“Emmanuel Macron is the most poorly elected president of the Fifth Republic.
His presidential monarchy survives by default, ”assured Jean-Luc Mélenchon in a speech, after the announcement of the results of the presidential election this Sunday evening.
Is the leader of France Insoumise right?
Not really.
According to the first estimates of the Ipsos Sopra Steria institute, if we count abstention as well as null and blank votes, Emmanuel Macron would have been re-elected by 42% of those registered.
According to Mathieu Gallard, research director of the polling institute, Emmanuel Macron would count more than 18 million votes, against just over 13 million for Marine Le Pen.
🇬🇧🗳️ Estimated results in votes:
🟠 Macron: ~18.6 million (-2.1 million)
⚫️ Le Pen: ~13.3 million (+2.7 million)
⚪️ Whites/Dummies: ~3.2 million (-0.9 million)
⚪️ Abstention: ~13.7 million (+1.6 million) pic.twitter.com/991YF3GS6A
— mathieu gallard (@mathieugallard) April 24, 2022
Although abstention was high during this election (around 28% according to estimates), it did not reach the level of that of 1969. During the second round, Georges Pompidou, who succeeded General de Gaulle, won with 58.21% of the vote.
But he was elected by a minority of voters (around 37% of registered voters), with more than 30% abstention.
Because of the importance of this abstention, he was also nicknamed "Monsieur Thiers" (a double reference, with Adolphe Thiers, the "winner" of the commune) by the PCF.
Three-quarters of the communist electorate, nearly 5 million votes in the first round, abstained or voted white on this occasion.
In the end, Emmanuel Macron even does better than Jacques Chirac in 1995 (39.43% of registrants) or François Hollande in 2012 (39.08%).
Jean-Luc Mélenchon's assertion is therefore false.
