‘Victory’ in defeat? Le Pen raises far right’s glass ceiling, fails to crack it

On her third attempt, Le Pen has moved several steps closer to the Élysée Palace, adding almost 3 million votes to her tally from 2017 and surpassing 40 percent of the vote. Not since World War II has the nationalist far right come this close to power in France. 

“The ideas we represent have reached new heights,” Le Pen told supporters in a defiant speech, hailing a “shining victory” even as she conceded defeat to the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron. The 53-year-old vowed to “keep up the fight” and lead the battle in parliamentary elections in June. 

After five turbulent years marked by violent protests and Covid lockdowns, Le Pen had sought to frame the election as a referendum on the incumbent. She urged voters to “choose between Macron and France”. Some did see the contest that way. More people chose to vote against her.

The far-right leader had hoped the very real detestation of Macron among swaths of French voters would be enough to carry her to victory. Many commentators had made similar conjectures, suggesting a large share of the 22 percent of voters who backed hard-leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round vote might swing behind her purely out of anti-Macronism. Such projections matched the flawed narrative of a country split into two blocs – haves and have-nots, liberals and populists, globalists and localists – in which far left and far right supposedly come full circle to challenge the mainstream. They were wrong.   

“There are not just two Frances, there are at least three,” said Brice Teinturier, head of the Ipsos polling institute, speaking on France Inter radio. “Mélenchon’s France is not soluble in Le Pen’s (…). Its values and aspirations are radically opposed to those of the far right.” 

In the end, the largest share of Mélenchon’s supporters grudgingly voted for Macron, as they did in 2017, while a third abstained or cast blank ballots, according to pollsters. Among those who backed the incumbent, more than 90 percent said they did so to keep the far right at bay. 

The re-elected president acknowledged this with uncharacteristic humility in his victory speech on Sunday. “Many of our compatriots voted for me not out of support for my ideas but to block those of the far right,” he told supporters at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. “I want to thank them and I know that I have a duty towards them in the years to come.” 

A large majority of French voters once saw it as a moral obligation to keep the far right at a low score, banding together in a “republican front”. Some have stopped thinking that way, others are simply tired of having to vote against the Le Pens again and again. Sunday’s result showed enough voters are still willing to rally against the far right, though the margin is shrinking. 

Outdebated, once again 

Le Pen’s party was co-founded by her father 50 years ago on a nationalist, anti-immigrant and distinctly xenophobic platform. Those ideological roots are still enough to mobilise the rump of France’s “republican front” in opposition. But they cannot alone explain the far right’s steady progression since Marine Le Pen took over from her father 11 years ago.  

The scion of the Le Pen dynasty has profoundly transformed her father’s Front National (National Front) party, rebranding it and adopting big-government economic protectionism as its main driver. Not all its supporters vote out of hostility towards immigrants, Islam or the European Union. But Le Pen does speak to many who feel unheard and uncared for by officials in Paris and Brussels. 

The National Rally leader noticeably softened her speech in the run-up to the election, steering clear of controversy and putting a lid on the vituperations that once defined her party. Without renouncing her anti-immigrant stance, she studiously avoided talk of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory championed by extreme-right rival Eric Zemmour, which even the struggling conservative candidate, Valérie Pécresse, clumsily referenced. She knew, no doubt, that their hardline supporters would rally behind her in the run-off. 

When Zemmour surged in the polls in late 2021, critics suggested Le Pen had gone too far in her efforts to “normalise” the former National Front – turning it from radical to bland. But party officials welcomed the shift in perception, noting that some analysts had stopped labelling the National Rally “far right”, adopting alternative labels such as “national populists”. 

As France’s “phoney” campaign entered the final stretch, its shift towards the concerns of low-income workers played into Le Pen’s hands, vindicating the choice of purchasing power as her main theme. It also validated her decision to shun large rallies in favour of small-scale gathering in towns and villages – both a tactical choice and a consequence of her party’s dire financial straits. 

