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Is Marine Le Pen more likely to win in 2022 than in 2017?

2021-04-09T16:37:43.295Z


THE VERIFICATION - Driven by a weaker dynamic, at the head of a more indebted party and the number of members divided by four compared to five years ago, Marine Le Pen may appear in 2022 as the only protest vote against to a Head of State no longer benefiting ...


THE QUESTION.

One year before the French presidential election, the Financial Times asked this week the question of Marine Le Pen's chances of victory.

Asked by the British daily, the former minister of François Hollande and unsuccessful candidate for the primary of the left of 2017, Arnaud Montebourg, predicts in 2022 a victory for the head of the National Rally against Emmanuel Macron.

"Hated because he is arrogant",

the Head of State and his

"oligarchic policies"

no longer constitute, according to the Socialist, a

"bulwark"

against Marine Le Pen but on the contrary "

will put her in power.

"

The nationalist candidate she truly more likely than it was five years of winning?

Read also: Presidential 2022: why Marine Le Pen is returning to the right

CHECKS.

It is impossible to predict, twelve months in advance, the outcome of any election.

An electoral campaign, a fortiori presidential, offers each candidate more than one opportunity to challenge and convince public opinion, to an extent that statistical studies cannot predict.

It is rare that a campaign is not, moreover, punctuated by twists and turns sweeping, by their waves, all the prognoses and forecasts authoritative until then.

With these customary precautions taken, a comparison of the situation in which Marine Le Pen finds herself today and that in which she found herself a year before the 2017 election can make it possible to identify that they are her strengths and disabilities, compared to five years ago, with a view to 2022.

To compare these two photographs, polls will be of little help.

All the competitors are not arrested twelve months before the ballot.

In April 2016, an Ifop study assured Marine Le Pen between 26% and 28% of voting intentions in the first round of 2017 according to the different scenarios on the starting line.

The latest survey from the same institute places, this time again, the head of the RN at 28% on the evening of the first round.

A solid score that tends to ensure his place in the second round of the presidential election, next year, against Emmanuel Macron.

As it seemed, five years ago, to assure him against… Alain Juppé.

With 21.30% of the votes collected on the evening of April 23, Marine Le Pen will have finally qualified narrowly for the second round.

By only one point ahead of the candidate of the right, François Fillon, and a point and a half that of the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Read also: Presidential 2022: Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron neck and neck in the second round, according to a survey

Contrary to opinion studies, the state of Marine Le Pen's party between 2016 and 2021 has been upset.

Twelve months before the 2017 presidential election, the leader of what is still called the National Front is in a position of strength.

It has just recorded the largest and most constant dynamic in the history of its movement.

After having painfully garnered 11% of the vote during the regional elections in 2010, his party passed the 25% mark during the Europeans in 2014. Before coming close to that of 30% in the first round of the regional elections in 2015. Nobody knows where this is. meteoric progress will be able to stop.

The FN then claims 83,000 members and if the coffers are not full, the financial situation is not a cause of anxiety for any of its leaders.

Five years later, the situation is quite different.

Conversely, the Front, which has become the National Rally, has registered a significant decline in the ballot box since 2017.

After disappointing legislative elections, the party lost two points in the Europeans of 2019 compared to those of 2014, although arriving by a short head in front of the ruling party.

The municipal elections will have been, by Marine Le Pen's own admission, a setback.

Partly attributable to the health situation linked to Covid-19 which will have demobilized RN voters, considered to be the most subject to abstention, at the polls.

If the next regional could be an opportunity to reconnect with a certain dynamic for the movement, the same health causes could just as easily produce the same electoral effects as during the municipal elections.

The National Gathering can now only count on a base of around 20,000 members.

Its finances are still burdened with twenty millions of debt.

The party treasurer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, recently expressed concern to the weekly

Le

Point

 :

“for the elections we have nothing”

in the coffers.

From the point of view of its own dynamic, the RN and its president, Marine Le Pen, are today in a worse position for the presidential election than five years ago.

To read also: Municipal: is the poll a “big victory” for the RN as Marine Le Pen says?

The current political context, however, counterbalances, in many ways, these structural handicaps of the flame party.

Since the 2019 European elections where it came with a short lead in front of the presidential list, the National Gathering has confirmed its status as the first opponent of the head of state.

Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron have been clashing since then in a duel suffocating any other political force.

Thus succeeding in imposing their cleavage, instead of the eternal right-left opposition.

Regardless of the opinion polls, the two finalists of 2017 are each more than ten points ahead of any other putative candidate in the first round of 2022. Aided in this by the division of the left, and the absence of a

"

 natural candidate" in the ranks of the right.

Unlike 2017, where the protest vote was divided between Marine Le Pen, the leader of rebellious France Jean-Luc Mélenchon and, in a way, the candidate Les Républicains François Fillon, the candidate RN appears, one year from the 'deadline, as the only one likely to overthrow the power in place.

A voting catalyst all the more effective for Marine Le Pen, as the Head of State no longer has, as he did five years ago, a

"surprise effect"

but, on the contrary, carries a balance sheet.

What the former Minister of the Economy of François Hollande, Arnaud Montebourg, sums up by

“oligarchic policies”

and an

“arrogant”

air

in the

Financial Times.

Unlike the second round of 2017, part of the left could - the conditional is important - thus, in the event of a duel in the second round between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, refuse to choose between the two finalists and prefer to sulk the ballot box on polling day.

Rebalancing, in fact, the balance of power in favor of Marine Le Pen.

At least that's what the Harris Interactive institute measured, in a survey revealed by Le Parisien last January.

Thanks to the abstention of nearly one in two left-wing voters, and the reinforcement of a third of the votes of François Fillon in 2017, Marine Le Pen is given 48% in the second round against 52% for Emmanuel Macron.

A deviation less than the margin of error.

In April 2016, an Odoxa poll predicted a victory for Emmanuel Macron the following year with 61% of the vote against 39% for Marine Le Pen.

He will finally win with 66%.

From this perspective, Marine Le Pen benefits from a more favorable context than five years ago.

Many things in the news over the next few months could contribute to shifting, at all, these power struggles.

Starting with the economic and social consequences of the health crisis.

There remains, for Marine Le Pen, a major challenge to be taken up in view of 2022 which already conditioned her chances of victory in 2017: that of credibility.

That is to say, to convince the French of the seriousness of his proposals, especially economic ones, and of the ability of his entourage to embody a possible government team likely to lead the country at his side.

Despite the abandonment of the exit from the euro, the rallying to his candidacy of the former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, Thierry Mariani, of the ex-LR magistrate Jean-Paul Garraud or of the economist Hervé Juvin, the path remains ahead the unsuccessful candidate of 2017.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-04-09

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