How exciting are the elections?
“If you look at the polls, you can see that Macron’s lead over Le Pen has increased. Two weeks ago, immediately after the first round of elections, Macron barely had a lead, now the difference is about 10 percentage points. Looks like he’s going to win.
However, his re-election is not a certainty, Le Pen has better cards than ever. Take the voters who chose the radical left-wing Mélenchon in the first round: about half of them are not known for whom they will vote.’
You were just at a protest of the yellow vest movement on the Place de la République in Paris. Was it busy?
‘That wasn’t too bad, there were a handful of people at the end of the morning. They called for greater citizen participation in democracy. And some of them want to check today whether the polls are fair. They also advocate the introduction of a citizens’ initiative referendum. There may be great dissatisfaction with the elections, but the call to protest for more citizen participation seems to have triggered little so far.’
So why is there so much discontent about these elections?
“A lot of French people today don’t vote for Macron or Le Pen, they vote against the other. I heard that again this morning at the polling stations. A large proportion of Macron voters don’t want him as president so much as they want to prevent Le Pen from becoming president. The same applies the other way around. The feeling that the second round of elections is about voting for the lesser of two evils has been around for years, but the fatigue about it seems to be growing. Another factor is that anti-Macron sentiment is much greater than five years ago.’
Where does this aversion to Macron come from?
France has long struggled with a deep rift between the part of the population that is well off and the part that sees life constantly getting harder. Five years ago, as a novice and relative outsider, Macron raised hopes that he could reconcile divided France. He failed to do that. He has become a symbol of an urban, highly educated France that benefits from globalization.
‘In recent years, for example, he has implemented a tax cut for the rich, with the underlying idea that this would allow them to make more investments and create more jobs. The question is whether they will come and who will benefit. Unemployment has fallen, but inequality has not.
“It is also important that he spoke quite harshly about parts of the population, especially in times of corona. He even said that people who didn’t want to get vaccinated aren’t actually citizens. Those are hefty texts.’
If Macron is reelected, what will he have to do?
His agenda is largely similar to that of 2017: reconciling France with globalization, tackling the fault line in society and reforming the pension system.
“Things have really changed in the last five years, such as the flexibilization of the labor market, but Macron says the yellow vest movement and the corona pandemic have prevented him from being able to implement his entire agenda. Give me another five years, then I can finish what I started, is his story.’
What does it mean for France if Marine le Pen wins?
‘In these elections she mainly put forward her socio-economic agenda. She wants to lower the tax on energy from 20 to 5.5 percent, abolish the tax on food and protect French agriculture by importing considerably less agricultural products. There are big questions about the financial viability of her plans.
‘She also wants to give priority to people with French nationality on matters such as social housing, work and benefits. To do this, she has to implement a constitutional amendment, because it states that everyone has equal rights. She wants migrants outside the EU to apply for asylum, put French law above European law and enable border controls to check products for fraud. That goes against European and international agreements.’
When will we know more about who won the election?
The polls will close at 8 p.m. tonight and the first exit polls will be published shortly after. Certainly if the two candidates are close to each other, they do not provide a definitive answer. In the course of the evening more and more results will come in, until the point has been reached where the Ministry of the Interior says: now there is a winner.’