27 April 2017
It’s not in the bag, Emmanuel
What will the Mélenchon supporters do on May 07?
By Richard Pooley
Exciting, wasn’t it? Actually, no. Despite the warning by pollsters that the first round of the French presidential election was too close to call and hence reliable exit polls would not be published at 20.00 on Sunday night, predictions were being made within minutes of the cities’ voting booths closing. They were not true exit polls; they were based on the early stages of counts at some 800 polling stations around the country (voting ended outside the big cities at 19.00). TV and radio presenters assumed they were accurate and switched to discussing what would happen now that it would be Emmanuel Macron versus Marine Le Pen in the final round. No swingometers, no charts showing one candidate catching up or overtaking another, no reports of shock results. Only Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Marxist leader of La France insoumise (France unbowed), among the losing candidates did not concede defeat within the hour. Most asked their supporters to vote for Macron. Mélenchon protested that it was absurd to start talking about round two when the real results of round one were not known. And he still, three days later, has not clearly conceded defeat. Instead he has given strong hints to his supporters that they should follow his lead and vote blanc on May 7 – i.e. put an empty envelope into the voting box. This should worry Macron, as I shall explain later.
I had spoken to our village’s mayor at lunchtime on election day. He told me that turnout would be high, as usual. The Vayracois were “serieux” and would do their civic duty. He was right. Shortly before 22.00 on Sunday night I got an alert from the Ministry of the Interior informing me of the result in Vayrac, a village of 1337 people in the upper Dordogne valley (but, confusingly, in the Lot and not the Dordogne Department). 85% of those registered had voted. 28% of the votes were for Macron, 19% for Fillon, 19% for Le Pen (just 3 votes behind) and 18% for Mélenchon. You may be reading this while I am in the village market on Thursday morning. I will be looking at my fellow villagers with extra interest, trying to guess which were the ones (37%) who voted for one of the two extremist candidates. The main question in my mind: what will the Mélenchon supporters do on May 7?
The Ministry alert proved to be a fascinating insight into how the French had voted, not just locally. You don’t just get the detailed result in your village or town. Scroll down to the bottom and you can click on the results in all the neighbouring places. Under the result for the next village is a fresh list of locations. I began walking digitally across the Lot Department from place to place (Macron came out on top overall) and on into the Dordogne Department (where Mélenchon led) and finally ended up in Bordeaux, where Macron got 31% and Mélenchon 23%. But it was a couple of results just 20 minutes down the road from me which particularly caught my eye.
Biars-sur-Cère is an industrial village of 1923 people situated on the right bank of the river Cère, a tributary of the Dordogne. A kilometre downriver from Biars’ old centre on the left bank is Bretenoux, a pretty bastide village of 1353 inhabitants, invaded by tourists in the summer. Biars contains the headquarters and main factory of the region’s biggest employer, Andros. You may not know the company but you will have probably bought their products – those Bonne Maman jams Brits can buy in Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Tesco. 29% of Biars’ votes went to Mélenchon, 24% to Macron and 17% to Le Pen (so, 46% to the extremists). Across the river in bucolic Bretenoux, 30% voted for Macron, 19% for Mélenchon and 15% for Le Pen (34% for the extremists).
By now you will see where I am going. Assume that Le Pen will keep all her first round support of 7.68 million people (21.3%) and that she can add nearly all of the 1.7 million (4.7%) who voted for the far right winger Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. These are safe assumptions. Assume too that at least a third of those who voted for the right-wing Republican candidate, François Fillon, switch to Marine, as we are now asked to call her. That is what the polls on Monday said would happen. This would add 2.4 million (6.7%) to her second round total. Okay, you will say, that leaves her with around a third of the vote, still way short of the half, plus one vote, that she needs to become President. But what if the turnout plummets and/or Mélenchon’s supporters decide to vote for Monsieur Blanc? This could happen, especially if Macron continues to stumble towards May 7 rather than inspire his current supporters and persuade the doubters to join him. He sounded far too complacent in his victory speech on Sunday night. He got blasted from all sides for afterwards taking his wife and close aides out to dinner at an exclusive restaurant in Paris. He played straight into Le Pen’s hands: here is the real Macron – rich enough to throw his money around, taking you suckers out there in the country for granted. As a Mélenchon supporter wrote on Monday: “we are being asked to choose between hatred for the Foreigner and hatred for the Poor. I’ll vote blanc.”
I spotted a tweet from a German commentator who explained what was going on with a picture of a horseshoe. Most of us are used to thinking of the Far Left and the Far Right as at opposite ends of a straight line. This is not so in France. Think of a horseshoe. Mélenchon is on the left end, Marine on the right one, closer to each other than they are to Macron who sits in the central bend in the horseshoe. Their economic outlook is close. They both loathe the EU. They both believe France is run solely for the benefit of bankers and big business. They are both, effectively, protectionist. They both argue that to vote for Macron is to vote for a continuation of the status quo. They both are scornful of the idea that Macron is outside the Establishment. Those Mélenchon voters all over France may, in the end, decide that Marine is much more one of them than that Parisian banker and, instead of abstaining, vote in huge numbers for her.
Let’s return to the game I asked British readers to play in last week’s article. Imagine that you are a traditional Labour voter and you have to choose between two UK politicians to be the country’s next leader. Corbyn has failed disastrously to get into the second round (as happened to his equivalent in France, Benoît Hamon). You now have to choose between Tony Blair and Nigel Farage. Or you are a traditional Tory voter and your candidate, George Osborne, also failed to get through (Osborne is a much less satisfying match for Fillon but he’s the best one I could think of). What do you think those two voters will do?
Look, Macron will win. Only the revelation of some huge scandal by Le Canard enchainé next Wednesday or an assassination attempt is going to push Marine over the line. But how much authority will he have if the winning margin, instead of the current 24% predicted in the polls, comes down to just 4%? Will enough voters switch their previous party allegiance and vote for Macron’s new party, En Marche!, in the parliamentary elections on 11 and 18 June to give him a strong power base in the National Assembly?
As I was taking my digital walk across France on Sunday night, I tried to find out who our local Assembly deputy (MP) was. I assumed he or she must be a Socialist since the Lot is traditionally Socialist. I was right. He is Jean Launay. He was first elected to this large rural constituency (“2nd circonscription du Lot”) in June 1998 and has been re-elected with big majorities three times since then. But he is no longer a Socialist. His Wikipedia entry has been changed. He now is a member of En Marche!
So, Macron and his team have already been quietly selecting candidates for the Assembly’s 577 seats. They now have to decide whether to accept the many existing Socialist and Republican deputies coming over to En Marche! (more of the former than the latter) or whether to keep to his promise that he would choose people from outside the political establishment and have an equal number of women as men.
I get the feeling that the French presidential election night on May 7 will be more exciting than most people currently expect. I am absolutely sure that the French assembly election nights of June 11 and 18 are going to be riveting. Probably more so than the one taking place on June 8 in the UK.
Have you realised, by the way, that France’s and UK’s parliamentary elections in 2022 will now, thanks to Theresa May, be only three days apart? I wonder whom we will be judging then.
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