Those in the know say Emmanuel Macron is presenting a right-leaning program while his competitor Marine Le Pen uses left-wing elements, although he is resorting to old neoliberal recipes of the purest right-wing when it comes to curbing inflation, for example.
Today will tell if trying to win the French presidency pays off and who, after both getting the most votes in the first ballot, albeit by a few percentages far from an absolute majority: 27.8 percent for the still President of France and 23.1 percent for Le Pen, which is still seen as a historic vote for the French right.
More percent “won” the abstention, which was 25 percent, three percentage points more than in the 2017 election, in a repetition of the absence that obviously expresses a lack of credibility. There were 12,824,169 voters who did not favor any of the 12 candidates presented, to which must be added absentees 543,609 blank votes and 247,151 zero votes.
In this way, the bloc that didn’t speak up represents 27 percent, a higher odds than the candidate who got the most votes.
Today, large numbers of poor people or people who feel discriminated against are permanently abstaining from voting.
And especially among young people, there is disillusionment in the face of this second round, because they have to choose again between what they see as the “lesser evil”, which already happened in the 2017 election, when the presidency took place, is controversial, even in the tie-break round, between the same competitors.
“We’re tired of always having to choose the least evil of the two, and that explains this revolt. Neither Macron nor Le Pen,” a student from La Sorbonne told Reuters a few days ago during a demonstration outside the university gates to demand that none of the candidates get the vote.
These students would have voted for the left candidate, Mélenchon, in the first ballot. But they could stop it now.
Experts also took into account the impact that the so-called “useful vote” had in the first ballot, which the voter leaves not in favor of the candidate of his real sympathies, but for the candidate of the party with which they consider the most opportunities to win, what at usual in French elections.
An online consultation conducted after the first round by the Mieux Voters Association to promote a voting system that balances voting intent while balancing the qualifications people bestow on the candidate proves the weight of the helpful vote.
According to france24.com, when participants in the consultation were asked to comment under the traditional system, in addition to rating each candidate on a scale ranging from Excellent to Rejected — what the institution touted as a “majority vote” » — It posed It turned out that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who took third place in the first ballot with 22 percent of the votes, received 55.46 percent of the points out of 30,000 participants. Macron followed with 14.38 percent.
It is unknown how much of that notion of who will be the winner today will affect which of the two finalists will put the cat in the water.
The polls show a 51-54 percent range for Macron versus a 49-46 percent range for Le Pen.
Both the one and the other tried at all costs to win the votes cast in the first ballot in favor of the remaining ten candidates; mainly that of Mélenchon (indomitable France), third in the list of the first round with 22 percent. The fate of the voice of his followers is considered momentous today.
Recent polls show that 38 percent of the votes cast in his favor would now go to Macron, 16 percent to Le Pen.
However, this does not mean more certainty for the president in his efforts to be re-elected.
Considered a bit of an outsider by him when he achieved the presidency in 2017 and projecting himself as an “anti-system” figure within the system, the president’s performance in the dying days has not pleased those taking a more consistent stance than a suspect expected task for which On the contrary, right.
However, analysts point in his favor that despite Covid-19 he has reduced unemployment to 7.4 percent from the 9.6 percent he found when he came to power; that GDP recovered faster than other European countries after the worst of the pandemic; and that foreign investment increased, albeit at the expense of reforms with a liberal tinge, including lowering the cost of layoffs and cutting unemployment benefits, which are under among other things caused more than one protest, and where the displeasure is told about his finally postponed pension reform, according to which employees should work longer and earn less for retirement.
On the other hand, many analysts warn of the risk of being confused with far-right Marine Le Pen, who has softened her speech to attract supporters, an effort that led in 2018, among other things, to changing the name of the political group she founded included her father, Jean-Marie LePen. The far-right Front National party would be renamed the National Group.
But her father’s political heir has not revealed her origins.
During this campaign he has spoken about jobs, social inequalities and public services, but “Le Pen’s economic outlook is anything but socialist,” warn analysts at digital magazine CounterPunch.
Thus, in the televised debate in which they faced each other, Marine Le Pen presented himself as the “Third Way” and announced a solidary France in the fight against precariousness, while Macron, on the other hand, justified that he had tried to walk this the better decisions amid the pandemic and now with the conflict in Ukraine, promising an improvement in everyday life.
The difference between the two, which the polls show, is not big. The distance between their approaches doesn’t seem to be that great either.
