Bloomberg: Eight Maps That Explain France’s Macron-Le Pen Election

For the first time in modern-day France, neither of the two mainstream parties made the second round of a presidential election. In their place, Emmanuel Macron, a former Socialist economy minister who left the party to run for the presidency, and Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Front, will face off on May 7.

Here are eight maps to help make sense of all that’s scrambling the political landscape in France—from anti-establishment frustration to blue-collar angst and urban-rural divide.

In Sunday’s presidential first-round election, Macron won many departments—like counties—that went Socialist in 2012. Le Pen, by contrast, made most of her gains in the heartlands of the center-right. Both were aided by the poor performance of the candidates from those parties. Macron ultimately won 33 departments and territories that current President Francois Hollande had won in 2012, while Le Pen picked up 30 that had gone to UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. (France has 96 mainland departments plus several overseas departments and territories.)

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The Intercept: Trump Hopes Paris Attack Boosts Le Pen, One Day After Obama Calls Macron

Trump’s barely concealed endorsement of Le Pen — who wants to deport or prosecute more than 10,000 people on a terrorism watchlist and take France out of the European Union — comes one day after his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, tried to boost the chances of the centrist, pro-European candidate, Emmanuel Macron, with a friendly phone call trumpeted by Macron’s campaign. 

Despite the hopes of Trump, and his strategist Steve Bannon, who previously championed Le Pen through rapturous Breitbart News coverage, it remains unclear if the majority of French voters, who tell pollsters they will vote for anyone but Le Pen if she makes it to a second-round runoff, will be swayed by the shooting. [...]

In other news that might have gotten more attention if not for the attack in Paris, Francois Fillon, the center-right candidate polling in third place, suggested that a journalist who was interviewing him had failed to understand his platform because she was pregnant during the campaign, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing candidate surging in recent weeks, welcomed the endorsement of Pamela Anderson, who praised his promise to offer asylum in France to Julian Assange.

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Haaretz: Le Pen's Real Sin? Roping in the Jews With the Muslims as a Threat to France

Jacques Chirac deserves credit for being the first French president to puncture the myth of Vichy being an aberration of history, when at the time of the deportation of Jews it enjoyed overwhelming popular support. The same Chirac, however, helped forge France's special relationship with Saddam Hussein at a time that the Iraqi dictator called for Israel's fiery destruction. 

What prompted Le Pen to issue the statement was her essentially correct instinct that a successful fight-back against an Islamic takeover of France required France to shed a sense of guilt and shame. As Andrew Michta has recently written in the American Interest the narratives fostered in academia and the media equating the West's colonialist past to original sin have sapped Western self-confidence. This all-pervading sense of guilt (according to Michta) has been appeased by the embrace of multiculturalism, whereby immigrants were no longer expected to embrace the values of the host country and Islamophobia was viewed as a greater problem than the establishment of no-go zones ruled by sharia law. Another tactic in seeking absolution, which Michta does not mention, is to transfer the guilt to others, for example the United States or Israel. [...]

Macron, who will probably get most of the Jewish vote, and was himself targeted with anti-Semitic slurs due to the years he worked in the Rothschild bank, also fell into this pattern. He decried the fact that an increasing number of pupils are studying in religious schools that inculcate hatred for the republic, be they Muslim schools where studies are essentially in Arabic "or elsewhere where they teach the Torah more than the basic skills." As measured by success in matriculation exams, Jewish schools that study Torah surpass the national average by a healthy percentage – but facts cannot get in the way of evenhandedness. The fourth major contender, far leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, is exempted from this list because he believes that the Muslims are sweetness and light and the Jewish umbrella organization CRIF is "acrimonious".

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Politico: French election: key questions for the final days

Mélenchon has campaigned on leftist populist themes, giving vent to “the rage” of the people against the rich and calling for a “citizens’ insurrection” against France’s globalized elite. His platform is based on more taxes for the well-to-do, massive public spending, and a promise to push for a major overhaul of the European Union’s founding treaties, with the threat of leaving the EU if he doesn’t get his way. There’s little to no chance other EU governments would agree to his demands, which would make a French exit from the union more than likely. 

The big question is whether increased attacks on his character and scrutiny of his platform will stop his rise in the polls. His suggestion that France should join the so-called “Bolivarian alliance”, an economic treaty between Cuba and Venezuela with Iran, Syria and Russia as “observers,” could give pause to socialist voters who are considering backing Mélenchon because they consider Macron too centrist for their tastes. [...]

