On Sunday, 48.7 million French people will elect the President or President of the Republic between Emmanuel Macron, the outgoing head of state who would be the first to be confirmed after Jacques Chirac in 2002, and Marine Le Pen, the first woman and first exponent of the extreme right to lead the country.
The latest polls give Macron a lead of between 55-57% of the vote against his opponent’s 43-45%, a less significant difference than 5 years ago when the first clash between the two ended at 66%. of the votes for Macron and 34% for Le Pen.
A record abstention could shake up forecasts, fueled mainly by the disappointment of left-wing voters who were absent from the vote despite the excellent performance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise’s radical Gauche (22%). was. The polls speak of a proportion of 25-30% of voters who will not go to the polls.
Here is a brief profile of the two challengers
Emmanuel Macron. Born in Amiens on December 21, 1977, he was the 8th President of the Republic. He studied philosophy before moving to the renowned ENA School of Administration.
His career sees him very young at the General Inspectorate of Finance, then as a commercial banker at Rothschild. In politics, he approaches the civic movement of Jean-Pierre Chévenement, a left sovereignist, then the socialists of Michel Rocard, but the turning point comes in 2012 when he is appointed Deputy Secretary General of the President of the Republic under François Hollande.
The latter appointed him Economy Minister in August 2014, replacing Arnaud Montebourg. He immediately caused controversy by passing the law regulating Sunday work, then he created his own movement “En Marche!”, with the intention of presenting himself at the Elysée in 2017. For this reason he left the government at the end of summer 2016 and then refuses to run in the primaries of the left. His book “Révolution” is a success and he leads the field in the presidential elections, taking the lead with 24.01% of the votes in the first round. He beats his opponent Marine Le Pen in the live TV debate and then in the general election, where he is elected president with 66.10% of the vote. Despite reforms and a wave of novelty and prestige that it brings to France, its mandate is riddled with crises, from the protests of the yellow vests to that against the pension reform, which it then suspends due to the pandemic. The reform itself crowns his re-election program in 2022. He is married to Brigitte, his high school teacher, and is 24 years his senior.
*MARINE LE PEN. Real name is Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen.
She was born on August 5, 1968 in Neully-sur-Seine, a residential suburb of Paris, to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the Front National, the main far-right group in France. He joined his father’s party at the age of 18, and in 1998 he received his first political mandate as a regional councilor in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. Within the party, the first positive election results accredit her as a possible future leader, and she begins to set up groups and internal organizations that will form the future of the “clarified” movement. Her first appearances on television built her new character on the far right and in 2004 she was elected MEP. His father’s failure in the 2007 presidential election is offset by his excellent result. He begins to build “his” party, less rigid and more attentive to the popular classes. He expels his father’s lieutenants one by one until he succeeds his parents as President of the Front National in 2011. Another “anti-liberal” twist follows and he gets 17.90% in the 2012 presidential election, improving on his father’s performance in 2002. He begins to gain a foothold on the ground, taking on the victories in the municipal elections and – in parallel – the family war the father, excluded from the party and disowned because of his more extreme positions.
In 2015, Jean-Marie Le Pen was expelled from the party he founded. In 2017, Marine comes to the presidential election, but then stumbles head-to-head against the young candidate Emmanuel Macron on television. In the 2022 presidential election, when she seemed to have been ousted by far-right rival Eric Zemmour, she still manages to win the election, always against Macron. She has three children from her first husband, Franck Chauffroy, whom she divorced in 2000 only to remarry to Eric Iorio two years later. New divorce in 2006.
Coupled since 2009 with National Front Secretary General Louis Aliot, from whom he split in September 2019.