Macron’s political earthquake continues to roar

Emmanuel Macron is approaching his historic re-election as France’s president after his first-round victory over his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen. Investors should feel comfortable, but not complacent. Round two on April 24 will be close.

Preliminary results show that the parties of the French establishment are in dire straits. An increasingly fragmented electorate is looking for new answers after Covid-19 and the Ukraine war that has broadened the country’s protective umbrella without eliminating fears of rising inflation.

Socialist Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo scored a goal at 1.5%, while center-right Valerie Pecresse scored 5% – the worst ever for both parties. The Fifth Republic lies in uncharted territory, where both Macron and Le Pen’s rules of white- and blue-collar electorate displace left and right tribes in the 20th century.

Emptying the center benefits radicals of all stripes. Jean-Luc Melenchon of the far left came in third with an impressive 21.9%. Meanwhile, hard-line anti-immigration expert Eric Zemmour had 7%. Even as Melench urged his followers to keep Le Pen out of power, a large portion of them think the opposite: Le Pen’s vote, or no vote at all, to oust Macron.

Shifting loyalties and a growing proportion of candidates to punish elites – Le Pen, Mélenchon and Zemmour received more than 50% of the vote – have made French politics more unpredictable, even as the post-Covid situation is more generous than ever. Macron will find it difficult to build a comfortable voting cushion of frustrated voters, as pollsters estimated his poll share on April 24 at 51%-54%.

Even if Macron remains the front-runner, his lead is slim — and weak — compared to his last presidential run-off against Le Pen in 2017, when he scored 66%.

After a modest campaign in which he refused to discuss his rivals, Macron will have no choice but to fight his opponent head-on. He can claim an improved economy and renewed European influence. But he will also realize that his previous reformist zeal will not win over Le Pen voters who want more protectionism, or Melenchon voters who want to prioritize fighting inequality. Citizens want protection, thinks Catherine Fishey of Counterpoint Consulting, making any second Macron term different from the first — not least with the formation of parliament about to change.

In the meantime, Le Pen will be a serious contender against Macron. It has scrapped its most toxic policy proposals – such as the explicit “Frexit” pledge – in favor of budgeting under 30s and courting Mélenchon’s retirement age of 60. In addition to targeting the far-left’s fickle voices, he will also hope to capitalize on the turmoil in the Peaks party, which is already divided over who to support.

Diplomats in other European capitals are watching with alarm: A Le Pen victory would be a thunderbolt for the European Union. Besides the immediate impact of a candidate with ties to Putin who criticizes anti-Russian sanctions on Ukraine’s war effort, there is a real danger of institutional stalemate and internal battles over budgets, terms of trade and the rule of law. Le Pen’s calls to favor French goods and take back the authorities from Brussels increase the de facto risk of Frexit, according to Christine Verger, vice president of the Jacques Delors Institute.

Here, too, Macron will have to pit his European project against Le Pen’s, while simultaneously resisting the urge to focus solely on her extremism – her image as a candidate focused on consumers’ purchasing power has honed her position with voters, and that will take more than two weeks to undo.

The stakes in this election for Europe and the world are high. France is the second largest economy in the European Union and the only nuclear power at a time when geopolitical and energy relations on the continent are undergoing a radical change. History is moving again, says Arnold Toynbee: Macron is set to be either the first fifth republican president to win re-election since 2002, or the first to lose to the far right. The incumbent proves that his rise was no historical coincidence, but also confirms that French democracy is stuck in a “crisis,” as Christopher Dembek of Saxo Bank put it. It will take more than a 2017 reboot to fix it.

More from Bloomberg Opinion:

Macron’s “revolution” faces reckoning: Lionel Laurent

• Le Pen finally gets the market’s attention: John Others

• Ukraine reinforces Macron’s call for the European army: James Stavridis

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial staff or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Lionel Laurent is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion covering the European Union and France. Previously he worked for Reuters and Forbes.

More stories like this are available at bloomberg.com/opinion

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