It is possible. The National Front leader has fallen from around 28 percent of the vote in early February to about 21 to 22 percent now. She was considered two months ago the favorite in the first round by a comfortable margin. But she is now threatened by both Mélenchon and Fillon, the conservative candidate who has proved surprisingly resilient in the face of multiple scandals. Mélenchon is picking up votes from Le Pen, but her main threat is Fillon, who has based his campaign on hard-right themes, notably on social issues, which appeal to core National Front voters. According to the daily IFOP survey, both Mélenchon and Fillon are still 3 percentage points behind Le Pen, but there is still time for many undecided voters to make up (or change) their minds. [...]

Macron is trying to compensate for the youthful, at times amateurish, nature of his presidential run — he has never appointed a campaign manager — with increased energy. He filled the Zenith, Paris’ largest arena, with 20,000 people for a rally Monday night and is planning to campaign non-stop this week, culminating with three rallies on the same day in his home region of Picardie on Friday. He remains vulnerable to a self-inflicted injury, such as a major gaffe, but has sounded more disciplined in recent days as the race tightens.

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Quartz: All but one of France’s presidential candidates want to reverse globalization

Ten out of the 11 candidates competing to be France’s next president have pledged to fight the forces of globalization in myriad ways. If polls are any indication, French voters may end up deciding between protectionist Marine Le Pen, of France’s far-right National Front, and globalist Emmanuel Macron, the upstart candidate pushing a liberal agenda. [...]

Macron is the only candidate explicitly in favor (link in French) of the comprehensive free trade deal between Canada and the EU. The pact, which has yet to be ratified by EU national parliaments, would make it easier and cheaper for French companies to export goods and services to Canada (roughly 10,000 French companies export to Canada). Most other candidates argue these agreements benefit big multinational companies at the expense of the environment, and French workers and consumers. The exception is conservative candidate François Fillon, whose stance on the pact is neither here nor there. [...]

The protectionist bent is not new (pdf) to France. In a 2016 year study (pdf) by German think tank the Bertelsmann Foundation, 54% of the French considered globalization as a threat, a higher proportion than every other EU country except Austria, thanks in part to immigration fears. In a separate YouGov poll published last year, French respondents were least likely to see globalization as a force for good, and ranked second to last among countries surveyed on its view of immigrants (ahead of Indonesia).

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America Magazine: French presidential candidates are breaking tradition by playing the religion card.

Two of the most interesting photo ops of France’s current presidential election campaign took place last month 2,000 miles away in Lebanon—and they were all about religious optics.In one, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen called off a scheduled meeting with Grand Mufti Abdellatif Deriane just outside his Beirut office when the Muslim cleric’s staff insisted she don a headscarf before going in for the meeting. With the video cameras rolling, she emphatically refused. 

Later that day, with the same media entourage in tow, she smiled and exchanged pleasantries with Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, leader of Lebanon’s Maronite Christians and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. [...]

After several deadly attacks by militant Islamists in recent years and sliding support for the main parties, politicians—especially from the right and far-right—are harking back to a secularized version of France’s traditional Catholic identity as one of several ways to mobilize voters. [...]

But Francois Fillon showed in November that there were still lots of votes to win on the right when he swept the primary of the Republicans—the main conservative party—by openly appealing to traditional Catholics angered by the Socialist government’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2013.

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Associated Press: Non merci: French voters reject corruption in politics

The change is the result of an aggressive new financial prosecutor, an unprecedented anti-corruption drive by President Francois Hollande, and growing public frustration with a political establishment seen as intent on enriching itself even as ordinary people suffer.

Hollande on Thursday inaugurated the French anti-corruption agency, a public organization focusing on business activity — the latest move in government efforts to fight corruption.

Five years ago, Hollande campaigned on the promise to make the French Republic "exemplary." He probably didn't think he would have so much clean up to do in his own camp.

Former Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux on Tuesday became the fifth minister to quit the Socialist government over financial wrongdoing allegations. Prosecutors opened an investigation into a report that he hired his two daughters for some two dozen temporary parliamentary jobs, starting when they were 15 and 16 years old.

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Politico: Le Pen’s Dutch bummer

The Dutch were in a tetchily Euroskeptic mood in the days after Britain’s Brexit vote, with nearly half saying they wanted out of the EU. But the anti-Brussels mood has since cooled. A poll by TNS Nipo for Deutsche bank in February showed a whopping 79 percent of Dutch voters did not agree the Netherlands would be better off outside the EU. [...]

