POLITICAL THURSDAY. Leading in all surveys of voting intentions, Emmanuel Macron is the favorite of this presidential election. But his re-election, which would be a first outside of cohabitation, could be marked by record abstention: 30% according to polls and confirmation of a growing lack of interest in voting for ten years. Neither the socialist alternation in 2012, nor the surprise election in 2017 of a president emerging from nowhere and without a political past have made it possible to reverse this negative slope.
Will France register its lowest participation rate in a presidential election under the Fifth Republic? Abstention is the main unknown – perhaps even the only one – in this final stretch of the campaign. The stakes are colossal. At the rate of current polls, the hypothesis of a record seems the most likely: between 30% and 32% abstention are measured in the latest surveys, that is to say a proportion much higher than that of April 21 2002 with its 28%. Everything is in place for this coming democratic bankruptcy. Interest in the presidential election barely exceeds 50%. Never had the major election been so uninteresting. What’s fault? In the casting of candidates? To the lack of mind-blowing proposals? Lack of suspense? To the refusal of the president-candidate to debate? A little of all that at the same time… But above all there is the improbable context. After the health crisis, the war in Ukraine anesthetized the countryside, in the words of Frédéric Dabi, director general of Ifop. The only audible transmitter seems to be Emmanuel Macron, and then only when he talks about the crises and less about his program.
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A catastrophic electoral cycle since the start of the five-year term
A record abstention would therefore close a catastrophic electoral cycle since the beginning of the five-year term: 66% abstention in the regional elections; nearly 60% in municipal elections; 50% to Europeans (up slightly). Already, the oppositions short of arguments reject the responsibility on Emmanuel Macron. Second character of the State and support of Valérie Pécresse, Gérard Larcher launches a trial of illegitimacy of the winner. A hashtag, #PasDeDebatPasDeMandat, using a formula from Senator LR Bruno Retailleau, is flourishing on social networks. Emmanuel Macron replied dryly: “A president of the Senate should not say that.” They, who have been angry several times, should not speak to each other again anytime soon. In any case, the president-candidate knows that one of his objectives in the first round is to finish as high as possible. To prevent the first party in France from being, on April 10 at 8 p.m., that of the abstentionists. In 2017, the French had already beaten in the second round the abstention record (25.44%) and that of the number of blank and void ballots, estimated at 4 million