EU elections: 'The ceiling blocking Le Pen's ascent is gradually weakening, as the party refines its message'

While it is difficult to draw national conclusions from EU elections, the Rassemblement National's lead in voting intentions is a warning, which, if confirmed, is to be taken seriously, observes Le Monde columnist Françoise Fressoz.

Published on June 6, 2024, at 6:02 pm (Paris) 4 min read Lire en français

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According to the latest voting intention polls, the main uncertainty surrounding the June 9 election is whether the populist temptation exists in France, but rather the level at which it will manifest itself. The Rassemblement National (RN, far-right), led by the party's president, Jordan Bardella, quickly secured the lead, far ahead of all the others, and has solidly remained in pole position throughout the campaign without experiencing any downturn so far. This speed and solidity have discredited any scenarios involving a reversal of trends. The only hope for the RN's opponents – starting with the presidential party, which appears to be a fragile challenger – is to use the final days of the campaign to try and close the gap. In the Ipsos-Le Monde survey published on Monday, June 3, the gap between the RN list (at 33% of voting intentions) and the Renaissance (Macron’s party) list (16%) is 17 points, which is significant when compared with the small one-point gap that separated the two lists just five years ago.

The likelihood of a Bardella-Le Pen victory is such that on Sunday, June 9, all political players will be faced with the question of the appropriate status to give these European elections, which are the only ones to be held at the national level under a proportional single-round voting system. Do they foreshadow a possible victory for Marine Le Pen in the 2027 presidential election, after three consecutive failures? Or is this, on the contrary, an atypical election from which it would be risky to draw national conclusions? No doubt the interpretation will not solely depend on the result. It will be closely linked to the various players' tactical game plans and the degree of clear-headedness they are capable of producing.

At first glance, the assessment of results should be nuanced, since the logic of the two-round majority voting system that prevails for the French presidential election differs so much from that of the European voting system. In the first case, it's about gaining sufficient momentum in the first round to aim to rally the broadest possible electorate in the second. In the other, it's a matter of asserting one's uniqueness from start to finish, in the hope of being the one who will best grasp the public opinion's expectations at that exact moment.

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