France Votes: And Then There Were Deux

The French have voted (for now). The dust has settled (for now). Here's what to expect in the coming weeks leading up to the final vote for France's next president. 

Emmanuel Macron is the overwhelming favorite to win the Presidency on 7 May. Given how accurate the final first-round polls were, his 22-point lead over Marine Le Pen in simulated second-round polls appears unassailable. The reality is that he needs to secure another eight to ten million votes over the next two weeks to secure a victory. His first-round result may give him a head start but there are clear signs that the anti-FN “Republican Front” is fraying. Fillon's center-right and Mélenchon's far-left voters are key swing electorates. In our view, there is a 35% chance that a combination of protest votes and complacency leads to a Le Pen victory.

The endorsement dilemma

It is truly historic that neither of the mainstream parties will be represented in the second round of the 2017 presidential election. 

As we expected, Fillon and other figures from his political generation have clearly called for center-right voters to vote for Macron instead of abstaining. The official LR position will be decided at a meeting later today. We expect the party to endorse Macron but with a clear message to supporters that they should stick with the party in the June parliamentary elections. Polling and social media activity suggests over a half of Fillon's voters will resent this endorsement. This makes it very tempting for younger center-right politicians to publicly deviate from the party line.

Only a handful of isolated non-FN politicians have endorsed voting for Le Pen so far. However, the frustration we can see in party grassroots confirms our earlier view that Macron's second-round lead is vulnerable. He can tap into a greater number of reserve votes than the FN but it is a historical first that the far-right party can count on additional votes from other parties in the second round of a national election.

Le Pen's ideal opponent

We have long argued that facing Macron makes it very easy for Le Pen to deploy her most effective arguments and portray herself as the champion of the dispossessed. While she has maintained hostility to immigration as one of the key elements of the FN's platform, Le Pen has moved its economic platform considerably further left. By promising to protect French living standards from globalization, she has broadened the party's reach and made it capable of attracting second-round votes from social conservatives and economic protectionists alike.

Almost everything in Macron's background and his policy platform make it easy for the FN to caricature him as the darling of the pro-EU establishment and of financial markets. They will do this consistently and aggressively over the next two weeks in order to rally the 48% of the vote went to anti-establishment candidates. This does not include Fillon's 20%.

Probabilities for the second round

Macron is now in a very good position to win the presidential election. However, the overwhelming consensus that he will win and the frustration he generates even among moderate voters lead us to believe that at least one of the following things will happen.

There is a very credible chance that his lead over Le Pen halves within the next week. If this doesn't happen, there is a very big complacency risk in the second round, with voters either not bothering to turn out or spoiling their ballots in protest.

At this stage, we think Le Pen still has a 35% chance of winning on 7 May.


Mujtaba Rahman is Managing Director for Eurasia Group's Europe practice, covering regional macroeconomics, the Eurozone, the U.K., Greece, and Turkey, to name a few.

Charles Lichfield, Europe analyst, specializes in France, Germany, and the U.K.