While they obtained only 4.6% of the votes, the ecologists will start by doing everything possible to block Marine Le Pen before looking into their own future.
For a long time, they thought to exceed 10%. They even, for a time, dreamed aloud of reaching the second round. Then the passing months, the candidate not moving from his 6 to 8% intention to vote in the polls, they revised their ambitions downwards. But until last month, they would never have imagined going below 5%… So, on April 10, the disappointment was immense among elected officials and EE-LV activists gathered at La Bellevilloise, a concert hall in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. “I’m not going to tell you that it’s a party”, confided Julien Bayou, national secretary of the movement before adding: “it’s a very bad scenario for ecology” After the good scores in the municipal elections, the dynamic Europeans has stalled. “When you try to win an election and the question is ‘did more than 5% do it?’, it’s a failure”, sadly confides Eric Piolle, the mayor of Grenoble. “This time, we were aiming to be something other than a testimonial candidacy,” recalls Marine Tondelier, one of Yannick Jadot’s spokespersons. This April 10, he did less than Noël Mamère in 2002 who obtained 5.25% of the vote – the record for an ecological presidential candidate. But there. While they had never managed to take off, for a few weeks, they began to decline in the voting intentions: a dynamic “of the useful vote to block Marine Le Pen” is committed to the benefit of Jean -Luc Melenchon. And, many on the left, including members of EE-LV or partner movements like GénérationS, have announced that they would support the rebellious. In the home stretch, personalities – Christiane Taubira, director Cyril Dion… – followed in their footsteps.
Macron in the lead, Le Pen qualified, the results map
In the afternoon of this voting day, the political council of the party met, like the strategic council of the campaign just before the first estimates. On Monday, it will be the turn of the members of the executive office to meet. But “the balance sheet, we will do it later”, assumed David Belliard, EE-LV deputy to the mayor of Paris. This evening of April 10, all the ecological hammered out their number 1 priority: “until April 24, my only concern, repeats the mayor of Grenoble, is to block the far right. We are on the razor’s edge and we have two weeks of total uncertainty ahead of us. The fear is there. “In the immediate future, the challenge is to save the Republic and defeat Marine Le Pen,” adds Julien Bayou. The second priority, recalled even in his speech by Yannick Jadot, is to find funds to reimburse campaign costs (below 5%, they are not): “ecology needs your financial support from this evening to continue these essential fights. Go to “support ecology.fr” to donate, “said the candidate. They need to find 2 million by the end of May to repay a bank payment. The third priority: show a united front , above all, do not type on Jadot, whose qualities were all praised this evening. “He has not been undeserved. The sympathizers support his action. It is not a story of a candidate, “assures Julien Bayou. “He never there was as much cohesion as in this campaign, adds Marine Tondelier.
Read also: Yannick Jadot (4.8%) calls for a vote for Emmanuel Macron but “without caution or support”
The third round, the legislative
Apart from Sandrine Rousseau and two or three people who were at La France insoumise and returned there, there was no undermining. We are a family, so in hard times, we stick together. “. They must avoid at all costs settling their scores in public. Very quickly, they will call for mobilization for the “third round”, that is to say the legislative elections. “What will the people who made the useful Melenchon vote do? asked Marine Tondelier. “I have good hope that the people who would have liked to vote Jadot but who, taken by the steamroller of the useful vote, did not do so, can finally feel free to do so”. At that point, it will finally be time “to analyze the reasons for our inability to convince”, according to Julien Bayou. Despite the exit from the road, the days ahead promise to be busy for environmentalists.