In my previous commentaries about French elections, I have expressed concerns about the apparent absence of substantive debate, declining voter turnout and weakness in sustainable coalition building. These have been evident in the most recent presidential election, where 12 candidates operated at separate and often isolated levels, culminating with a run-off between two candidates (a centrist candidate who had moved increasingly away from the left and an extreme right candidate) that did not genuinely reflect the range of voter interests. Voter turnout was down as a result, and there were no evident signs of institutionalized coalition-building. This last point was especially significant, in my opinion, to the segue from the presidential to the legislative elections in the short span of time between the two rounds. In this interim period prior to the June elections for the French National Assembly, I have some thoughts about the way that coalition-building is actually starting to happen.
The interest that I have had in French coalition-building had caught my eye as early as the round of municipal elections that were held in France in 2020. Here I was, living in a country that had managed to elect a decent and even inspirational president in 2017, a year after the disastrous outcome of the American presidential election in 2016. Needless to say, the outburst of the Gilets Jaunes (the Yellow Vest Movement) in 2018 and 2019, followed by the global pandemic AND the reaction to the George Floyd murder in 2020, did have their signs of disappointment about the stability of democratic societies, even here in France.
My concerns here were largely driven by the absence of a grass-roots momentum for Macron’s party, En March (or LREM). Not only had he won the presidential race in 2017; he had also mobilized this movement to dominate the legislative elections following his election as president. He had an overwhelming majority to work with in the National Assembly. And yet there seemed to be no institutionalizing of this momentum into the grass roots. To me, it certainly was an issue in 2020 in the municipal elections when there seemed to be no sign of the solidifying of LREM support in the outcomes. And again last year, it was discouraging to see the LREM’s candidates do so poorly in the departmental and regional elections. It seemed, then, as though the traditional center-right Republicans and the traditional center-left Socialists were still in control of the grass roots.
But was this perhaps a look at French politics with an American lens? After all, the abysmal showing of both Republicans and Socialists in the presidential elections seems to have been part of an overall downward trend for both parties, at least at the national level where governance matters. And the nipping at Le Pen”s heels of the Zemmour mystique on the right and the momentum of Mélanchon and his La France Insoumise (LFI) on the left, could be interpreted as indicative of more than the rise of extremism generally. They certainly are, if one tries to look at this from a French lens, indicative of a long history of personality-driven populist movements.
Okay, fair enough. We’ve got the same issue in the States. Or at least we do now. Trump has become the Republican Party. The personality has displaced the power of the grass roots – or has transmogrified the grass roots of the Republican Party. We who are Democrats lament this disaster because of what it did to the country for four years and what it portends for the future. At least, there is no parallel personality cult among the Democrats – likable but gaffe-prone Biden notwithstanding. But enough of this. The personality function is quite different in the French world.
First, there has been the Mélanchon gambit. Having announced when he had done so well (coming in third) at the end of the first presidential round on 10 April that he would be running for the Prime Ministership, Mélanchon has indeed pulled together a remarkable “new” coalition called the “L’union populaire, ecologique et sociale” with the acronym “NUPES”. Reputed to be the charismatic personality that I somehow did not see in him, he has managed to pull in the Greens (the EELV and others), the Communist Party (PCF) and even the Socialist Party – plus a few other odds and ends. The Socialists in particular have had to tone down their pro-European Union stance for participating in this coalition.
This grand coalition has agreed to divide up the 577 constituencies for a commonly agreed slate of a unified candidate in almost every one. It seems, though, that some prominent Socialists are still hostile to this coalition, and some environmentalists are also wanting to run their own people here and there. The forecasts are that NUPES will probably be the largest opposition group to Macron but that their strength is not widespread enough to win a majority. There is still hope that the centrist momentum of the LREM’s success in the 2017 national-level elections will produce a similar result in 2022.