While her rivals bickered on TV sets and Macron focused on the international stage, the National Rally leader spent much of her time mingling with crowds in depressed areas, showcasing her ability to connect with ordinary people. She cast herself as the “candidate of concrete solutions”, detailing plans to curb the price of gas, petrol, wheat and other staples. 

The strategy was aimed at drumming up support among what is already a consolidated voting group, said Jérôme Sainte-Marie, head of the Polling Vox institute. “Le Pen’s electorate has become a class-based one, combining blue-collar workers and employees, most of them low-earners from the private sector,” he explained. “Their vote signals both support for Le Pen and her platform, and also a form of social identity.” 

The measured, focused, low-profile campaign was enough to push Le Pen into the second round. But when scrutiny increased ahead of the run-off, cracks quickly emerged. She began to muddy her message, unsure as to how she could lure Mélenchon’s backers without forfeiting Zemmour’s (admittedly, an impossible ask). While Macron took the fight to her working-class heartland, she vanished from the radars, hiding from the public eye to prepare her great revenge in a rematch of their farcical televised debate of 2017. 

Le Pen had spent the past five years trying to erase memories of that fiasco. But her attempt to dispel concerns about her fitness for the job was largely derailed as Macron zeroed in on her ties to Russia and her plans to ban Muslim women from wearing headscarves in public. 

The far-right candidate hoped to land punches on the issues of poverty and spending power but struggled as Macron repeatedly questioned her grasp of economic figures. Crucially, she mostly failed to put the incumbent on the defensive, allowing him to evade scrutiny of his turbulent five years in office. 

Competition good for Le Pen 

While Le Pen has made huge strides in “de-demonising” her party – or, rather, in trivialising it – the National Rally leader is yet to close the credibility gap that is also keeping her from power. She has carried the far right to unprecedented heights but is still some distance from the Elysée Palace. 

“This is the eighth time defeat strikes the Le Pen family name,” Zemmour said on Sunday, adding Jean-Marie Le Pen’s many presidential runs to his daughter’s three. In the coming months or years, the rabble-rousing former pundit is likely to challenge her once more for control of the nationalist far right. 

The challenge is not necessarily bad news for Le Pen. In fact, the competition has proven to be beneficial for the National Rally leader, focusing attention on the far right, further weakening mainstream conservatives, and adding a reservoir of votes for run-off elections. Above all, it has eroded the ostracism her party suffered from for decades, adding potential allies where previously there were none. 

>> How Zemmour’s storm in a teacup hijacked French campaign – and helped Le Pen

Far from weakening Le Pen in this campaign, Zemmour’s incendiary attacks on immigrants and Muslims helped trivialise the far right while allowing the National Rally leader to come across as more respectable. While Zemmour ultimately flopped, abandoned by “tactical” voters who rallied behind Le Pen, his candidacy also revealed the extent to which the French far right can count on the indulgence and complicity of a growing segment of the media.

Adding up the first-round votes won by Le Pen, Zemmour and nationalist right-winger Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the far right’s combined total soared to an unprecedented 32.5 percent – underscoring a profound shift in the French electorate. The tally gives Le Pen’s camp a formidable springboard for future polls, starting with highly unpredictable parliamentary elections in June. 

Far-right Le Pen plots parliament win after loss to Macron

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A more accurate indicator than the presidential run-off, results from the first round on April 10 signalled the emergence of three camps of roughly equal weight: a centre-right bloc gravitating around Macron, a far-right bloc dominated by Le Pen, and a scattered left emboldened by Mélenchon’s radical pitch. How those three blocs will perform in June is anyone’s guess. 

In his victory speech in 2017, Macron had promised to “do everything” in his power to ensure the French “no longer have any reason to vote for the extremes”. Five years later, the far right has added almost 3 million votes to its tally and the mainstream centre-left has been supplanted by Mélenchon’s more radical force.

That populist, anti-establishment parties should have come closer to power than ever before is hardly a surprise. Having completed his takeover of the political mainstream, Macron has left space only for radical forces to flourish. There can be no democracy without the possibility of an alternative. Right now, the only alternatives thrive outside the mainstream.