Elections in France, Macron pushed beyond expectations (27.4%). On polling with Le Pen (24%) on April 24

It is not surprising that the duel in the second round is the same as in 2017. Outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and his rival Marine Le Pen go to the second round. Compared to the leaked opinion polls from Belgium, which gave the leader of the National Rally a lead, the predictions issued after the polls closed, changed the scenario in a remarkable way. Macron has 27.6 percent, Marine Le Pen is at 23, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-leaning standard-bearer with Insoumise, is at 22.2 (and official figures for the number are increasingly close to dropping, with Macroin at 27.4% and Le Pen at 24.15), disappointing at the extreme. Right (even farther than Le Pen’s right) Eric Zemmour, journalist and columnist, who is only 7 percent. Inevitably, what happened on February 24 when Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine affected the outcome. The Russian Tsar has always had a dialogue, to put it mildly, with the European sovereign and right-wing parties, beginning with the Marine Le Pen dialogue. I avoided talking about it, and tried to move the election campaign to something else, while Macron did not touch on the issue because he preferred to appear low, and got involved in the role of someone who, as president in office, should manage. international crisis.

Macron kisses and hugs his wife Brigitte after the results of the first round of the presidential elections

However, the background remained: the right very close to Putin favored Marcon and perhaps also for this reason, compared to poll expectations, the gap was more consistent than expected. And so the French president – quarterback and leader of La Republic en March – amassed four more points than he did in 2017, when he hit 24 per cent in the first round. But it is paradoxical that even Marine Le Pen has grown for five years, reaching 21.3 percent, and, according to some commentators, another paradox: the presence of Zemmour, which seemed to her less extreme and more moderate, reassuring. section of the electorate. The Republicans collapsed, with Valerie Presses receiving less than 5 percent of the vote. Not to mention the Socialists, who have now gone, in what Liberation calls “historic history”, a historic defeat: Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, fell to less than 2 per cent, even less than Dupont Aignan (Debout la France, 2.1 per cent, Le Pen), Communist candidate Fabian Roussel (2.3), Jean LaSalle (Resistons, 3.1) and ecologist Yannick Gadot (4.7) to vote.

Elections in France, relief of EU leaders (and help of Draghi). The wave of populism in Paris is worrying

What will happen now? The ballot will be voted on on April 24, and Macron starts with an advantage not only on the 4.6 points that separate him from Marine Le Pen. The latter should theoretically get the full votes of Zemmour, who yesterday evening publicly sent his voters to vote for the right-wing candidate in the second round, citing one of his strong points, immigration. But for the outgoing president, there is greater potential, even if the result of the second round is far from writing: according to a poll conducted by Ipsos for France TV in the second round, Macron collects 54% of voting intentions, i.e. 46. Melenchon made a heavy statement We must not give a single vote to Marine Le Pen. But also Yannick Gadot (“I ask to ban the far-right”) and Valérie Presress (“In good conscience, Le Pen’s rise must be prevented”), who together have a value of more than 9 percent, endorsed Macron. Yesterday the abstention rate in France was 26 percent, and we have to go back twenty years ago to find a higher figure. The decline in the number of voters is significant in Paris.