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This Sunday occurred the first part of our once-every-5-years grand ruckus and maybe you would like to know more from an objective and neutral source, in which case I'd advise looking somewhere else!
I'll try to keep it short here, and if time allows it after the second round I can try to write more about what the hell is going on if there is some interest.
Ordered, with expressed votes:
Abstention is 25.14% of registered voters which is a lot. Blank/invalid votes are roughly 2% of the voters.
Here is a short portrayal of each candidate, with a list of themes that is characteristic of their manifestos — their actual one, not the one told in meetings — with how they are usually perceived by mainstream media along with my more accurate political contour.
Neoliberalism and that's pretty much it.
Supposed to be the guy that transcends left and right to rally everyone, and per his own words, aim that nobody has a reason left to vote for “the extremes”. Five years later the far-right has never been so strong, and the left/right transcendence turned out to be taking the place of the old right-wing party.
This fucker is still here despite the last five years of social regression and arrogance. Depressing.
He comes from the financial world. His political action is of pure communication, and he is not even good at it, but apparently good enough. His manifesto can be entirely disregarded as only neo-liberalism and generally conservative social policies will be brought to the table by his government and MPs. His entire political movement is dedicated to himself rather than his projects, as it used to be in older political parties (LREM used to be EM, “En Marche !”, because the first letters matched his own name). We call his MPs “playmobils” because of how damn shallow and brainless they are: if Macron said something, rally behind it, no questions asked.
President of climatic inaction, president of the rich. Does not want to hear that there are more important things in life than work. Bathing companies in public money while convincing you that your 12 y.o children will have to start working. If reelected, he will increase the retirement age to 65 years. Social protests will be met with unchecked police brutality. He handled poorly the pandemic with contradictory and late measures, harsh repression, fueling conspiracy theorists along the way.
Nationalism, liberalism, not really anti-system anymore, trying for decades to appear socially acceptable.
Right or far-right depending on who's talking. This is historical far-right and probably still is, if the right still makes any sense to anyone.
With Zemmour in this campaign, she managed to avoid having to put her xenophobic and nationalist agenda too much on the table and could focus on presenting herself as a regular democratic party, reaching new milestones of the long term operation of « dédiabolisation » of her party, pretending to have some progressive social views, backing off with many controversial topics such as leaving UE or nationality reforms. Even though none of this political progress holds under analysis — the RN agenda is still the same old racist shit — this is a success: she sits above 23% and the traditional right-wing party is below 5%.
Socialism, ecology, anti-nuclear, jacobinism, diplomatic nonalignment.
Perceived as left or far-left but is mostly the new left-wing main political force, at least in presidential dynamics.
Usually presented as far-left, the manifesto of LFI is actually a bunch of decent, left-wing ideas, far from being revolutionary but at least attempting to answer both social and ecological demands with rather coherent propositions. MĂ©lenchon is a temperamental loudmouth but he knows how to use this to his advantage. As much as we may dislike the personification of politics, one has to admit that there is some appeal in France for strong leaders, and MĂ©lenchon managed to solely take this role for pretty much the whole left. With some relative success: after a turbulent but strong campaign among a very fragmented left, he ends up in the third place, not that far behind Le Pen but with a crushing advantage over every alternative on the left.
Nationalism, liberalism, anti-islam, """"anti-system"""", sexism, collaboration apology, barely veiled fascism.
Presented as far-right but at this point it almost feels like an euphemism. His supporters have lots of parallels with the American alt-right in their discourse and methods.
Anti-Islam is not a mere tag in a list of propositions, it is basically the core of this demon's rhetoric. Every problem the country faces is due, one way or another, to Muslims. Masculinism is also a main topic of his books, along with the “fall of western civilisation”. Targeted by multiple investigations of sexual assault. Consistently presenting himself as anti-system despite being the candidate the most discussed on television and having vast opinion columns in various TV channels and newspapers: his omnipresence is in part due to being the favorite of Bolloré, a far-right media magnate who managed to have him on air pretty much all the time.
A first overview of the results shows that despite his attempts to present himself as the representative of the « France profonde » (deeply rural areas), the right-wing voices of rural areas actually went to Le Pen, and he made his highest scores in the richest cities of France (Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris 16th district, the Monts d'Or cities north of Lyon, etc). Thus it is more accurate to consider him the candidate of the racist old and youth of chic neighborhoods. EDIT: to be clear, he still made above average results in the poorest areas of France. Generally, the far-right gets their best scores in the lowest classes.
Conservative, liberalism.
Historical right, now politically diluted with far-right due to constantly running after Zemmour's supporters.
