French President Emmanuel Macron defeated the far-right National League candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round of elections and became France’s first re-elected president in two decades.
Although the election results have settled, the outside world believes that Macron’s future will not be easy.
The right-wing “National League” candidate Le Pen’s father is the founder of the “National Front”, which advocates extreme nationalism, advocates France first, opposes cultural diversity, and opposes economic globalization; extreme xenophobia, anti-Islamic, anti-Semitic, Anti-immigration, anti-refugee; and put forward extreme popular ideas such as opposing representative democracy, supporting referendum, and opposing elites.
The middle-class, young, ambitious and ambitious Macron appeared in 2017 under the banner of a centrist that crossed the divide between the left and the right, playing the banner of “Reviving France”. the opposite of extreme. In the end, he defeated Le Pen with an absolute advantage and became the youngest president of France.
However, Le Pen adjusted his strategy after two defeats, and changed the name of the “National Front” to create an image of people-friendly and inclusive, trying to downplay the extreme color of the party. She played the people’s livelihood card and hit Macron’s pain point. She walked among the masses, gossips and understands how difficult the life of the French people is. It can be said that she has played the people’s livelihood card by biting on problems such as the decline in the purchasing power of the people during Macron’s tenure.
In the past five years, Macron’s image of a moderate elite has become a pain point for him, giving people a feeling of “indifference” and “aloofness”. For example, during his election campaign, voters dragged him to complain about fuel prices due to the Russian-Ukrainian war. Great rise, seriously affect life. Macron asked the voter to “turn down the indoor temperature by a degree or two.” The voter responded by saying, “I have already lowered the temperature for a long time, and now the problem is that even driving out, gas is too expensive. “Macron made people feel “why not eat minced meat”.
During his five-year tenure in office, Macron was also accused of multiple rounds of reforms targeting vulnerable groups, and was dubbed the “President of the Rich”.
Compared with internal affairs, Macron seems to care more about shaping France’s image as a great power in Europe and the world, pragmatically “looking outward”. Le Pen advocates the priority of France, which is xenophobia and de-grouping in an extreme way, and advocates that France withdraw from NATO to fight alone. Judging from the results of the general election, French voters believe that France cannot stand on its own with the strength of one country, and the idea of uniting allies and strengthening the status and role of the EU has a slight upper hand.
However, Macron has always been critical of the U.S. dominance in NATO. In the early days of his tenure, he sought to form a European coalition, tried to promote European strategic autonomy, and even made a sensational comment that “NATO is brain-dead”. However, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Macron’s mediation was not effective, and France had to stand on the side of the United States and NATO. France is one step further away from the dream of strategic independence.
It is foreseeable that Macron is narrowly winning re-election, and Le Pen’s powerful far-right forces and the leftist coalition will become the “stumbling blocks” for Macron to form a new government.
From the distribution of votes, Macron defeated Le Pen five years ago in 2017 by 66.1% to 33.9%. Comparing the results of the first and second rounds of voting this time, we can observe the political ecology of France. In the first round of voting on April 10, Macron won 27.6% of the votes, and Le Pen won 23.4% of the votes, that is, the basics of the two die-hard supporters have not changed. By the second round of voting, Macron had won by 58.6% to 41.5%, and while Macron’s victory was larger than expected, more French voters than expected did not vote.
One of the keys is that after Melenchon, the leftist coalition’s French Insubordination party, who came in third place with 21.95 percent in the first round of voting, was defeated, he only publicly called on his supporters not to cast any votes for the far-right Le Pen, but he did not. Explicitly call supporters to switch to Macron.
The attitudes of left-wing politicians are reflected in the turnout rate. According to the French Ipsos polling agency, the abstention rate in France in the second round of voting in the general election is about 28.2%, that is, white votes or no votes. , which is the highest level since 1969.
Before the general election, more than 30 organizations and trade unions in Paris demonstrated tens of thousands of people, with the biggest demand being “No Macron and no Le Pen.” This reflects France’s future domestic and foreign dilemmas.
In the past five years, the obvious rise in the support rate of Le Pen’s faction shows that ultra-conservative views are no longer a fringe idea in French society. From the results of this vote, the political spectrum of France is undergoing unpredictable changes, and there is a chance that it will slip into social disintegration.
Editor’s note: Mr. Lu Yongxiong took more than a month’s leave due to personal affairs. During this period, Li Tong, the editor-in-chief of “Bus News”, wrote “Bus Review”.
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Li Tong