Marine Le Pen: A Campaign Full of Paradoxes
Everything seemed new in Marine Le Pen’s third presidential campaign. Over the past ten years, her vote total in the first round has risen from 6,421,426 in 2012 to 7,678,491 (and then 10,638,475 in the second round) in 2017, and finally to 8,136,369 on April 10 of this year.
Emmanuel Négrier, University of Montpellier and Julien Audemard
This increase is all the more significant given that it continued despite the presence of a formidable challenger from the far right, Éric Zemmour (2,485,935 votes in the first round).
Have these changes lent credibility to Marine Le Pen’s candidacy beyond her usual, demagogic stance? In any case, they run up against certain limitations and paradoxes that we propose to explore.
A programmatic refocus
The trauma of the 2017 runoff debate—where the candidate’s lack of preparation for a policy showdown was glaringly obvious—has convinced the National Rally of one thing: a campaign aimed at appearing not only worthy of representation but also capable of governing requires in-depth work on the platform. If the strategy is to win over a growing share of a right-wing electorate in need of leadership, then this platform must be adapted to the makeup of that electorate—which is notoriously older and more conservative—and for whom dramatic measures (such as Frexit, for example) are seen as undesirable adventures.
Although Gilles Ivaldi identifies a greater number of “social” measures, Marine Le Pen’s platform is not “more left-leaning” than it was in 2017—quite the contrary.
Overall, the platform still leans to the right, with measures such as increased exemptions from inheritance tax, the abandonment of retirement at age 60 for all, and—after some hesitation—the rejection of a return to the wealth tax (ISF). Not to mention, of course, what remains symbolically the social and economic pillar of Le Pen’s platform: open and systematic discrimination between French citizens and foreigners regarding social, health, and educational benefits.
A significant development in communication
The shift in communication strategy is, however, evident, and it is largely due to a change in Marine Le Pen’s inner circle, as the bulk of her 2017 campaign had been dominated by Florian Philippot. In 2022, she was surrounded by advisors primarily from the world of expertise, symbolized by the think tank “Les Horaces,” which somewhat mimics “Les Gracques,” a social-liberal think tank founded during the 2007 presidential campaign and which later fueled Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in 2017. As aptly described by journalist Géraldine Woessner, the Horaces, established as a think tank in 2015, had remained on the sidelines of the 2017 campaign.
While their numbers and influence among the French elite should not be overstated, valuable reinforcements have arrived from members of ministerial staff, Énarques, and representatives of the medical, social, and economic sectors—such as Jean-Philippe Tanguy (ESSEC, Sciences Po Paris), the former aide to Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, who at age 35 became deputy campaign director for Marine Le Pen. The professionalization of Marine Le Pen’s inner circle has thus come at the risk of appearing more “traditionally” right-wing than disruptive.
To support this refocusing, the campaign’s style has also been significantly altered. The elimination of harsh and potentially anxiety-inducing measures has been replaced by efforts to soften her image (the aunt grieving over her niece’s betrayal, the portrayal of her relationship with cats, the care taken in welcoming people and maintaining polite dialogue during her visits to various campaign stops). The reduced emphasis on rallies compared to “micro-group” visits has also reinforced the idea of a low-key campaign, one that could potentially make her seem less of a political villain.
But the key factor in refocusing Marine Le Pen’s campaign came from outside and against her will. This was Éric Zemmour’s primary role, one that proved particularly useful in the first round as it validated the RN candidate’s efforts to appear more “democratically” acceptable, in contrast to the polemicist’s excesses.
The Three Roles of Éric Zemmour
Éric Zemmour played three key roles in Le Pen’s campaign. The first was to amplify the presence of far-right themes—issues of identity and immigration—which are generally attributed to him. Voiced loudly (by Zemmour) and transformed into a public policy platform (by Le Pen), these themes, within a few months, shifted the Overton window to include opinions worthy of public debate.
According to Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), “shifting the boundaries of public opinion” is a process that involves moving ideas from being initially considered “unthinkable” to “radical,” then “reasonable,” and finally “popular,” ultimately leading to the adoption of public policies. Among these ideas in 2022 is, of course, the “Great Replacement” theory, which even some representatives of the Republican right have embraced, led by Valérie Pécresse.
Éric Zemmour’s second role has been to embody the figure of the tribune, with an unapologetic radicalism that, in turn, served as a “lightning rod” for the RN candidate. The best example here is the reference to the dream of a French Putin, which, through its excessiveness, served to shield Marine Le Pen from overly insistent mentions of her ties—at least as clear—to the Russian president and his entourage, particularly in the banking sector. During the April 20 debate, Emmanuel Macron’s mention of these ties did not fail to unsettle her.
