Paris: The President Emmanuel Macron and the leader are far true Le Pen suffered a setback in the final round of regional polls, the last election test before the French presidential election next year.
AFP saw the four main questions submitted by the results of the Sunday election, which was marked by the Abstain note and the resurrection of traditional parties on the left and right.
Before the election, the leader far to the right, Marine Le Pen sounded optimistic about the prospect of his party as he traveled around the country to campaign on the theme of security, Islamism, and the preferred immigration.
Polling shows candidates from their national rally (RN) who lead in six of the 13 regions in the French mainland in the first round, giving their hopes to win at least one region for the first time.
But the pre-poll guarantee has turned into a bitter disappointment: not only RN failed to win a region, but RN voters, which are usually reliable to change, also staying at home in voting marked with high notes assessing.
Le Pen, 52, faced doubts from inside his party about his leadership and options after his failure in the 2017 presidential election against President Emmanuel Macron.
Will the question come back now, and maybe they push rivals, especially the medium right-right pundit Eric Zemmour, which is said to be considering the offer of the president? “Momentum has been damaged,” Jean-Yves Camus, an expert far at the Jean-Jaures Foundation, told AFP.
Since a sensational victory in parliamentary elections in 2017, mostly declined to the Macron Republic in the Moving Party (LREM).
After a dear second place in the European election in 2019, it was poorly carried out in local elections last year and suffered cooling in this regional election, giving more evidence that he failed to lay roots.
After the party collected a little more than 10 percent in the first half, Canard Weekly Satirical Enchaine joked on the front page last week that it had become “republic on the margin.” Macron itself has increased in polls in recent months, however, and he is the current favorite for the president’s race.
“Macron has managed to not connect his destiny with a picture of his party,” Stephane Zumsteeg from the IPSSS poll company told AFP recently.
But even though this might apply to the presidential contest, Macron will require the majority of work in the next parliament to give legislation and weaknesses of his party can still haunt him.
Traditional French government parties, right-wing republic and left-wing socialist, have been overshadowed since their defeat in 2017, but regional elections have changed this dynamic.
All of their regional leaders on the land of France Afpseven on the right and four of the left were re-elected.
From the Republican Party, three potential Xavier Bertrand’s presidential candidates in the upper area of ​​France, Valerie Pecree from the larger Paris area, and Laurent Wauquiez at Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes might use their victory as a political springboard.
Socialists are still looking for charismatic candidates to lead them into future polls.
Some commentators saw the results as a return on the traditional right left division in French politics, rather than the fault line for the past four years against the Macron and Le Pen Le Pen.
“Redrawing of the political landscape pretends to be doubtful,” read the headlines of the Le Monde newspaper on Monday.
The only thing agreed upon by all politicians is that the restriction rate in the vote of the area is very high and the source of concern.
Only one of the three French voters who turned out to be historic since the beginning of the fifth Republic of Indonesia in 1958.
Many explanations have been suggested, beyond classical dissatisfaction with politics: lack of campaigns, poor communication about the stakes, or people only tuning out of politics after one year of restrictions on pandemic.
But the trend of the increase in abstention level has been seen for years, even for national polls such as the second round of presidential elections in 2017 and parliamentary voting in the same year.
Is the idea of ​​electronic voting from home now collecting support? Gabriel Attal spokesman entitled last week for “real cross-party discussions with all our political parties”, but the right wing republic, which controls the Senate, is known to be opposed.