Will Macron get reelected?

[CumbrianLefty]

France is a prime example how the main political conflict is no longer between social democracy and classical conservatism, but has shifted to globalism vs. nationalism.

Of course there is *some* truth in this, but some people seem to almost fervently want it to be *universally* true. Which is still (even in France) a fair way from being the case.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

French politics was never about a conflict between social democracy and 'classical conservatism', literally never.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

We can't make any predictions on this until we know who the candidates are. At this stage for the last election, nobody was mentioning Macron and it was widely assumed that the LR candidate was a shoo-in.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We can't make any predictions on this until we know who the candidates are. At this stage for the last election, nobody was mentioning Macron and it was widely assumed that the LR candidate was a shoo-in.

And Juppe been the LR candidate, he would have been!

[Kingpoleon]

There are a couple ways for him to lose.

1) Goes against Melenchon or Le Pen in the runoff, and the right or left, respectively, just does not turn out for him. At all.
2) Goes against a moderate leftist or rightist who digs enough into the center vote while mobilizing an energetic left/right that Macron loses, esp. because the other side, not feeling remotely threatened, doesn’t need to turn out and vote for him.
3) A populist candidate makes it into the second round, and somehow manages to get Melenchon voters, Le Pen voters, and even a few more centrist populists from the Macron vote. This seems like the easiest way for him to lose, but it would be very hard for them to make it into the second round, I think.

[parochial boy]

"Political competition has shifted to globalism v nationalism"

[Velasco]

There are a couple ways for him to lose.


2) Goes against a moderate leftist or rightist who digs enough into the center vote while mobilizing an energetic left/right that Macron loses, esp. because the other side, not feeling remotely threatened, doesn’t need to turn out and vote for him.

Maybe the last cabinet reshuffle suggests that Macron is targetting a centre-right constituency, at the expense of Les Republicains. With LR neutralized, Macron would confront a moderate leftist (EELV or PS), a radical leftist (Melenchon) and the far right candidate (Le Pen)

3) A populist candidate makes it into the second round, and somehow manages to get Melenchon voters, Le Pen voters, and even a few more centrist populists from the Macron vote. This seems like the easiest way for him to lose, but it would be very hard for them to make it into the second round, I think.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Macron was already labelled as a "liberal populist" or "the centrist liberal response to the rise of populism". With that in mind, we reach the conclusion that three of the four top first round candidates of the 2017 election were "populists", with the remaining candidate being a traditional rightwinger or a discredited representative of the so-called 'social gaullism' (I don't remember). When "populism" occupies the centre of the stage (btw, what is a "centrist populist"?) and becomes mainstream, populism needs to be redefined.   

[Tirnam]

- In that respect, Macron's electorate now is not Macron's 2017 electorate. As his government has moved further to the right, so have his voters, who are now older, higher income, more likely to be cadres, more likely to live in upmarket suburbs than in the villes-centres. Basically more like the traditional LR electorate. As an example of this, compare Macron's first round share of the vote to LREM's 2019 European Election vote in bourgeois Neuilly-sur-Seine and the bobo 10th arrondissement of Paris. Massive gains in the former and losses in the latter. Basically, Macron will be going into 2022 as a right wing candidate with a right wing electorate, and that wasn't the case in 2017.

But it may be different for the presidential election. At the moment, according to the last 2 presidential election polls:
- Elabe: 77% of Macron's voters in 2017 would still vote for him in 2022, 10% would vote for a left-wing candidate, 13% would vote for a right-wing candidate. 12% of those who voted Hamon or Mélenchon would vote Macron.
- Harris: 69% would still vote for Macron, 14% would vote for a left-wing candidate, 15% would vote for a right-wing candidate. Roughly 10% fo those who voted for Hamon or Mélenchon would vote Macron in 2022.

[CumbrianLefty]

69% arguably isn't that great, though (admittedly, the other poll is better)

[adma]

69% arguably isn't that great, though (admittedly, the other poll is better)

Still, generic "a" left-wing or right-wing candidate (particularly if it's only first-round) doesn't indicate a particularly galvanized opposition--and of course, the 69% should be augmented by the 10% of counter-switching Hamon/Melenchon vote.  And that's not even accounting for whatever counter-switchers there might be on the right...

[parochial boy]

And has been noted, in 2015 polls were predicting Juppé would be the next president, and in 2010 they were predicting it would be Aubry. I would be minded to think the sociology of LREM's 2019/2020 electorate is a better guage than polling for an election that nobody is thinking about yet.

You know, "uhh, I dislike Mélenchon and I don't have a clue who Faure or Jadot are. so... Macron? I guess?"

[brucejoel99]

How does Macron keep managing to save his approval rating?

[Zinneke]

How does Macron keep managing to save his approval rating?

In this case, new government boost + EU package.