PĂ©cresse is the candidate for LR, which was previously UMP (Sarkozy) and even before RPR (Chirac). So yeah, you are not mistaken, this party is now below the 5%, which means their campaign costs won't even be reimbursed as per the law. The party got crushed between Macron capturing the softer, liberal part of the party, and the far-right which fled to either Le Pen or Zemmour despite the party historically refusing to associate in any manner with the RN. As Macron showed his true conservative face, emptying their ranks, their strategy has been mostly trying to regain voices on the far-right end of the spectrum, with anti-Islam and xenophobic declarations. This strategy failed for many reasons, one being that PĂ©cresse is hilariously bad at communication to the point that any public appearance became some sad meme.
Ecology, social democracy.
Perceived as left, sometimes called “green khmers” by the right (yeah), but actually is the center-left for anything outside of ecology.
Jadot was the candidate of political ecology. Among the plethora of issues of their campaign we can try to outline some… First, they are pretty bad at political ecology: even if their plan for countering global warming is good, the LFI ecology program appeared rather similar and even more well-thought-out, but they do not have much more to offer politically whereas the LFI manifesto is considered solid on many more domains, removing most of the possible value in a vote for EELV. Jadot himself is quite unlikeable and boring as a candidate, this is sad in what it says about the level of our debates but that's just the way it is. The party killed early every chance to appeal to the rest of the left with quite liberal positions and removing Sandrine Rousseau from the campaign, their only other known face, which held more radical views especially on feminism — without her, Jadot truly shined as the soft moron that he is.
Fun to note: despite presenting political ecology (by that, they mean their party) as the rising star of the left, they scored as low as 20 years ago when ecology was not yet considered a central topic during elections.
Conservative, farmer, being the weird guy of the election.
Perceived as some joke, actually on the right.
Lassalle is the goofy candidate token, unsure how he got the patronage for his candidacy, like we had Cheminade before. Well, he used to be that candidate, because he's now sitting at 3.16% which is really high, and above other candidates initially perceived as much more serious. Lassalle arrived first in a lot of villages from the south-west he comes from and works (worked?) as a farmer, and he generally seemed to have got a lot of support in other rural areas. Despite sounding fun and warm, he is socially conservative.
Socialism, pro-nuclear, populism.
Well... it's the economical left, but it would be a bad joke to still call them the far-left or communist for that matter.
The French Communist Party presented their own candidate instead of rallying LFI and MĂ©lenchon as was the case in 2017. They chose to orientate their campaign to populism, with crass humor and vague propositions toward purchasing power, with a showing lack of vision and an unknown candidate falsely presenting himself as coming from the working class. As every left-wing candidacy, they got completely disregard by their usual followers for MĂ©lenchon. There is nothing to save in the PCF but they somehow managed to make everyone on the left cringe even more than usual of their shenanigans.
Conservative, being an idiot.
Perceived as far-right, is actually far-right.
Still unsure who the fuck identifies with this guy. Manifesto is mostly copy and paste from Le Pen, presenting itself as a more upright candidate. No one seems to take him seriously, which can be partly explained by how stupid he sounds whenever he opens his mouth.
Social democracy and being the final nail in the coffin of social democracy.
Historical left, the socialist name already was quite a stretch back then, and it has stopped being anything but a vessel for liberal agenda since the 80s. Hollande's mandate achieved its shift to the political center or center-right through his prime minister Manuel Valls (now a Macron supporter).
Sooooo yeah, this is where the Socialist Party ends up this year, the party of François Mitterand and François Hollande is below 2%. There is much to say about it but it requires a dedicated note. Macron sucked the lifeblood out of the most liberal wing of the party, which turned out to be an enormous part of the representatives, leaving the remaining supporters a hollow husk without public figures nor the political vision needed for our times. For some reason this did not ring all the alarm bells it should have and they thought they had the slightest chance in the election, looking back to their past as the central force on the left. In a strategic strike of genius, they picked Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, the very embodiment of lukewarm politics in a campaign more heated than ever, where from the start they announced they did not intend to win but to maybe reach the 5% for reimbursement, save their faces and at least ensure the survival of the party. Obviously any of that failed miserably and everyone laughed at how pathetic this whole operation was.
If we are lucky, they will not recover from such a disgrace and we will finally put to rest this wretched remnant of a left-wing party, and the media will be forced to discuss about left-wing politics through actually left-wing parties.
Communism (progressive)
Perceived as anti-capitalist / Marxist / you name it far-left. Actually is all that, with a lot of young people and a general broad acceptation of the questions the new generations bring on queerness, anti-racism, etc.