Le Pen should take note. The Dutch vote marks the second time in a year that a Euroskeptic candidate came up short on polling day. Last December, far-right candidate Norbert Hofer lost Austria’s presidential run-off. His supporters blamed arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage for suggesting that Austria would hold a referendum on leaving the EU if Hofer won.

Given that polls in France show a rising majority in favor of EU membership, and an even higher share in favor of staying in the euro, Le Pen is trying to tone down her own Frexit proposal. Yet she, too, is branded with the Euroskeptic seal, and her efforts to change tack with a plan that would somehow combine a revived franc with a single European currency have left voters confused. [...]

While voters rate the National Front president very highly on metrics such as “sincerity,” “desire to change” or ability to “understand them,” nearly two thirds of voters said that she was “worrying,” according to an Elabe poll conducted in February. The scandal-tainted Fillon also rated highly on the worry-meter, while Macron registered lower at 41 percent, according to the poll.

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Bloomberg: A Le Pen Win Would Be Dangerous for Putin and Russia’s Economy

Far-right French presidential contender Marine Le Pen’s party has received financing from a Russian bank and gets positive coverage in Russia’s state-run media. Does that mean the Kremlin actually wants to see her elected? Not necessarily: Le Pen’s promise to take France out of the euro zone — which could break up the European single currency — might well devastate Russia’s economy and financial stability. [...]

The 28-member European Union remains by far Russia’s largest commercial partner despite a contraction in trade in recent years after the longest Russian recession in two decades and sanctions imposed because of the Ukraine conflict. Russia’s exports to the euro zone ($91 billion) are almost four times what it sells to China and nearly 11 times the amount of Russian imports in the U.S. [...]

Russia appears most concerned to shore up support for former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, a pro-Kremlin figure who's been hit by a family finance scandal. His presidential rival Emmanuel Macron this week accused Russia of meddling in the French election by putting out fake news through its media outlets.

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The New York Times: Broad Strokes Propel Emmanuel Macron in French Presidential Race, for Now

If any surer sign was needed that Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former minister of the economy, is the new front-runner in France’s presidential race, look no further than the concentrated volley of wild attacks against him. Even the Russians, via pro-Kremlin websites, are piling on.

France’s two major parties, on the right and the left, are in self-inflicted ruin, the first downed by the corruption scandal surrounding François Fillon, and the second by a utopian dreamer, Benoît Hamon. [...]

Yet Mr. Macron has never been elected to anything. He served two largely unsuccessful years directing France’s vast but sluggish economy, with scant accomplishment in his wake. He is not a member of either major party, or of any party, and is disliked by many of the Socialists in whose government he served. He claims to transcend the parties. [...]

He spoke of lowering taxes on companies, restraining capitalism, swiped at the “obscurantism” of Trump’s America and denounced the National Front for “betraying fraternity because it detests those faces that don’t resemble it.”

Mostly, it wasn’t concise or specific, but the crowd had not come for that.

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Quartz: To defeat Marine Le Pen, France’s center-left must put their nation ahead of party politics

As a result, growing numbers of mainstream liberals are frantically plotting to abandon their radical Socialist wing to block the anti-immigrant, Muslim-bashing, and far more electable Le Pen junior from qualifying for the May ballot. (The French presidential election has two rounds, one on April 23 and the decider on May 7, with the two first-place getters in the first ballot qualifying for the final). Ahead of Sunday, senior Socialist party figures are signaling they will, if required, break away from the hard-left tax and spend candidate Benoit Hamon. Hamon is favored to defeat ex-prime minister Manuel Valls for his party’s nomination but seems unlikely to vanquish Le Pen.

Enter Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old independent candidate is a dynamic if relative newcomer to French politics whose centrist, modernizing stance could, according to his backers, unite the moderate left faithful and pull votes away from the embattled center-right. Macron resigned in 2016 as outgoing president Francois Hollande’s economy minister after pushing through landmark labor law reforms. He is running on an economically liberal, pro-Europe platform under the banner of his political grouping, “On the Move.” [...]

Macron already has the friendly ear of former Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal. Other sympathizers include supporters of Valls. A group of MPs allied with Valls’s push for the nomination have started circulating a communique to release early next week, paving the way for a mass defection to Macron. Even France’s Green party has signaled it may be willing to join forces. Dany ‘The Red” Cohn-Bendit, co-founder of the ecologist party EELV, said he was ready to vote for Macron because he was “the only candidate” who could avoid the impossible dilemma of a Le Pen-Fillon duel. Cohn-Bendit explained (link in French) Macron’s vertiginous rise in the polls as evidence of “a desire for renewal, new faces, new ideas, new personalities.”