In spite of my misgivings about the absence of LREM strength at the grass roots in municipal and regional politics, the polling sources (of which there are quite a few different ones) are all showing that the coalition around Macron’s party will win a majority of the seats. It might not be as large a number as in 2017, but the prediction is widely shared that Macron’s supporters and allies will ultimately win – in the second round, (19 June) for sure, even if other candidates might come out ahead in the first round (12 June).
Reinforcing this polling, the Macron network has reimagined itself as a new and expanded coalition of an apparently magnetic center. In fact, even the core party (LREM) in this coalition has been renamed “Renaissance” – a ploy on French history of obvious significance. The coalition, however, is more cautiously called “Ensemble”, bringing together the old centrist party (Modem) and Edouard Philippe’s newer Horizons party with LREM – now called Renaissance. Their theme is “Avec vous”.
Ironically, the Ensemble coalition was announced at a meeting of four men sitting around a couple of drink tables – making it look like a rather sexist bunch of old men coming together to keep their hold on power. This was hardly the image of “rebirth” that Macron was attempting to convey. The media coverage of this negative image, however, was quickly taken over by President Macron’s announcing a new prime minister for his new administration – none other than a woman, Elizabeth Borne. Who proceeded to appoint a cabinet that was credibly balanced on gender, even if most of the old guard types (and mostly male, it seemed) were retained.
This has stirred up the typical French debate on how to call a female prime minister – with the progressives all suggesting “La Première Ministre” rather than “Mme Borne, Le Premier Ministre”. She is, after all, only the second woman to be appointed prime minister in all of French history. More on that later (along with my interest in what Macron/Borne did in appointing a controversial historian to be Minister of Education). But this hardly constitutes a significant campaign strategy for the legislative electioins.
Back on the legislative front, then, we see that both the National Rally (i.e. Marine Le Pen) and Reconquest (i.e. Eric Zemmour) are running their separate lists for the National Assembly – no prospects of a coalition on that front. Le Pen’s party is still expected to come in with the third largest group in the National Assembly – Renaissance first, then NUPES and then National Rally. The national polls seem to think that the gradual slide in the anticipated number of Renaissance winners (anywhere between 260 and 295, where 289 is needed for a majority in the Assembly) is due to growing support for the NUPES candidates, not necessarily the National Rally ones.
But our interest right now is at the very local level. I note that there is an incumbent LREM running in the constituency that includes Peymeinade, which is rather strange, since that town itself tends to vote extreme right. But then, I didn’t recognize any of the candidates as well known figures. We ourselves are in Grasse in another constituency, where the incumbent is a Republican, also not a name I recognized. Will the incumbents win? It seems odd that a Renaissance candidate would win in the district that includes Peymeinade since it seems that this same district had given more votes to Le Pen than to Macron in the Presidential run-off in April. The Grasse candidate, clearly associated with the well-known local Mayor Jerome Viaud, should be a shoe-in. We can expect that to be the result, in spite of what we see in a small enclave within the Grasse constituency.
This happens to be a small but old community – very visible from the main road into Grasse but very deeply nestled in a valley. It is a small “commune” with its own community hall. What I find fascinating about this community is that they have a signboard along the main road that regularly changes campaign posters – from Mélanchon (extreme left) to Zemmour (really extreme right) to Le Pen (extreme right) and back! It is pretty incredible to see how frequently the signs are changed – and deliberately damaged along the way. As though the community has three factions constantly competing with each other.
I’ll be posting a poster collection separately, including for the officially placed campaign posters in nearby polling places. But in this particular location, the latest display shows Le Pen posters on top, with a set of posters for Zemmour below them and yet another set of Mélanchon posters underneath the Zemmour posters. A few days ago, it was the Mélanchon posters that had been on top. Go figure.
In conclusion, at this point (but maybe a bit premature on the legislative front), it seems that the French elections are witnessing a very widespread divergence in political views. There seems to be no avenue for facilitating an inclusive debate on the issues, a growing abstention rate among the voters and a worrisome patchwork of political alignments of extremes. The polls continue to favor Macron’s Ensemble but with declining enthusiasm for the centrist momentum of La République en Marche that had captured such an overwhelming majority of French voters in 2017.
