France’s regional elections: Macron and Le Pen’s parties fail

Paris | The French still avoided the polls on Sunday in the second round of regional elections, which were marked by the failure of the far-right of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron’s party, allowing the left and right to demand a new dynamism at ten. Presidential month.

Nearly two-thirds (66.3% according to a 1 p.m. estimate) of about 48 million voters did not speak, just down from the record-breaking last week in elections since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

Polling stations closed at 2 p.m. EST.

“I’m coming to vote, but it’s no use,” was summed up in Strasbourg by Hugh Hubert, 66, a retiree from the transport sector, with a soccer jersey on his shoulders, and none of the three kids had to move. “Vote for the presidential election, OK, but as for the boycott, we don’t know. What are the candidates going to do? No idea.”

Besides this teaching about French democracy, this second round confirmed the failure of the parties of Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron and the beginning of the traditional parties established in the domestic political scene, allowing the barons of the right and left to confirm this. The suspension of the 2022 presidential election has been revived.

All outgoing regional presidents were also re-elected, seven for the seemingly winning right, and five for the left in France.

The far right (Rally National, RN) of Marine Le Pen does not win the only region he has had a chance, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, which is still on the right (Les Républicains, LR), supported by the left, in the tradition of the “Republican Front” that Traditional parties followed him for decades to prevent the RN from winning elections.

“Tonight, we will not take a region,” Marine Le Pen admitted, referring to a “deep crisis in local democracy.” “The crowd is the key to the victories ahead,” she warned.

Macron’s party ‘disappointment’

On the side of the presidential majority (Yemen Republic, Republic of Yemen), the day was also bleak, as expected, no district won.

Stanislas Guerini, delegate general of the LREM, admitted it was “a disappointment for the presidential majority”.

These two parties lack regional stabilization compared to the right or the moderate left aligned with the far left and ecologists.

These “traditional” parties have somewhat disappeared from the media scene in recent years, after the surprise centrist Emmanuel Macron was elected to the presidency in 2017, having nibbled on both right and left voters.

Many right-wing beliefs will now be defeated by their victory in the region to argue that the presidential election cards can be amended while pollsters predict a Macron/Le Pen victory.

Everyone has now understood that the presidential election is now a three-way match. “The two-man match is advancing in the wing,” Xavier Bertrand, a former right-wing minister, winner of the Hauts-de-France (North) region and already a candidate for 2022, said in the newspaper. reverberation.

The winner from the Ile-de-France region, Valérie Pécresse (right), and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region (centre), Laurent Wauquiez (right), would also position themselves. Ms Pécresse warned that “a team from the right and center in France has emerged, and I will do my full part”.

On the contrary, the left Tarkou also prevails in many regions with alliances between socialists and ecologists (EELV) and Insoumis (far left). But none of the officials elected on Sunday is in the line of competition in the presidential election and party leaders do not approve of a single nomination.

“There is a left that is in the process of reoccupying space,” PS National Secretary Olivier Faure estimated, estimating that his party was a “driving force” that should “bring together all the left and the environmentalists to be able to go towards the presidential election.”

“The environment is the only dynamic force,” for his part, congratulated EELV National Secretary Julian Bayo.

However, the resurgence of the left-right split must be analyzed with caution and nothing says that the Macron/Le Pen duel in the presidential election will be in doubt.

“Traditional parties benefit from the large regional network that they have maintained. The left-right divide persists at the level of local institutions, but is not currently translated at the national level,” estimated Jerome St. Mary, president of the PollingVox Poll Institute, pre-polling.