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Politico: ‘Penelopegate’ hits François Fillon’s approval ratings

François Fillon’s bid for the French presidency is already suffering from the fallout of a scandal over disputed payments to his wife, according to opinion polls.

According to a poll carried out since the scandal broke, 61 percent of French voters have a “negative” or “very negative” view of the conservative former prime minister, while the proportion of “positive views” of Fillon plummeted to 39 percent from 54 percent before “Penelopegate” became top news.

Fillon, who until recently was the hands-down favorite to win May’s presidential election, is struggling to draw a line under the scandal. On Thursday, he was placed under preliminary investigation on suspicion that he may have abused public funds by paying his wife €500,000 over eight years for a parliament job that she did not actually do. [...]

With the scandal just three days old, Odoxa’s poll is the first sign that Penelopegate is having an impact on the public view of Fillon, so far the favorite for the presidency. It also highlighted widespread frustration with the cozy practice of hiring spouses in parliament, with 76 percent of respondents saying they would like to see the practice banned.

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The Washington Post: In secular France, Catholic conservatism makes a comeback

For many French voters, François Fillon is more than a leading contender for president in next year’s elections: He is viewed as a crusader in the throes of a holy war.

When Fillon handily won both rounds of France’s conservative primaries last month, he campaigned mostly on a genteel conservatism of economic reforms and strengthened national security. But in a country that firmly defines itself as “secular” in its constitution, Fillon’s unexpected victory represented an astonishing prospect: the political reawakening of Catholic France, after decades of slumber. [...]

Although France is renowned for strict prohibitions on religious displays in public spaces — notably on certain types of veils worn by many Muslim women — it is also a country of some 45,000 Catholic churches and one whose public holidays are almost exclusively Christian in origin. France does not keep statistics on race or religion, but a vast majority of its citizens are believed to be either practicing Catholics or agnostics from Catholic backgrounds. [...]

“These voters consider themselves as legitimate defenders,” said Denis Pelletier, a historian who specializes in Catholicism. “They are defending France. There is economic liberalism there, but mostly there are traditional family values, authority and a sense of the moral order.”

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Al Jazeera: Fillon's victory: A political earthquake in France

The outcome of the Republican primaries revealed a desire among the French people for new faces. Although Fillon started his political career more than 40 years ago, he is ironically considered a newcomer because he was kept in the shadows during the Sarkozy administration. [...]

Fillon's victory is the result of his capacity to create a grassroots movement among The Republicans that supported concrete and radical policy options over the populistic speeches of his former boss, Sarkozy.

It also revealed a determination among Republican sympathisers to elect a candidate who focuses on the party's core values of economic liberalism and social conservatism, rather than on building a bipartisan and moderate platform, as Juppe tried. [...]

On the other hand, Marine Le Pen and the National Front were rooting for the more moderate Alain Juppe to win, allowing the National Front to attract the more conservative Republicans. The choice of Fillon is far less convenient for both Hollande and Le Pen.

In particular, Fillon's strong conservatism is reflected in his ideas on social policies. His Catholic background and hardliner position with regards to same-sex marriage, immigration and - even at times - abortion rights have made him the preferred candidate of a traditionalist and religious electorate that Le Pen was hoping to grab.

On many societal issues, Fillon appeared as a milder, more reasonable version of Le Pen which could be very challenging for her presidential hopes.

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Politico: Why François Fillon’s win is torture for Marine Le Pen

Le Pen was caught off-guard by Fillon’s landslide win Sunday in a contest to pick the center-right presidential candidate. Most senior cadres in her anti-EU group were convinced that Alain Juppé, another former prime minister, would cruise to victory and provide an ideal target for Le Pen in the presidential election next year.

They had planned out their lines of attacks against 71-year-old Juppé, a career politician who could be hounded for his embrace of multiculturalism, his defense of the European Union and his notion that France should embrace a “happy identity” for all. [...]

Fillon has no interest in multiculturalism and wants foreigners to “assimilate.” He also argues that there is a “problem linked to Islam” in France. And while Juppé called immigration a “richness,” Fillon wants to slash it by asking parliament to draw up yearly quotas and making it harder to invoke family reasons for immigrating. [...]

In other words, Le Pen (who last week unveiled her new campaign logo: a rose that looks rather like the Socialist Party’s symbol), is attacking Fillon on his left side. And no one is better suited to the role of left-wing tormenter than Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s powerful vice president and architect of her party’s welfare state-loving, statist, anti-European agenda.

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