For most people he was the guy who openly shamed other candidates for their corruption during prime-time TV debates, but yesterday Poutou and the NPA simply did not survive the wave of rallying behind MĂ©lenchon. Maybe the absence of an actual debate where he could shine as candidate of the people caused his dismissal from the votes.
Politically speaking they are OK and many people on the left actually agree with their manifesto, but it is perceived that they will never win a presidential election and they actually joke about it themselves. Oh well.
Communism (traditional)
Perceived as the far-left that never does more than 1%, which matches with the reality. Supporters are generally from older generations than NPA supporters, and both don't seem to talk that much.
Not much to say, they did their usual stuff and ended last. Unsure what the hell is going on with them.
Like in 2017, we will have Macron vs Le Pen, right vs far-right. Sad but expected. There is a lot to be said about the reconfiguration of the political spectrum; whereas editorialists tend to say that political boundaries are evolving in new ways and lines are too blurred to extract definitive commentary, we actually see clearer in a few ways.
The left is in shambles but we already knew that. 6 candidates, 5 below 5%, 0 for the second round. The debacle around the multiple half-hearted attempts to unify the left pushed the majority of the people on the left to rally behind the program of LFI, ultimately unifying, even though they have issues with MĂ©lenchon as a person and are vocal about it.
In my circles, I perceived this trend as gaining traction a few weeks ago, but gaining unprecedented dynamics only a week before the election. During these last days, it felt as if everybody agreed that MĂ©lenchon was the only vote that made sense for the left. Because every other left-wing candidate is under 5% and won't be reimbursed of their campaign cost, it feels like a punishment for all the other maintained candidacies that could have been withdrawn if some egos had been tamed a few months ago. If any of them comes to disappear, I will reprendre deux fois des moules, as we say (but veggie moules).
Both PS and LR, resp. the left and right historical parties, are below 5%. This is massive and an indicator of pivotal times in terms of political reorganisation. Again, this means they won't be reimbursed for their campaign costs, and they already started asking for donations instead. We are talking about what was still 10 years ago the two giants in the arena.
Does this mean they are definitely dead? It's too early to tell, but they both surely never fell that low.
Zemmour made a lower score than expected. He wanted to steal the far-right from Le Pen but failed miserably despite fraudulently having the largest audience. In a remarkable turn of events, Le Pen has been able to use the Zemmour candidacy to her advantage, leaving him getting destroyed by any non-fascistoid media as he continuously threw fuel into the islamophobia train, while she did a successful campaign closer to the people, being filmed with her cats, etc. Amusingly, a lot of important RN members left her party to join Zemmour, thinking he was the rising fascist star, to end up with this underwhelming score. Surely she will welcome them back with open arms!
There are interesting facts to take from the far-right split between Le Pen and Zemmour. Why do the rural areas which used to vote for Le Pen are still voting for Le Pen, and why is Zemmour usually below MĂ©lenchon in most departments? I think it tells us something about Le Pen voters as an opposition to Macron, economically motivated xenophobia and despair, unlike the ideologically putrid Zemmour, reeking memories of WW2, but we will need more time and research to explore this way.
Overall, it seems that more people used tactical votes than before — thank you michel on IRC and ~phoebos for the help with the translation! — i.e. they voted not by conviction for the candidate or the manifesto matching the most with their values, but because it made more sense strategically. On the left especially, a lot of far-left votes have effectively been displaced toward votes for LFI to bring a left candidate for round 2 but also to punish the ego wars of the left. I think both failed: the left is wiped from the election and no one on the left seem ready to acknowledge how collective our failure is.
It's the 3rd time in the 5th republic that we get a right vs far-right for the second round. In 2002 it led to a massive rally behind Chirac who won with more than 80%. In 2017 Macron failed to set the same “republican front” going (i.e. blocking the far-right from power), still ending up with more than 65%. This year it is impossible to know in advance who will win, and for the first time Le Pen and the far-right might access power. More and more, some right-wing people openly call to vote for Le Pen in two weeks, and less and less people on the left want to give a voice to Macron after this depressing quinquennat.
I do not like to vote but got convinced to vote for Mélenchon this time. I did not think he would reach the second place, but I know to not trust my forecasts too much so I went anyway. I even got involved in the counting process afterwards (wow what an anarchist lmao!) and in my polling place, for roughly 1000 votes, we got 614 votes for Mélenchon (IIRC), Macron being far far behind and others being negligible. Very fun to hear several voices saying "mélenchon" for almost 2 hours while laughing about the local plebiscite for the old grumpy socialist. If the national results are a shameful display, at least the people walking the same streets as me have clear minds.
I hope this has been a good read and I will see you in two weeks for round 2, with a probably much shorter and depressing note!
Some content to follow up:
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