“Mr. Macron is the worst elected of the presidents of the Vᵉ Republic” reacted Sunday evening Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Info or intox ? When the leader of La France insoumise made this declaration, the first partial results published by the Ministry of the Interior seemed to prove him right. Even assured of his victory, Emmanuel Macron was only credited with the votes of around 37% of registered voters – a score close to that of Georges Pompidou in 1969.
Absent left, strong abstention: a remake of 1969?
But overnight Sunday into Monday, as the counts wrapped up in major cities, the numbers steadily increased. According to the results Monday around 1 a.m., the incumbent president was credited with 18,779,809, or 38.52% of registered voters.
The record set by Georges Pompidou, the most poorly elected president of the Fifth Republic, therefore still stands. At the time, the Gaullist candidate had won against the centrist Alain Poher with only 37.5% of registered voters, after a second round marked the absence of left-wing candidates and a record abstention of 31%.
Emmanuel Macron therefore does better, but not by much. Above all, he loses five points compared to the previous election: in 2017, the founder of En Marche was able to count on the vote of 43.6% of registered voters – a figure which was rather in the high range of his predecessors.
In five years, Emmanuel Macron’s electoral base has melted, while that of Marine Le Pen has increased in opposite proportions. If in 2017, around 22.3% of voters had mobilized in the second round for the president of the National Rally, they were 27.3% this Sunday, according to the almost final results.
Barely worse than Holland or Chirac
Second most poorly elected president since the transition to direct universal suffrage, therefore, Emmanuel Macron does not have to be ashamed of his result. First, because some of its predecessors barely did better.
In 2012, François Hollande owed his election to only 39% of the electorate. And in 1995, Jacques Chirac only won against Lionel Jospin with 39.4% of the vote. Anyway, with one exception, which owes everything to particular circumstances, no French president has ever been carried to the Elysée by more than 45% of the electorate.
Then because this second round was marked by a high abstention (28%), which mechanically lowers the results reported to the number of registered.
Added to this is a significant number of blank or invalid votes (6.19%, however down two points compared to 2017), which lead to the same result. On Sunday, more than one in three voters chose to abstain, or to submit an empty or invalid ballot.
Unsurprisingly, the “best elected” candidate of the Fifth Republic remains Jacques Chirac, when he was re-elected in 2002.
In the second round, more than six out of ten voters had mobilized to slip a Chirac ballot into the ballot box, and oppose Jean-Marie Le Pen the famous “republican dam”.
A dam which is now leaking from all sides: in 2002, twenty million votes separated Jacques Chirac from Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. In 2017, the gap between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen was ten million. Five years later, on Sunday, it was now only five million.