Laurent Chalard is a geographer and works at the European Center for International Affairs. Find him on his
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Presidential 2022: find here the result of the first round of the election
Is Emmanuel Macron left or right?
This question has tormented the French and the editorialists throughout the five-year term which has just passed, the tenant of the Elysée sending contradictory messages according to the context of the moment.
Like the origin of the Etruscans, this question may also have no meaning in a world where traditional political divisions have been shattered.
In fact, over the past ten years, new reading grids have emerged ignoring the bipolarity inherited from the French political field, including one that would oppose the winners of globalization, concentrated in the large metropolises, to the losers, who live in the rest of the territory.
However, a detailed analysis of the evolutions of the electoral geography of the first round of the presidential elections between 2017 and 2022 shows that the French now seem to identify the outgoing President of the Republic with a certain political affiliation.
During the first round of 2017, the mapping of the vote of the future newly elected, Emmanuel Macron, was distinguished by a certain specificity in relation to the geographical distribution of the votes cast for the main parties which had dominated the French political scene for several decades, the Parti Socialist, on the left, and Les Républicains, on the right.
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Indeed, the candidate of En Marche appeared to combine two types of territory: on the one hand, the heart of the large metropolises benefiting from globalization, where the most educated and wealthiest populations are concentrated, and, on the other side, the centrist France of the François Bayrou vote of 2007, corresponding to a part of the center-west and south-west of France, which is characterized by a rejection of extremes and a fairly good socio-economic situation with relatively few inequality.
On the other hand, the candidate of the classic right, François Fillon, maintained a classic geography, with strong points in the chic suburbs of western Paris and in the well-off territories
of the rest of the country, such as wine-growing areas or in the old province of Savoy.
On the left, the candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who had largely prevailed over the socialist Benoît Hamon,
also displayed a certain classicism in the distribution of his electorate with an overrepresentation in the popular suburbs of the large metropolises and in the Southwest.
The geography of the vote for the current President has changed, reflecting the changing perception of the candidate within the French population.
Laurent Chalard
Logically, we expected that the results of the first round of the 2022 presidential elections for Emmanuel Macron would largely repeat the pattern of 2017. However, the geography of the vote for the current President has changed, testifying to the change in the perception of the candidate within the French population.
Indeed, if the centrist bastions of 2017 are preserved, on the other hand, the progression of the Macron vote is only made in the territories
historically acquired by the Republicans, the outgoing President purely and simply replacing François Fillon.
The observation is particularly striking in what I call the "chosen peri-urban space" in the Ile-de-France region, located to the west of Versailles in the Yvelines, where there has been a substitution of
The typical example is the town of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, which has one of the highest median household incomes in the country, where Emmanuel Macron won 48.61% of the vote in 2022 while his competitor unfortunate of 2017 had a score of 54.39%.
The same trend is found in the well-to-do outskirts of large provincial cities.
In Saint-Cyr-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon, where François Fillon won 49.99% of the votes cast in 2017, Macron reached 46.98% in 2022, in Saint-Marc-Jaumegarde,
commune bordering Aix-en-Provence at the foot of the Sainte Victoire mountain, where 46.35% of the votes went in 2017 to the former Prime Minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, the outgoing President is at 39.5% in 2022 , and in Bondues, a municipality in the "BMW" golden triangle of the Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing conurbation, the 54.58% of the Republican candidate in 2017 gave way to Macron's 50.78% in 2022.
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A similar process occurred in other areas of strength for the traditional right, such as the rich wine regions of eastern France (Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne).
For example, in Pommard in Côte d'Or, well known to oenologists, Emmanuel
Macron won 41.33% of the vote in 2022 against 45.71% for François Fillon in 2017. Similarly, in Savoie, Chiraquian land par excellence, in the pretty Tresserve on the shores of Lake Bourget on the edge of Aix-les-Bains, the outgoing President won 36.99% of the vote in 2022 against 40.51% for the candidate Les Républicains in 2017.
In five years, we have therefore witnessed a change in the Macronist electoral geography, which has shifted from centrist to a strong right, its territorial strengths increasingly covering those of the traditional right, which corresponds to a change in the perception of the political positioning of the President of the Republic during the five-year term,
thus making it possible to answer our initial question.
At the beginning of his mandate, a large part of the right-wing electorate retained a mistrust of a former minister from the socialist party, which is more of François Hollande, reviled, not so much for his political position, all in all rather center left, than for his immobility and his rejection of the traditional values to which part of the right remained attached (think of the mobilization against Marriage for All).
Emmanuel Macron quickly shifted to the right in public opinion, especially as he was increasingly hated by the far left.
Laurent Chalard
Then, over time, whether in terms of economic or liberal policy, or the way of exercising power, with the demand for a certain class consciousness, or the absence of concessions in the face of to the revolt of the yellow vests, perceived by the elites as a jacquerie to be severely repressed, Macron quickly shifted to the right within public opinion, especially as he was at the same time increasingly hated by the extreme left.
The management of the health crisis with the choice to adopt draconian measures to protect the oldest
and most fragile has only confirmed Emmanuel Macron's anchorage to the right.
On arrival, the Les Républicains party found itself completely emptied of its substance, the President of the Republic having taken over most of its program and its ideas, a phenomenon reinforced by the choice of a candidate, Valérie Pécresse, which only appeared to the right-wing electorate as a vulgar copy of the original, minus the charisma.
It follows that the latter logically turned to the candidate who seemed to him to best defend his values on the economic level in a context where the fear of the accession of the far right to power remains, a certain scarecrow for the wealthy retirees.
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The Les Républicains party therefore faces a difficult dilemma to resolve: accept the situation out of pragmatism and rally entirely behind the presidential majority, allowing it to weigh in on decisions, or, on the contrary, try to maintain an individuality, which cannot than going through a policy different from that of Macron intended for another electoral clientele, the popular right.
Either way, history will remember the perfect takeover of the main right-wing party of a former investment banker with no real political base at the origin, which should be taught in all schools of political science from France and Navarre!