After the first forecasts were announced, thousands of French people gathered on the Place de la République in Paris to protest against the extreme right. The scenes were reminiscent of the protests against Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, who had qualified for the second round of the presidential elections in 2002 as a candidate for the then National Front party.
At that time, parties and voters united against the extreme right, putting aside their differences to defeat the extreme candidate in a policy that was considered Sanitary barrierBut European politics has changed dramatically over the last two decades.
The left-wing Unyielding France party and its leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon have, after a year of fighting in the National Assembly, proven to be an even greater opponent of the centrists than Le Pen. Macron himself spent much of his election campaign describing the policies of the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, which includes the extreme left, as “grotesque” and destructive for France.
In a speech a few hours after the defeat, Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal underlined this point: He called for “not to vote for the National Front”, but suggested that candidates from Macron’s coalition should only drop out if a candidate from the “republican forces” had a better chance of winning – which might exclude candidates from the “Indomitable Republic”.
The clearest sign of Sanitary barrier A break came from Macron’s ally and former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who explicitly called on voters to also oppose the Rassemblement National and the La France Instinct party.
“Since the left has made Macron its great opponent and Mélenchon and Macron have been fighting a major political battle for months, it is difficult to Sanitary barrier,” said Bruno Jeanbart, a pollster at OpinionWay. “We also don’t know if it will make a difference among voters.” Jeanbart added that centrist voters often abstain when given the choice between the far left and the far right.