Zemmour’s third role is, ultimately, electoral. While the far right has, over the years, performed quite well in the first round of a majority-vote election, it suffers in the second round from a lack of support and defections. This time, Zemmour’s voter base (with penetration into affluent segments resistant to voting for Le Pen) appears available for a more open second round, assuming the two can be combined.
Stéphane Coursière/CEPEL, Provided by the author
Stéphane Coursière/CEPEL, Courtesy of the author
The first-round map shows just how distinct the two voter bases are at the interregional level. However, when focusing solely on Occitanie, we also see that Zemmour’s voter base is strong in the very same areas where Le Pen received a high share of the vote: Aude, Gard, Pyrénées-Orientales, and Hérault. This observation holds true for the entire coastline. Marine Le Pen received 26.6% of the vote compared to Éric Zemmour’s 14% in the Alpes-Maritimes; the figures were 26.2% and 10.8% in the Bouches-du-Rhône, and 30.6% and 13.3% in the Var. But this map of potential vote shifts may point to one of the paradoxes of Marine Le Pen’s 2022 campaign, which must now be highlighted.
Two electoral districts
One limitation of Marine Le Pen’s campaign strategy is evident in the geographical distribution of votes in her favor: a comparison of the 2017 and 2022 maps first reveals the remarkable stability of the RN electorate. While there has indeed been, to some extent, an expansion of electoral support for Marine Le Pen, this is by no means a widespread trend that would indicate the mainstreaming of the far-right vote. The map of RN votes from Sunday, April 10 reveals gaps precisely where the party’s efforts to shed its demonized image might have had an effect. This is particularly true in urban centers, where the RN candidate trails by a significant margin, especially given that voter turnout is relatively consistent across different regions. In municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, Marine Le Pen received an average of only 12.3% of the votes cast, compared to 29.5% for Emmanuel Macron and 31.3% for Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
This is also true in the western part of the country, which has traditionally been more resistant to voting for the RN—the voting divide running between Le Havre and Perpignan persists, despite the RN’s rising vote share across much of mainland France, today just as it did in the 1980s.
Added to this first limitation is a sociological one. The moderation of the party’s rhetoric has not translated into an increase in RN support among the upper classes; the party’s support base remains, for the most part, a working-class one. This populist paradox is all the more detrimental to Marine Le Pen in her quest for power because support for her faces the obstacle of the Mélenchon vote, which also performs very well among segments of the working class (lower-level civil servants, voters of immigrant origin, who are largely hostile to the far right ).
These two limitations mean that the RN’s voter base is likely still too niche to hope for a victory in the second round of the presidential election, despite the candidate’s intensified campaign, particularly in the west.
A political constraint
Finally, Marine Le Pen’s campaign strategy faces a third limitation, this time of a political nature. This limitation, which has been clearly evident during the period between the two rounds, consists of three elements.
The first highlights the limitations of the party’s policy platform. The debate on April 20, 2022, demonstrated this. Often flustered and on the defensive regarding the most technical aspects of its platform, the party failed to undermine the incumbent candidate’s track record.
By treating Marine Le Pen (almost) as an ordinary rival, he has validated her shift in strategy—her “de-demonization”—in order to better dominate her on the ground of governance. At the same time, this period between the two rounds highlighted the difficulties faced by the candidate and her inner circle in addressing recurring criticism of the RN’s traditional ideological foundation and its conservative and anti-immigration stances.
A second factor compounds this difficulty: despite her improving election results, Marine Le Pen still struggles to win over voters, including those on the right and, at times, even within her own camp. This shortfall can be largely attributed to a third factor, which stems from the enduring stigma associated with the Le Pen brand, which remains a source of shame for many.
On Sunday, April 24, a majority of voters will have to choose between two grim alternatives: the fear of a Le Pen presidency—the incumbent president’s trump card—and the resentment toward Emmanuel Macron that the RN candidate intends to capitalize on. For Marine Le Pen, this perilous choice hinges on two major factors: her ability to retain, beyond the presidential election, the working-class fringes she considers her base, while simultaneously expanding her territorial reach and consolidating the mainstream acceptance on which she relies.
From this perspective, the convergence of the Le Pen and Zemmour electorates will undoubtedly be key to securing lasting leadership. In the longer term, the challenge for the RN is to bridge the divide between the two popular blocs represented by the Le Pen and Mélenchon votes. Between seeking respectability on the right and gaining popular legitimacy, all the contradictions of a campaign are laid bare.
Emmanuel Négrier, CNRS Research Director in Political Science at CEPEL, University of Montpellier, University of Montpellier and Julien Audemard, Associate Research Scientist
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Readthe original article.