France had its second-round election for president Sunday, and as expected, Emanuel Macron won a second term, the first president to be reelected since Jacques Chirac in 2002. And like Chirac, he beat a Le Pen, in that case, Jean-Marie Le Pen — in Macron’s case, his daughter Marine Le Pen, who some years ago kicked her father out of the Rassemblement national party he once led. Macron also beat Marine Le Pen in the second round in 2017, by 32 points. This year, he won by about half that — 17 or 18 points.
As I pointed out after the first round of voting on Sunday, April 11, Macron came uncomfortably close to being squeezed out by the populist (negative on immigration, leftist on economics) Marine Le Pen on his right and the leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon on his left. Nationally, Macron had 28% of the vote to 23% for Marine Le Pen and 22% for Melenchon.
But in metro Paris (defined as the city of Paris plus seven surrounding departements), which cast 16% of the national vote, Macron actually ran behind Melenchon, 30% to 29%. Marine Le Pen, like populist candidates in Europe and in the United States, ran far behind in the metropole, with only 13%.
In the overseas departments, France d’Outre Mer, Melenchon ran far head with 40% of the vote, to 21% for Marine Le Pen and only 20% for Macron. It’s a familiar pattern: The Left runs ahead in the metropolis and in the ethnic or geographic fringe (many, perhaps a majority, of French overseas voters would be classified as people of color in the U.S.).
In the rest of France — the French heartland, which cast 82% of the national vote — Macron ran ahead of Marine Le Pen in the first round but only by a 3-point margin. Melenchon was third, with 20%. Clearly, some of the blue-collar votes that used to go to France’s Socialists (who held the presidency in 1981-1995 and 2012-17), and which Melenchon hoped to win, went to Marine Le Pen instead.
Macron’s margin in the second round was larger than polling suggested but barely more than half his margin five years ago. Some 40% of this margin came from metro Paris, which is only one-sixth of the country and where he finished behind the leftist candidate in the first round. He has proved for the second time that he can defeat a candidate named Le Pen, and he might well have defeated Melenchon as well if the leftist had made it to the second round. But his reelection may well have just been a case of faute de mieux.
Macron was, after all, by no means the first choice of a majority of French voters. It is easy to imagine, had some things gone differently, him running third behind Marine Le Pen and Melenchon. And since he is ineligible to run for a third term in 2027, it is fairly easy to imagine that another centrist candidate could get squeezed out then.
Remember that Macron’s candidacy did not arise from one of the old parties: He is an enarque, a graduate of the elitists Ecole nationale d’administration, who worked in finance and served in the Socialist government of Francois Hollande and who then created his own party. Whether this personal candidacy can or will be transformed into institutional form is far from clear. Indeed, Melenchon has started campaigning for a majority in the legislative elections in June, and the numbers suggest that an anti-Macron majority is entirely possible.
We in America have gotten used to divided government, with the presidency in the hands of one party and majorities in one or both houses of Congress in the hands of the other. That has been the case for two-thirds of the time starting way back in 1968, and it appears likely to be the case again after the election of 2022. But the electoral system of France’s Fifth Republic seems to have been established to avoid such a result, although it has occurred with some frequency and may again this summer.
The powers that be may heave a sigh of relief over Macron’s reelection, but a look at the numbers suggests that they should feel a sense of discomfort. With Angela Merkel’s longstanding centrist government in Germany utterly repudiated, and the weakness of the underpinnings of Macron’s version of centrism in France becoming apparent, centrists have no cause for complacency.
