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President Emmanuel Macron on an election campaign tour in northern France: The regional elections as a political seismograph
Photo: JACQUES WITT / AFP
The French regional elections, which will take place in two rounds this and next Sunday, seem rather insignificant at first glance.
The regional presidents have too little to report in the centralized republic, their competencies seem too marginal: road construction, subsidies, school canteens.
But this impression is deceptive, especially this year: Less than eleven months before the presidential elections, in which it seems to be a duel between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen from the Rassemblement National (RN), the regional elections can be understood as political seismographs.
Even on the morning of the first ballot, it is still unclear whether there will be only minor tremors in the electorate or a real tremor.
What do the regional elections say about the presidential election?
Unlike at the national level, the formerly large parties, the social democratic Parti Socialiste and the conservative Les Républicains, have not yet eroded in the regions. You won the office of regional president in eleven of the twelve regions on the French mainland in the last elections. La République en marche, on the other hand, President Macron's party, was not even founded at the time, in December 2015. To this day, it lacks structures in the area, as well as candidates; she has little chance of victory in any region. In contrast to several candidates from Marine Le Pen.
To infer the presidential elections directly from the outcome of the regional elections would be wrong, and Macron is likely to make public efforts to downplay the election results.
Internally, however, it will look different - because the elections hold explosive power that will affect the presidential election campaign.
First, we will see how open the French are to political extremes, after more than a year of pandemic and general dissatisfaction.
And secondly, it will become clear whether the parties continue to regard the right-wing radical RN as a common enemy or as a party like any other.
Will Marine Le Pen benefit from the election?
The RN has never succeeded in gaining a regional presidency. But with every election he comes closer to power. In 2015, right-wing populists won the most votes in the first round in six of the twelve mainland regions, sometimes with a huge lead. The fact that they were defeated in the second round was mainly due to the so-called Front républicain, the agreement between left and right parties to unite against the RN if the worst came to the worst.
This unity has been crumbling for many years, but in 2015 it prevented regional presidents of the RN in both the north and south of France, namely Marine Le Pen and her niece Marion Maréchal. At that time, two Social Democrats withdrew their candidacy before the second round, in the hope that their voters would vote for the conservative competition to stop Le Pen and Maréchal in the runoff election. With success.
It is precisely those regions, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the south, Hauts-de-France in the north, that are particularly competitive this summer. In the south, the RN's candidate, Thierry Mariani, is ahead of the polls. In the north, RN candidate Sébastien Chenu is almost on par with the conservative competition. These two names are worth mentioning because they illustrate well the conservative identity crisis. Both Mariani and Chenu are former Republicans who defected to the RN. They confront their former party with questions that the Conservatives have been grappling with for a number of years: How credibly can we distinguish ourselves from the RN if our own people are running for them? And how do we mark our field politically, encircled between the center-right Macronists and an RN,which can now be connected to the bourgeois-conservative camp?
With a view to the presidential elections, many Republicans are upset that their party colleague Renaud Muselier in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur has now put Macronists on his electoral list. They fear that the party will become completely arbitrary. There are many indications that Muselier actually gambled away. According to a poll, 44 percent of Republican sympathizers would prefer to vote for the RN candidate Mariani. And the front républicain? Could be of little use even if the left alliance candidate withdraws. Most of their voters want to invalidate or not vote at all in the second ballot.
For Le Pen, a victory for their candidate in the prestigious region, which includes cities like Nice and Marseille, would be extremely valuable.
Not only because he would finally anchor her RN in the regular party spectrum at the start of the presidential election campaign.
But mainly because it would be the first obvious step towards a proper changing of the guard.
And nothing strengthened their ambitions for the Elysée Palace as much as Republicans lost in search of themselves.
And what's up on the left?
In one respect, Le Pen won even before the election. Would the regional elections actually be an occasion where left-wing parties could dominate the debate with their issues - social housing, transport turnaround, emergency in the health system - everyone talked about security and migration, although no regional politician would have anything to say on these matters. In other words, topics that traditionally left parties are not particularly interested in - it is therefore hardly surprising that they are barely noticeable in the media debate.
But their problem goes much deeper than just successful agenda-setting from the right: On the left, elections can hardly be won in France today, regardless of whether regional or national. According to a new study, just under one in five French people classify themselves as politically left, while more than twice as many as politically right, and the trend is rising. Noteworthy: It is the young French in particular, among whom this shift to the right is observed.