France Re-Elects Macron: What It Means for Europe (Part 1). NewsWire

A SPECIAL NOTE: My research team and I will be at Hedgeye Live – our first annual subscriber conference. It’s from May 12 – 15th at the Hyatt Regency in Greenwich, CT. In addition to the other Hedgeye Live events, I’m hosting an exclusive “idea dinner” (capacity capped at 18), and a deep-dive breakout session Saturday morning. If you’re interested, email .

NewsWire: 5/2/22

• For the second time, French President Emmanuel Macron soundly defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Yet Le Pen registered her party's best-ever electoral results and successfully "mainstreamed" her party. (The Washington Post)
• NH: Last Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron emerged victorious against Marine Le Pen. Macron received 58.2% of the second-round vote to Le Pen's 41.8%.

• Yet while the incumbent centrist won handily, the results were no endorsement for the status quo. To the contrary. Voters made it crystal-clear how much they dislike Macron's brand of market-oriented technocracy--and how attracted they are to populist alternatives. A couple of schizoid U.S. headlines tried to sum up this state of affairs: "Macron May Keep the Presidency, but Le Pen Has Already Won" (NYT) and "France chose Macron, but it craves full-fledged populism" (WP). What happened?
• Let's start with this fact. Although Le Pen did indeed lose the election, this was the best showing that her party, the right-wing National Rally, has ever had. She lost this time by 17.1%. But the last time that she and Macron faced off, in 2017, she lost by 32.2%. And the first (and only earlier time) that her party ran in the second presidential round--in 2002 when it was called the "National Front" and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen was the candidate--it lost by a whopping 64% (82% to 18%). That was the most lopsided election in the history of any French republic. So reviled was the National Front back then that half a million Parisians held massive demonstrations in 2002 to protest the sheer indignity of having to cast a vote in such an election.

• Fast forward to 2022. There is no such revulsion. Rather, Marine Le Pen is simply the most powerful in a broadening sea of populist candidates who now dominate French elections. Her platform really hasn't changed much. She still wants to pull the French military out of central NATO command; regain some national sovereignty from the EU (back in 2017, she was called "Madame Frexit"); call a referendum to make French immigration policies more restrictive; and give preference to native-born French people over immigrants in welfare payments.
• These proposals, once politically untouchable, have become almost mainstream in France. Now facing still more radical nationalists to her right (notably, Éric Zemmour, who got 7.1% in the first round), Le Pen is even beginning to come across as a moderate.
• She's also amping up a very generous "social populism" that would further expand the French social safety net--excluding "undeserving" foreign-borns, to be sure--which is getting a positive reception. She wants to cut income taxes on the young, lower the retirement age, spend more on schools, and subsidize "French" industries. She also wants to sock the financial wealth of the rich. She ridicules Macron for all of his neoliberal lectures on markets and competitiveness.
• Le Pen's National Rally, in short, doesn't just assume a populist pose; it backs a truly populist overhaul of the economy. It doesn't resemble Trump Republicanism in America as much as it does the economic populism of the PIS in Poland or Fidesz in Hungary. Many younger and economically hard-pressed French voters who ordinarily favor candidates on the left don't mind these right-wing affiliations (or even Le Pen's soft spot for Vladimir Putin). They're willing to back her.
• And that's the second big shadow looming over Macron. A steadily shrinking share of French voters prefer, as their first choice, any sort of moderate or centrist as their president. Back in 2002, while most voters did not pick Jacques Chirac as their first choice, the vast majority picked moderate center-right or center-left candidates like Chirac as their first choice.
• No longer. Of the twelve candidates running in the 2022 first round, eight can be plausibly labeled far left (5) or far right (3). And these eight won 61.0% of all votes.

• The change over time is unmistakable. There are four other radical populists who have run with Le Pen in the last three elections. One of them, leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came in just behind Le Pen in the first round in 2022 (at 22%). But here's my point. Back in 2012, these five candidates won 32% of the first-round vote. In 2017, they won 47%. And in 2022, they won 48%. And in 2022, you need to add three more radicals: hard-right Zemmour, hard-left Communist Fabien Roussel, and the militant independent Jean Lasalle (his party: Résistons!). That raises the total to 61%.
• Think about that number, 61%. Meanwhile, Macron only got 28% in the first round--and he's the incumbent. More importantly, the total vote for all centrists including Macron (after adding in the Greens plus what's left of the Socialists and Republicans) came only to 39%. By more than twenty percentage points, in other words, France wants radical change.
• So why did Macron win the final vote? Because most of the leftists still won't vote for the right, and vice versa. Nearly half (45%) of all Macron voters in the second round said they voted for him "under protest." But even here, the wall of left-versus-right resistance is beginning to break down. Roughly a third of voters stayed home or submitted a blank ballot (it's a very French custom, "le vote blanc") rather than back either candidate. Most of these were voters on the left who refused to back Macron. And a large share of the "far left" who did vote ended up voting for Le Pen.

• The share of registered voters refusing to cast a vote is now at an all-time high. The only historical exception, in 1969, doesn't really count because the two final candidates were indistinguishable and most parties on the left instructed their members not to vote.

• OK, you might say, that's all very interesting. But why should Macron care so long as he gets elected?
• For this reason: Macron cannot govern without some kind of popular backing. He could quickly descend back to the mid-20s approval rate that he enjoyed back in 2018 at the height of the "gilet jaune" protests. (See "Most French Citizens Disapprove of Macron.") More to the point, he needs some backing in the June legislative elections. If the right and the left agree to back anti-Macron candidates in most of the regional districts, which is very likely, Macron's presidency would be crippled at the outset.
• France is little different from the rest of Europe since 2016 in witnessing a steadily weakening of support for centrist candidates and parties. (See "Global Brexplosion: An Overview of the Moving Parts," "Another French Revolution?", and "Are Millennials Giving Up on Democracy?"). The centrists have fought back by moving closer to the populist position on many issues, especially immigration. And during the pandemic, voters seemed to be favoring the centrists again as a haven of familiarity and competence. (See "Europe's Populist Wave Loses Steam.") But now, it seems, the pandemic is over and the radicals are pushing ahead again.
• Italy is an instructive case in point. As recently as 2008, back when Silvio Berlusconi was still a celebrity, the Italian center-right and center-left coalitions still attracted 80% of the vote. That fell to 57% in 2013 and only 37% in 2018. A technocratic coalition remains in power due solely to the superstar reputation of Prime Minister Mario Draghi--and the deputies' fear that most of them would be voted out if they called another election. But they have to call another national election no later than June 1, 2023. And at this point, the polls consistently show that about 45% of the vote would go to a right-wing alliance dominated by two populist parties: Lega and Brothers of Italy.
• This is how the WP describes the Italian political outlook: "Barring dramatic changes, the question is whether the next Italian prime minister belongs to a party descended from Mussolini’s Fascists or one that has signed a cooperation pact with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party."
• Takeaway: Populism is thriving in Europe--and has not yet reached high tide.
• Next NW: Who exactly voted for Macron and Le Pen?

To view and search all NewsWires, reports, videos, and podcasts, visit Demography World. For help making full use of our archives, see this short tutorial.