Two weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron won a decisive victory over Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election. With more than 20 million votes, he captured 66.1 percent of the electorate, nearly doubling that of his opponent.
This election was historical in a number of ways. It was the first time the second round of voting included neither a member of the center-right Les Républicains nor the center-left Le Parti Socialiste.
Instead, Macron led a centrist party he founded, called En Marche!, and Le Pen represented the party of her father, the infamous ultra-conservative Front National.
France also experienced its worst voter turnout rate since 1969, an abysmal 74 percent, down from well over 80 percent normally. Notably, however, that same figure would represent the best turnout America has seen in more than 120 years.
There were also a record number of blank ballots cast. Nearly nine percent of voters cast a ballot for no one in a display of dissatisfaction with their presidential options — all of which feels reminiscent of our own election some six months ago.
Indeed, the new president of France and president Donald Trump do share some commonalities.
Most importantly, neither of them had ever held elected office prior to becoming president. In fact, no one from the En Marche! party has done so. However, Macron has had an extensive career in public service, once serving as the finance minister for former president François Hollande, which happens to be more extensive than Trump’s résumé.
Both men are, of course, fervently pro-business, having pledged to slash the corporate tax rate, and they each ran campaigns as political outsiders promising to shake up the political system.
Nevertheless, Trump endorsed Le Pen, the extreme-right, anti-immigrant demagogue, who France rejected in favor of centrism and common sense.
When the news broke, many of my liberal friends were quick to celebrate Macron’s victory and congratulate France on not repeating America’s mistake. While there’s much reason to cheer, I would caution them against getting too excited too soon.
In France, there were five prominent candidates on the ballot for the first round of voting, in which Macron won 23.8 percent of the vote. The two candidates on his left captured a combined percentage of just 26, while the two candidates on his right garnered more than 41 percent.
In addition, Marine Le Pen’s Front National party nearly doubled its electoral share since its last appearance in second-round voting 15 years ago.
This year, Le Pen performed best in the regions of France experiencing the highest levels of unemployment. While Germany and the United Kingdom have seen their unemployment rates steadily decline for the last seven years, France’s has remained stagnant.
Like the Democratic Party in the U.S., if Macron doesn’t address these economic issues, the Front National party could see a continued increase in supporters in 2022.
Make no mistake. The tide is not turning in liberals’ favor. A wave of ultra-conservative populism is running through Europe and North America that must not be downplayed, overlooked, or underestimated.
These nationalist ideologies were defeated in the Netherlands and France, but not in the U.S. or the U.K. A dictatorship is forming in Turkey and Germany’s left-leaning Social Democracy party wanes each day.
This victory in France was merely a battle. The war rages on.
thshowal@indiana.edu
