The trend is already quite clear. In 2002, French voters were so shocked that the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen had reached the presidential runoff that 82.2 percent voted against him. In 2017, Jean-Marie’s daughter Marine reached the runoff and scored 33.9 percent against Macron. This year, polling suggests she will receive somewhere in the region of 45 percent of the vote.
In the British and American popular imagination, all of this only serves to confirm the seemingly permanent conviction that, in France, disaster is always only one election cycle away, with the country paying the price for a model that is too rigid, too elitist, and too small-c conservative to avoid the reckoning that is coming. Yet the truth is that the reckoning never quite arrives, and the country actually seems to sustain itself perfectly well, maintaining a standard of living as good as anywhere on Earth and often far better than in many parts of Britain and the United States. And, as of today, Macron remains the overwhelming favorite to secure a second term, avoiding the fate of Hillary Clinton and David Cameron, who failed to control the nationalist backlash in their own countries.
If Macron wins, it does not mean all is well for France or the EU, but nor does it mean that all is lost. A Macron victory would be a reflection of France just as much as Le Pen closing in on him would be. The divisions and anger in France do not reveal just a particular trend within France, but a more general one within the West. If France is now regularly suffering through existential elections, so too are the U.S., Britain, and others. In 2014, Britain held a referendum on Scottish independence; in 2016, a referendum on EU membership; and in 2017 and 2019, general elections in which a far-left, anti-NATO candidate was the leader of the principal opposition party. As for the U.S., we all know what might happen in 2024.
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