[Crane]

I believe he surely wins re-election because the French economy is getting better and better with a decreasing unemployment rate that has gone down from . In addition, according to the website Trading Economics, despite Covid-19, the unemployment rate in declined from 8.1 % in February 2020 to 7.8 % in May 2020. Usually, a growing economy benefits the incumbent.

https://tradingeconomics.com/france/unemployment-rate

Do you know anything about the political situation in France other than what you just googled? That's not exactly a robust analysis.

[CumbrianLefty]

How does Macron keep managing to save his approval rating?

In this case, new government boost + EU package.

Indeed, his ratings have been in the dumps previously - and could quite feasibly be so again.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

How many people here would argue that the biggest threat to Macron in 2022 might be a Philippe candidacy?



As for me, I don't know. It seems to me like the perfect anti-Macron candidate would be a Green who coalesces all the left-of-centre forces and then somehow 1. gets to the runoff 2. gets all the Rassemblement National votes. And well this scenario is pretty absurd.

[EastAnglianLefty]

How many people here would argue that the biggest threat to Macron in 2022 might be a Philippe candidacy?



As for me, I don't know. It seems to me like the perfect anti-Macron candidate would be a Green who coalesces all the left-of-centre forces and then somehow 1. gets to the runoff 2. gets all the Rassemblement National votes. And well this scenario is pretty absurd.

I think you're close, but actually the perfect anti-Macron candidate is a Green who coalesces enough left-of-centre votes to force Macron into third, then runs the usual anti-FN campaign in the run-off.

Or to put it another way, the perfect anti-Macron candidate is actually two candidates, one ensuring that Macron can't steal the LR vote and another eating into his left flank.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

How many people here would argue that the biggest threat to Macron in 2022 might be a Philippe candidacy?



As for me, I don't know. It seems to me like the perfect anti-Macron candidate would be a Green who coalesces all the left-of-centre forces and then somehow 1. gets to the runoff 2. gets all the Rassemblement National votes. And well this scenario is pretty absurd.

I think you're close, but actually the perfect anti-Macron candidate is a Green who coalesces enough left-of-centre votes to force Macron into third, then runs the usual anti-FN campaign in the run-off.

Or to put it another way, the perfect anti-Macron candidate is actually two candidates, one ensuring that Macron can't steal the LR vote and another eating into his left flank.

So basically a rehash of 2017 except that the Green does slightly better than Melénchon and Macron does slightly worse than he did then?
I find it so crazy to have a politics split in 4 different camps all hovering around 20% of the vote.

[Samof94]

Too early to tell. But I think it is important not to forget that his election (which I noted as a possibility before everyone else, heh) was essentially a freak event: every other candidate was, in some form or other, unpalatable to a majority of the electorate, and there stood he, the ultimate electoral blank cheque. For now, all we can say is that we don't even know who his biggest threat is likely to be, or from what direction they might come.

Don’t forget Covid will be a recent memory and indirectly an issue.

[CumbrianLefty]

Too early to tell. But I think it is important not to forget that his election (which I noted as a possibility before everyone else, heh) was essentially a freak event: every other candidate was, in some form or other, unpalatable to a majority of the electorate, and there stood he, the ultimate electoral blank cheque. For now, all we can say is that we don't even know who his biggest threat is likely to be, or from what direction they might come.

Don’t forget Covid will be a recent memory and indirectly an issue.

But is anybody else well placed to take advantage of government failings?

[Samof94]

This is a country that has one of the worst outbreaks in Europe after Russia.

[Derpist]

There's no evidence anyone is close enough to beating Le Pen to get into top two, so Macron is almost guaranteed to win.

Macron at 30% in the first round, Le Pen at 30% in the first round - it's almost impossible for a third candidate to monopolize the rest of the vote.

[Spark]

I think he will simply because half the population would prefer him to any likely runoff opponent. He'd obviously beat Le Pen again. Against someone like Fillon he'd also get the reluctant support of the left. Meanwhile the right would definitely back him over someone like Melenchon.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think he will simply because half the population would prefer him to any likely runoff opponent. He'd obviously beat Le Pen again. Against someone like Fillon he'd also get the reluctant support of the left. Meanwhile the right would definitely back him over someone like Melenchon.

French runoffs don't always work by a strict median-voter paradigm (otherwise Mitterrand would have won 1974 but lost 1981, for example). Sometimes a candidate wins because they're the most charismatic, or there's a huge anti-incumbent backlash, or the time is right in some other way, even when it seems like they're too extreme on paper.

I agree that Le Pen and Mélenchon would both probably lose, but I'm not necessarily convinced that less toxic figures from the right or the left would. I could see two general profiles who could defeat FBM: either someone from the ""social"" wing of the right (ie mildly/performatively #populist with a general law-and-order vibe but not mouth-foamingly xenophobic, like Xavier Bertrand), or someone who's able to consolidate both the yuppie bobo left who was disappointed by FBM and the #populist left at the same time. That's not an easy task, of course, but it's what allowed so many ecologist mayors to win last year, so it's far from impossible.

[morgieb]

Probably, but I still get somewhat of an inkling he'll be Jospin'd.