Exactly 20 years ago, in April 2002, Jean Marie Le Pen caused an earthquake by propelling the xenophobic extreme right into the second round of French presidential elections.
His vote was seen as outrage on the part of the republic. As a gesture of uniting democratic forces, Jacques Chirac was elected with 82% of the vote. And Europe breathed a sigh of relief.
Today, two decades later, Emmanuel Macron has been reelected President of France for another five years. But the reality is that the far right has won.
Marine Le Pen, daughter of the movement’s founder, registered a record 12 million votes for her party, versus 17 million for Macron. And as a legacy of the electoral process, she received two conquests. Their movement was normalized as part of the political scene and today gained status as the main opposition to power.
Ecologists hoping for greater appeal failed. And the traditional Socialist Party has been humiliated and reduced to a dwarf power. Anne Hidalgo’s candidacy ended with 1.8% of the vote.
If Marine Le Pen added 33% of the vote in 2017, early indications today are that she would complete the process with 42% support, an alltime record. In the first round, she won in 20,000 communities.
His advance was conquered especially in “France of shadows”, so far from the light of Paris. Polls showed that the support she received was overwhelming among the uneducated populace. But it only took 12% of the vote among voters with college education.
Before the election, polls showed that more than 72% of the population with a monthly income of more than 2,600 euros would vote for the president. But Macron had only 41 percent of the vote among the poorest strata, calculated from those with salaries below 970 euros.
The same polls indicated that Macron would win 69% of the vote in the Paris area. But less than 45% in rural areas.
Where did Le Pen seduce? For analysts, his unprecedented result was the consequence of his decision to pare down his ideological discourse at least publicly and replace it with an inevitable theme: how to survive in the face of rising prices and falling incomes.
It is no coincidence that Le Pen, reaching the second round again, had the audacity to solicit lefttoright votes in the name of social justice. Always guided by hate to divide the country, she set herself the task of “uniting France”.
In contrast to previous elections, it has actually managed to win a share of votes from other parties. Polls ahead of Sunday showed that 17% of voters had migrated from the traditional right to Le Pen in the second round and 16% of votes for current left leader Jean Luc Melenchon would also benefit the farright candidate.
This Sunday’s result is still a response from the loyalist wing to Marine Le Pen within his party. In the past two years, the Rassemblement National has suffered heavy defeats in regional elections and has seen a hemorrhage of politicians. In 2022 she returns to the center of the movement with a new discourse.
Macron’s election was taken by other European countries as a relief in an already uncertain scenario given the war in Ukraine. However, the results also showed that the political existence of rightwing extremism is no longer a coincidence.
Today the extreme right has the support of 40% of the military and 70% of the police, has the highest French representation in the European Parliament and is no longer feared by half of the French in a subsequent government.
She still managed to hijack the political agenda despite being in opposition, forcing the other parties to debate issues imposed by the far right.
Assimilated in the country and at the table, Marine Le Pen’s representatives managed to carve out issues like immigration, to the point that Macron’s ministers are now accusing her of being too soft on the Islamist threat.
This Sunday in Evian, many of those running for elections knew who would win the 2022 elections, but the question on everyone’s mind was a different one: who will stop the far right five years from now?