Macron vs. Le Pen: Why are radical left voters key in France’s elections?

the followers of Jean-Luc Melenchonthe maximum representative of the radical left in Francewill have a decisive weight in the second round of the French presidential elections this Sunday.

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As in 2017, the battle will be between the centrist president Emmanuel Macron and the extreme right Marine LePenthe two candidates who received the most votes in the first round.

Mélenchon, of the party Unsubmissive Francecame in a solid third place with 22% of the vote.

But part of his electorate, paradoxically, now plans to vote for Le Pen, who is located in the opposite end of the political board.

In his speech after the publication of the estimates of the results of the first round, Mélenchon repeated four times to his voters that “no vote should be given to Le Pen”.

But he made no calls to vote for Macron.

Despite the suggestion of the leader of the French radical left, a significant number of his voters, between 18% and 30%According to different polls released after the results of April 10, they hope to vote for Le Pen in the second round.

According to projections, Macron has an advantage over the candidate of the Assembly National (National Grouping) in the transfer of votes from Mélenchon.

However, the electorate of France Insumisa indicated that they will mostly opt for abstention or for the blank or invalid vote (between 35% and 45% of them).

“There is a minority but significant part of Mélenchon’s electorate that is willing to vote for Le Pen. Macron has an advantage that is not so great. The dispute is real and will take place until the last moment”, assures the politician and analyst Gaspard Estrada, from the University of Sciences Po in Paris.

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a similar program

Two factors explain why some radical left voters plan to vote for Le Pen. One of them is the similarity of his economic program with that of Mélenchon.

The other candidate from the radical right, Éric Zemmour, who obtained 7% of the vote, he even went so far as to say that Le Pen “It’s on the left”.

Mélenchon said that his supporters should not vote for Le Pen.

During her campaign, Le Pen left the strong issues of her party (immigration, Islam and security) in the background, in which she maintains a radical vision, and focused her speeches on improving the purchasing power of the population, in a context high inflation economy.

Its program foresees, for example, reducing VAT from 20% to 5.5% on fuel, electricity and gas and link pensions to inflation.

It also promises a protective state and, like Mélenchon, the holding of “popular initiative referendums”, one of the demands of the yellow vest movement, which for months, in 2018 and 2019, protested in France, sometimes violently, demanding improvements in the quality of life.

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The rejection of Macron

Le Pen also speaks in this second round of “Social injustices”.

The other factor contributing to a vote for Le Pen in the second round is rejection of President Macron by the electorate of Mélenchon.

Le Pen and Mélenchon mainly appeal to the working classes, who have incomes around the minimum wage.

Macron, called by some the “president of the rich”, has been criticized by having abandoned to the less favored sectors of the population.

Le Pen, for his part, who turned his party’s economic discourse on its head, calls himself “opponent of the power of money”.

Disappointment

After mobilizing in the 2017 elections to prevent Le Pen from coming to power, part of Mélenchon’s electorate claims to be disappointed with the current president and assures that he is already “tired of building dams, like a beaver, against the radical right”, an expression that has become common among some politicians and voters of France Insumisa.

“It is a kind of anger or despair against the systemEstrada explains.

“It is an electorate with more precarious economic conditions, of workers with low professional qualifications, who they don’t feel represented in Macron’s speech”.

Marine Le Pen also hopes to turn the second round into a kind of referendum against President Macron.

“I want to tell the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon that I am strongly attached to our social protection system. Have the most protective project”, the far-right candidate promised in an interview with the French radio station TF1 a couple of weeks ago.

“Macron represents toughness when it comes to the most modest”.

Le Pen wants the second round to be a referendum on the government of Emmanuel Macron.

The candidate claims to be attached to the generous French social protection system, but defends in her program the “national priority”, which consists of giving preference to people of French nationality in access to social housing and employment.

also intended reserve social benefits for the French (For foreigners, they would have to have worked in France for five years to receive benefits.)

As it is not possible by law to make such a distinction by nationality, Le Pen plans to change the Constitution.

To the conquest of the votes

President Macron also wants to seduce the electorate of the radical left.

The French leader has already admitted he is willing to amend his pension reform bill, which plans to raise the minimum age from the current 62 to 65.

Macron recently announced that he would also will link pensions to inflation as part of the Le Pen program.

In March, prices rose 4.5% year-on-year. Macron promised that this would not happen again after July.

“I am ready to invent something new to unite different convictions and sensibilities,” Macron said shortly after the results of the first round were announced.

“The equation is complicated for Macron. He has already served a term, he had the opportunity to disappoint part of the electorate and Marine Le Pen is in a better position than she was five years ago,” explains political analyst Bruno Cautrès, from the University of Sciences Po.

Macron remains the favorite in the polls, but this time the race is much closer than in 2017, when the incumbent president beat Le Pen by 32 percentage points.

In the latest polls released a couple of weeks ago, Macron added between 52.5% and 55% of the intention to votewhile Marine Le Pen reached between 45% and 47.5%.

In some of them, the difference in points remains within the margin of error.

On Sunday, April 10, shortly after the results were announced, a survey by the Ifop institute indicated that in a second round, 51% would vote for Macron and 49% for Le Pen.

Source: Elcomercio