PARIS – It seemed inevitable: another duel in the French presidential elections next year between President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing, anti-immigrant National Rally Party.
But after the nationwide regional elections on Sunday, a repeat of the second round of the 2017 elections seemed far less certain, as both Mr Macron’s centrist party, La République en Marche, and Mrs Le Pen’s party did not have a single one of the 13 mainland French regions.
The defeat was particularly devastating for Ms. Le Pen. She had portrayed the regional elections as a harbinger of her rise to power.
In the southern Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, the region where the National Rally was led in the first ballot a week ago, a center-right candidate, Renaud Muselier, defeated the National Rally candidate by a comfortable margin , according to preliminary results around 57 percent of the vote.
The National Assembly has never ruled a French region and on Sunday Ms. Le Pen accused every other party of “forming unnatural alliances” and “doing everything possible to prevent us from showing the French people our ability to be a regional executive respectively”.
Stanislas Guerini, the general director of Mr Macron’s party, said the results were “a disappointment for the majority of the president”.
They weren’t a surprise either.
Since Macron cobbled together his party as a vehicle for his advancement in 2017, he has shown little interest in its fortunes and instead relied on his personal authority and the aura of the presidency. The party, often known simply as En Marche, has never managed to establish itself at a regional or local level despite having control over parliament.
The turnout was very low. Only about 33 percent of the French chose, compared with 55.6 percent in 2015, a clear sign of dissatisfaction with politics as usual and of tiredness after the country’s long fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
This low turnout and the fact that the presidential elections are still 10 months away make extrapolation from regional results dangerous. Still, it marked a shift. A headline in the left Liberation newspaper above a picture of Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen read: “2022: What if it weren’t for them?”
If they aren’t, it could be Xavier Bertrand, a center-right presidential candidate who emerged as the grand prize winner today.
A sober ex-insurance agent in the northern city of Saint-Quentin, Mr Bertrand, who has already announced that he will run for president next year, won the Hauts-de-France region with around 53 percent of the vote.
His victory came despite the vigorous efforts of Mr Macron and Mrs Le Pen to make an impression in the region, the stronghold of Mr Bertrand.
“This result gives me the strength to go out and meet all the French,” said Bertrand. “There is a necessary condition for the recovery of our country: the restoration of order and respect.”
Mr Bertrand, who served as Minister of Health and then Minister of Labor in Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, did not attend any of the French elite schools and likes to portray himself as a man of the people who is sensitive to the concerns of the French working class. He is widely viewed as an effective politician with consuming ambition. Another former minister in the Sarkozy government, Rachida Dati, once said of Mr Bertrand: “He is the one who is most hungry.”
Despite leaving the largest center-right party, Les Républicains, a few years ago, Mr Bertrand remains part of their conservative family and has an instinctive hatred of Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally, which he would like to call by her previous name. the National Front.
In a way, the election marked the revival of the traditional parties: Les Républicains on the right and the Socialists on the left. Left coalitions, usually including the socialists, held power in five regions that they had already ruled.
Security has become a major concern for the French after a series of Islamist terrorist attacks in the nine months leading up to next year’s elections. This has troubled a fragmented French left that appears to have few answers to security concerns and no presidential candidate to unite around. But the regional elections have shown that it is far too early to completely dismiss the left.
For Mr Macron, who has taken a nationwide tour to reconnect with the French people after the worst of the pandemic, the results suggest that his most recent focus on winning right-wing votes that may have gone to Ms. Le Pen may need to be reconsidered.
The presidential elections are more open than expected. The French people are more angry than they appeared to be. More of that – and a 2022 competition between Mr Macron and Mrs Le Pen would be just that – may not be what they are looking for after all.
Aurelien Breeden and Daphné Anglès Reporting contributed.
