With everything from the cohesion of the European Union to the power of NATO hanging in the balance, the unexpectedly strong challenge of far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen to center-right President Emanuel Macron gives many French people a sense of déjà vu mixed with fear. “The social climate in France is tense,” Mathias Bernard, a political historian and president of the University of Clermont Auvergne, told Yahoo News. In 2017, Macron defeated Le Pen in the presidential election, winning 66% of the vote against 34%. Since then, traditional devotion has become more divisive, with the urban / rural species gap exacerbated by energy price spikes. Macron and Le Pen, the winners of Sunday’s first round, who reduced the number of candidates from 12 to two, will now face each other on April 24. French President Emmanuel Macron on the eve of the election at his headquarters on April 10 in Paris. (Thibault Camus / AP) Macron himself stressed the uncertainty of the moment, warning supporters last Sunday, when he received more than 27% of the vote, that “Nothing is decided”. After traveling the country in a glamorous attack during which she promised to be the “voice of the forgotten”, Lepen garnered more than 23% of the vote in the first round – the highest ever far-right candidate – and told fans she was Sunday that she was sure that in the final round the French would “vote for our culture, our culture, our language”. The far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melanson, who received a huge 21 percent of the vote on Sunday, described the upcoming second round between Macron and Le Pen as a “choice between two bad guys”. “We know who we will never vote for,” said Melanson, adding, “Not a single vote should go to Ms. Le Pen.” French far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon comments on the preliminary results of the first round of the presidential elections in Paris on April 10. (Michel Spingler / AP) “The outcome of the second round remains uncertain,” said Bernard, in part because Melanson refused to support Macron. Polls also show that a third of the 47 million people who voted for him may indeed support the far-right candidate, and another third may bypass the final round altogether, making the election tragic. A post-election poll on Sunday night showed Macron in favor of Lepen with 51% versus 49%. Other polls give Macron an eight-point lead, but analysts warn that the situation is fluid and that the final results could change the game not only for France but also for the West. The story goes on “These elections could potentially reshape not only France, but also Europe and reshape the world order,” Andrew Hussey, a political historian with the Paris-based New Statesman magazine, told Yahoo News. two decades. The White House is also worried that Le Pen will drive France out of NATO – or at least on the military side of the alliance. French far-right leader Marine Le Pen poses for a selfie with a supporter at a rally in Perpignan, southern France, on April 7. (Joan Mateu Parra / AP) Philippe Waechter, head of financial research at Ostrum Asset Management in Paris, calls Le Pen’s impressive involvement a “wake-up call” – and not just for the financial markets. He fears that a Le Pen victory would weaken the EU as a single political institution, especially in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “With Le Pen as president,” he told Yahoo News, “we risk working with Putin more than with Europe. “In this case, too, Europe’s ability to be strong and to be a real negotiator with Russia will disappear.” What makes this election more volatile and unpredictable is that French society is in a state of heightened dissatisfaction with the rapid rise in the cost of living, which voters in a recent poll identified as their number one concern. Gasoline prices have skyrocketed to more than $ 8 a gallon in recent weeks, electricity prices have more than tripled this winter and inflation has topped 7%. President Emmanuel Macron speaks as Brigitte Klinkert, a junior minister for economic integration, stands next to a pre-election visit to Chatenois, near Strasbourg, in Alsace-Lorraine, France, on 12 April. (Johanna Geron / Reuters) “The economy is doing quite well in terms of jobs and purchasing power,” Waechter said. However, “people have the perception that inflation is high and that the government is doing nothing for the poor.” In addition, he said, Macron does not appear to be shaking the notion that he is “president of the rich”, a name he has earned in some quarters after cutting taxes on the rich and reducing subsidies to low-income citizens. first weeks in power. The small difference between the candidates who will participate in the second round shows how Lepen has adapted. In fact, he beat Macron at all demographic ages in the first round, except voters aged 60 and over. Despite a 10 percent drop in unemployment to 7.5 percent and a boom in the economy, Macron has outraged those who say he has ignored the needs of non-urban dwellers. Others are outraged that he has not achieved his goals on climate change and that a failed diplomacy effort has begun with Putin. The invasion of Ukraine ranks just 14th among the top concerns of French voters. In the weeks leading up to the first round of voting, Macron barely campaigned. He did only one rally in Paris. Macron has likened himself to Zeus, the Roman counterpart of the Greek god Zeus, and as Romain Meltz, a social scientist and political researcher in Lyon, commented bluntly, “he forgot to come down from Olympus.” Emanuel Macron speaks to women protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on his first campaign trip on March 28 to Dijon, France. (Aurelien Meunier / Getty Images) Le Pen, meanwhile, has been campaigning across France, rallying in rural towns, promising to drastically reduce energy taxes and lower taxes for workers under the age of 30 and reduce the retirement age from 62 to 60. Instead, Macron said he hoped to raise the national retirement age to 65. The 2017 French presidential election also confronted Macron, a former banker and something of a political question mark at the time, with Le Pen, a descendant of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s hard-line National Immigration Front. The far-right nationalist party was so controversial that in 1976, when Marin Le Pen was eight years old, a bomb exploded in her family home in Paris, in an apparent assassination attempt on her father. Initially, following in his footsteps, he ousted him from his party in 2015 and reduced some of his positions, after choosing to reject the Holocaust again as a “detail of history”. Four years ago, she changed her party name to National Rally, moving it even further away from her father. In the 2017 elections, however, the contradictions were clearer. Le Pen, who flew to Moscow weeks ago to meet with Putin and campaigned that year on a $ 10 million loan from a Russian bank, then promised warmer ties with Russia, backed the euro. France’s removal from the European Union and a moratorium on any legal immigration to France. Macron has vowed to forge closer ties with the EU and tackle the country’s high unemployment rate. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, poses with Marin Lepen at the Kremlin in Moscow in March 2017. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) Since the last election, even Le Pen’s critics have noted that she has polished her image and further softened her rhetoric. Now he says he wants France to stay in the euro, opposes a split in the EU and has downgraded its relationship with Putin. “Lepen was absolutely charming and charismatic,” Hasey said in a recent interview. However, he added, he still hopes to drastically boost immigration – this time putting the issue to a vote – and promises to ban the public use of the veil by Muslims. Analysts fear that beneath all this is the same old Lepen, just wiser. Analysts also see that this year’s tough elections underscore the growing tension between the people of France, who are served by an impressive public transport system, and those in poorly connected cities and villages that are dependent on cars – and therefore are more vulnerable to rising gasoline prices. Marine Le Pen has a few words for a cow at the 58th International Exhibition of Agriculture at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Center in Paris on March 2. (Johanna Geron / Reuters) “The people affected by the rising cost of living are not just the poor, who now make up 15% of the general population,” said Bernard. “They are also people who live on the outskirts of urban settlements and suffer from debts and travel expenses.” The same dynamics were evident during the Yellow Vest demonstrations in 2018, when violent demonstrations for increases in diesel fuel prices brought the country to a standstill. Although the left-wing candidates who lost in the first round on Sunday have encouraged supporters to block Le Pen, Bernard is not sure voters will listen. “Emanuel Macron is no longer the candidate for change,” he said, “but he is responsible for a record that is being complained about by many left-wing voters. Lepen, meanwhile, has lowered identity and nationalist issues into the background and is instead developing social proposals: she no longer wants to run as a far-right candidate. it prefers to be the candidate purchasing power, something that can attract left-wing voters. “
