Countdown to France's presidential election begins
There are still more than 365 days to go until France's presidential election. But the race for the Elysée has already begun. In first place is the current President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, still favourite in the pools. He has a long list of pursuers behind him who are trying to get around him at the next turn. Will Macron make a dent or will he manage to renew the reformist momentum that made him take pole position in 2017?
The leader of La République En Marche (LREM), the political platform created expressly to launch his candidacy in the presidential elections four years ago, has been at the wheel during the COVID-19 crisis and his handling of the pandemic has been questionable. Predictably - and as has happened to other political leaders globally - the erosion of his image has led him to lose ground to other candidates.
The virus in France has claimed a total of 5.4 million infections and more than 102,000 deaths. Macron, the youngest head of state of the Fifth Republic, decided to shut down at the end of March in the face of a spike in cases and decreed a lockdown for the month of April. French citizens are forbidden to travel more than 10 km from their homes except in exceptional cases, although the restrictions expire on 2 May.
The vaccination campaign is progressing rapidly. Almost 18 million French people have been vaccinated, according to the Ministry of Health. Of that number, up to 13 have received at least one dose and the remaining 5 million have completed the immunisation process with the inoculation of the second dose. AstraZeneca's vaccine has also generated rejection, yet France is the EU country with the best immunisation numbers after Germany and the third highest in the continent.
Macron maintains his lead in the polls, and has proved resilient in the face of opposition attacks. The riots sparked by the so-called yellow waistcoats between 2018 and 2019 disrupted public order and launched an assault on the president. The protests subsided, and Macron himself made a mea culpa after pointing out that he "underestimated the impact on the middle class" with the fuel tax hike. A rare exercise in self-criticism.
It looks increasingly difficult for the current head of state to win re-election in the next elections. Moreover, the former economy minister during Hollande's presidency has not yet revealed whether he will stand again. "Whatever happens, I will preside until the last quarter of an hour, whether on security, the economy and industry, reforms, education or the environment. It's what I promised the French, what I owe them," she told Le Figaro in an interview published on Monday.
Among the long list of opponents, Macron will once again have to face the leader of the National Rally (RN), Marine Le Pen. The heiress of the French far right came close to the Elysée in the 2017 presidential election and has emerged as the only plausible alternative to Macron. The current president defeated Le Pen in the second round with a difference of 10 million votes, backed by the rest of the electorate, after crushing her in the electoral debate. Five years later, all eyes will be on the same head-to-head.
Le Pen retains her seat as a deputy in the National Assembly and the party's ironclad leadership. Despite not having effectively exploited the pandemic crisis and Macron's questionable management, the candidate retains the support of a quarter of the French electorate. Moreover, the polls place her closer to a future victory at the ballot box. The two latest Ifop polls for Journal du Dimanche and Elabe for BFMTV show a clear duel between Le Pen (25/28%) and Macron (24/27%).
The far-right candidate is the favourite for the first round, but the key to her victory lies in stopping the massive dissenting vote. If she makes it to the second round, mobilisation will be decisive: if the population reacts en masse, it will be to support Macron, as happened five years ago, while abstention could benefit the leader of the National Rally.
Renewed attention to terrorism and Islamist radicalism in the wake of the atrocious murder of history professor Samuel Paty by a Chechen refugee explains his growing popularity. For this reason, Macron has launched a campaign against drug trafficking and citizen insecurity presented this week in a Montpellier slum to counteract the Le Pen effect. He himself has acknowledged that he wants to open a national debate on drug use, and has shown his firm support for the police.
The Elysée's belligerence against radical Islamism, announced by Macron, has materialised in the law against Islamist separatism. Among the measures are the prosecution of radicalisation on the internet, the reduction of home schooling and the blocking of foreign funding to local mosques. As a result of this move, some analysts have noted a certain rapprochement with the positions of the extreme right, however, this analysis seems mistaken, as Le Pen's voters now see in Macron a Europeanist product with a soft profile.
The president's electoral base seems to have shifted to the right since he came to power in 2017. The president's intention with this move is to attract the right-wing voter who has not yet seen in him an authority figure, but who in turn shies away from the extremism of the National Rally. This is where the leader of Les Républicains (LR), Xavier Bertrand, the third in discord in the right-wing bloc, who has also been critical of Macron's management of security, comes in. Among the strengths of the current leader of the Haute-France region are his ability to build bridges and his profile far removed from the establishment.
The political debate in recent months has once again revolved around the issue of citizen security. The issue of immigration is also a contentious one. However, the main themes of the campaign, a year ahead, seem to point in the direction of economic recovery after the ravages of COVID-19 and, above all, the battle of the institutions against the threat of Islamism.
In this space of confrontation, half of the political chessboard seems to be devoid of ideas. The French left has been knocked out and none of its candidates seems to represent a solid alternative to the current president with a year to go before the elections. The leader of the France Insoumise party, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was the first left-wing contender to announce his candidacy and leads the left-wing bloc with an intention to vote of around 10 per cent. However, his chances are reduced if he does not manage to unite the left.
Behind Mélenchon is the current mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, one of the last well-known survivors in the party after the Macron earthquake. Harshly criticised by the opposition as a sham socialist, the latest polls give her an approval rating of around 46%. If she runs - as she will reveal in the autumn - her chances of reaching the second round are 8%, although they would increase if she converges with the Greens, the party led by the environmentalist MEP Yannick Jadot and with a 5% voting intention, who intend to be at the helm of the candidacy.
Macron's approval rating has not exceeded 40 per cent since the start of the pandemic and his handling of it has been the subject of harsh criticism from the opposition. However, the president faces the big challenge: to lead France and begin the process of recovery from the biggest social and economic crisis in decades caused by the devastating health crisis. His performance in the coming months promises to be decisive in either boosting his leadership or derailing his re-election.