Amazing victories in most overseas departments. In the second round of the 2022 presidential election, Marine Le Pen was clearly ahead of Emmanuel Macron in Martinique (60.87%), in Guadeloupe (69.60%), in Guyana (60.87%) or even in Reunion. (59.57%). Results all the more surprising as these territories had largely mobilized for Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the first round, while the Insoumis had called on his voters not to give a single vote to Marine Le Pen. In Europe Morning Monday, two experts analyze the reasons for this plebiscite.
“It tells us how far anger can go”
“It’s a vote of anger”, first advances Jérôme Jaffré, political scientist and researcher associated with Cevipof, at the microphone of Sonia Mabrouk. “It tells us how far anger can go,” continues the political scientist. “In the Antilles in 2002, it was 93% of the votes for Jacques Chirac (against Jean-Marie Le Pen). In 2017, it was more than 70% of the votes for Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen. And yesterday (Sunday) , it was the opposite. It is the junction of the extremes against the central bloc, against power”, explains Jérôme Jaffré.
This massive vote for the candidate of the National Rally is also “a very clearly anti-vaccine vote”, a few months after the great tensions which erupted in particular in Guadeloupe or Martinique. “We see that there is a risk for the political power of the next few years, it is that this mechanism which was done in the Antilles could possibly extend towards the metropolis”, estimates the researcher associated with Cevipof on Europe 1 .
A sling on chlordecone and anti-Covid vaccines
These various electoral results show that the Republican front did not work in the West Indies and in other overseas territories. “Anger in the West Indies is right”, assures for his part Michel Wieviorka, sociologist, author of the book So Macron, Happy? on Europe 1. “The anger also has to do with the insecticide, chlordecone, used in the banana plantations. We use a product which has obvious toxic effects and, a few days before the first round, the trial of those who have responsibilities in this case leads to an acquittal”, he recalls.
For him, “the population not only feels despised, but so despised that his very life does not seem to count.” Michel Wieviorka also addresses the distrust of anti-Covid vaccines. “We cannot treat the vast majority of those who think otherwise, by saying that they are in the absurd, in nonsense, in irrationality. This is what they experienced, with great feeling of injustice, the antivax. So, we risk having other cases of this kind, “concludes the sociologist.