A keen observer of French political life and regular contributor to FigaroVox, Maxime Tandonnet, historian and essayist, has notably published André Tardieu. The misunderstood (Perrin, 2019).
Nothing helped. The multiple calls urging the French to go to the polls for the second round of regional and cantonal have fallen into the void. The alert launched by Mr. Jean Castex, the Prime Minister "
To win abstention is to lose democracy
" was not heard. The "
Twenty good reasons to vote
" of the newspaper
Liberation
did not convince the French either ...
In the aftermath of the first round, commentators generally attributed this record abstention rate to the French mistrust of politics increasingly perceived as disconnected from their daily life.
“
Voting is useless
” was the heartfelt cry of many French people, echoed in the media.
The second round of the regional, with an abstention rate almost as high as the first round (65%), despite the multiple calls for civility and warnings, only confirmed this situation.
The failure of the RN, its spectacular defeat in PACA and its retreat everywhere seems to sanction once and for all the impossibility for this isolated party, without possible alliance and still widely demonized, to gain power.
Maxime Tandonnet
In this context, at the end of a 1st round of regional elections marked by the collapse of the presidential party (LREM), and the sharp decline of the National Gathering, most observers considered that the result of the regional meetings did not fundamentally call questioning the balance of power in view of the future major national elections in 2022. A Harris Interactive poll (Challenges) of June 23, the day after the first round confirmed the continuation of the overwhelming domination of the Le Pen / Macron tandem in the presidential election and the poll certainty of the latter's re-election with 54% of the votes against Ms. le Pen.
According to this widely shared vision, nothing had happened at the regional level. Neutralized by massive abstention, they presented themselves as a simple parenthesis in the French political routine. They hadn't even chipped its ice age for four years.
“Between the regional and the presidential, we are talking about two different electoral bodies,”
notes Jérôme Sainte-Marie in Le
Point
. In fact, the daily media ubiquity of the Head of State and the overexposure of Ms. Le Pen (proven by a study entitled "Project Arcadie"), seemed to have preserved, even after the first round of the regional, their tandem dominating the polls for the presidential election.
In truth, it could be that these regional elections, especially the results of the second round, have shaken the political balance of the country much more in its depths than it appears. The failure of the RN, its spectacular defeat in PACA and its retreat everywhere seems to sanction once and for all the impossibility for this isolated party, without possible alliance and still widely demonized, to gain power. This failure could thus weaken the image of Ms. Le Pen as the main opponent of Mr. Macron. Moreover, the republican front, given to death by observers, has shown that it is still and more relevant than ever.
As for the President of the Republic, the bankruptcy of his party underlines that despite popularity polls slightly better than those of his two predecessors, his image is seriously degraded in the electorate and in deep France.
Maxime Tandonnet
As for the President of the Republic, the bankruptcy of his party underlines that despite popularity polls slightly better than those of his two predecessors, his image is seriously degraded in the electorate and in deep France.
The argument that abstentionism affects the categories that support it - young people - does not stand up to analysis: the triumph of abstentionism, precisely, is above all a failure for the power in place which has not succeeded in mobilizing or motivating voters.
The French ruling class continues to offer the spectacle of a policy reduced to the show, to provocations and blows of communication. By giving this image of a vain spectacle intended for the preservation of morocco and turning its back on the common good of the French, it prepared the ground for democratic collapse.
This result of the second round could therefore seriously weaken the dominant poll tandem of the future Le Pen / Macron presidential election. Today, the presidents of right-wing regions, wide winners in Hauts-de-France, Île-de-France and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, are on the rise. It remains for them to confirm their success by finding the words to speak to the vast majority of non-voters and above all, to avoid spoiling everything by falling back into the scourge of the war of the leaders.
