to April 23 first round.
Most prominent internationally was the campaign of the extreme right-wing populist Marine Le Pen of the National Front. The National Front (“FN”) has been political force in France for some 40-odd years, with Marine’s firebrand father Jean-Marie leading the party for most of its history. Historically a home for former Vichy supporters, right-wing militias, and veterans of the Algerian War, Marine attempted to soften the party’s image over the last few years. She sought to reorient it as an Eurosceptic, anti-immigrant, anti-austerity statist party, and famously expelling her father for his anti-Semitism and comments denying the Holocaust.
From the centrist wing of the Socialist party emerged Macron and his En Marche! movement. Not a formal party, En Marche! was pitched as drawing from the left and the right and supporting any candidates who promised to advance realistic solutions to France’s stagnant economy. Macron ran on a strong pro-European Union platform but also emphasized economic policies that borrowed from “both the left and right.”
Thus he prescribed a combination of labor-market deregulations with promises to invest in green energy and ending French dependence on fossil fuels. The former economy minister positioned himself and his movement as technocratic and non-ideological, and even pointed to economic revitalization as the best way to prevent the radicalization of French Muslims.
Left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, with a savvy social media campaign and strong debate performances, also mounted a surprisingly competitive campaign. His quixotic campaign program included Euroscepticism but also emphasized support for religious minorities and migrants and a promise to not just defend the welfare state, but expand it.
Ultimtately Macron and Le Pen received the highest vote shares in the first round — 24% and 21% respectively — and advanced to Sunday’s final round.
Following the first round, however, all the leaders of France’s mainstream parties quickly endorsed Macron as part of the “Republican Front” alliance. The concept of the Front was first popularized in 2002, when Le Pen-père scored an upset victory to make it to the second round against then-Pres. Jacques Chirac. The philosophy behind the strategy holds that all mainstream political parties, regardless of ideology, should unite against the Far Right, which they view as anti-democratic. Socialist Candidate Hamon, who was eliminated in the first round, explained this year, “There’s a clear distinction to be made between a political adversary and an enemy of the republic.”
For now the Republican Front seems to have held. Going into Sunday’s vote Le Pen had been polling around 40% — not enough to win but a number viewed as within striking distance. Ultimately Le Pen seems to have underperformed, receiving less than 34% of the vote at the time of this writing. Thus with his commanding win of over 66%, Macron is set to be the youngest president of the French Republic.
Russia and WikiLeaks strike again
Although Macron entered the voting weekend as the heavy favorite, one last bit of drama marked the campaign for the Élysée Palace: a massive hack attack against the centrist candidate.
On Friday evening, En Marche! announced that it had “been the victim of a massive coordinate hack.” Cyber-security experts contacted by the Washington Post noted that the attack followed a similar pattern of as the hack of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 United States Presidential election. As in that case, the En Marche! hack sparked fears of Russian interference in the French election.
Le Pen and Russian President Vladimir Putin share a close connection, with each publically embracing the other. Further more, Le Pen’s National Front had sought substantial loans from Russian banks with close ties to the Kremlin.
Further complicating the matter, France’s election commission requires a mandatory 24-hour media blackout before voting begins. This means that national media was prohibited from reporting on the content of the leaks, and Macron and En Marche! officials were prevented from denying or commenting on the contents of the leak.
American right-wing groups promoted the leaks, as did Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, which played similar roles in leaks targeted at the Democratic National Convention and Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But the leaks appeared to have a minimal impact on the election results, perhaps because nothing scandalous immediately appeared and because of the media blackout.
The hack does, however, seem to show that agents of the Russian government may have discovered a powerful new tool to undermine democracy. The leaked materials reportedly include both hacked information from En Marche! but also fake documents to further confuse fact and fiction. Thus anti-democratic forces appear to be relying on an electoral technique based on the old adage “a lie travels halfway around the world before the truth can even put its boots on.”
In addition to the media blackout, multiple leading French news outlets refused to report on the contents of what they labeled cybercrimes. Observers across the continent may take note as fears that Putin may attempt similar interference in upcoming elections — most importantly the Germany Federal Elections — and further his efforts to further weaponize the free press of western democracies.
Whatever happened to Baby Le Pen
One remaining question is what becomes of the National Front. This election was the culmination of Marine Le Pen’s efforts to “de-demonize” the National Front and make it a more mainstream political party. To achieve this she removed many of the party’s most prominent neo-Nazi supporters — most notably her father — and embraced economic populism. The economic message made the party viable in traditional left-wing strongholds in Northern France but also rankled some of the party’s more historic supporters.
A large part of the party’s base believes in more conservative social values. Le Pen herself has spoken in favor of abortion rights and has sought support from gays and lesbians. However, her 27-year-old niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, one of the party’s two Members of Parliament, leads a conservative religious wing of the party based out of Southern France. Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, publically stated that his daughter was unfit to be president, and that Maréchal-Le Pen would have been a stronger candidate. With Le Pen-fille’s disappointing finish in the election, it remains to be seen what will happen to the party.
In her remarks following her defeat, Le Pen acknowledged the party must change — perhaps signaling a split in the party or the creation of an entirely new one.
“Marine Le Pen said it clearly: ‘the National Front will change’…It’s going to change into a new political force which, necessarily, will not have the same name,” National Front Vice-President Florian Philippot said after the election Sunday.
It is not just Le Pen and the National Front that must consider their next move. Macron must now gear up for legislative elections in June if he is to successfully implement his ambitious agenda. France has a hybrid Presidential-Parliamentary system which means the President selects the Prime Minister to form a government, but only from the dominant party or coalition in Parliament.
Only a year old, the En Marche! movement currently has no elected office holders in France. In the June elections, Macron has promised to put up candidates in all 577 legislative districts. Macron further has promised equal gender representation among En Marche! candidates and has emphasized a need to include career politicians and private sector candidates.
Polls indicate that Macron may be able to achieve a majority or the largest share in the Legislature. One major poll found En Marche! candidates likely to get between 249 and 286, with opposition Les Républicans looking to achieve 200 or so seats, National Front increasing its seat total from 2 to between 15 and 25, and the current ruling Socialists being gutted from the current 273 to only 28–43 seats.
Macron has stated that candidates from En Marche! may be cross-listed with their former or current parties. Macron is also rumored to be considering a member of Les Républican, Le Havre mayor Edouard Philippe, to be his selection for Prime Minister. This move is widely regarded as a savvy way of appealing to moderate factions of both Républicans and Socialists, perhaps forming something of a “Grand Coalition” as exists between the major center-right and center-left parties in Germany.
Cynically, it may be that Macron is attempting to cleave both major political parties in two, strengthening his own political position and weakening opposition from across the political spectrum.
Should Macron fail to achieve a ruling coalition, or see his agenda stalled or fail, there is fear that Sunday’s election results may not have been a defeat of populist rule, but merely a reprieve. Should the centrist Macron stumble, a recalibrated Marine Le Pen — with a potential new party and platform — might just make it to the Élysée Palace during the next presidential election in 2022.
