Can Emmanuel Macron build a coalition to beat Marine Le Pen?

Emmanuel Macron has restarted his campaign for a second term in the Élysée Palace with a series of visits to Marine Le Pen’s strongholds.

The president, who won the first round of voting, “did minimal campaigning” ahead of Sunday’s vote, The Washington Post said, but now appears ready “for an intense two weeks, wooing voters who picked other candidates or sat out the first round”.

Le Pen’s strong showing in the first round has “unnerved the president’s supporters”, the paper added, leaving Macron with the task of knitting together what the Financial Times (FT) described as a diverse cast of “liberals and internationalists” to secure his re-election.

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Scripted finish, unscripted future

As polling closed on Sunday, all signals pointed towards a rerun of 2017s Macron-Le Pen run-off. A “renewed battle for votes” is now under way, the BBC said, with the president’s team prioritising “a series of big rallies and major TV appearances”.

Le Pen, who won 23.1% of the vote in the first round, can almost certainly “count on supporters of Éric Zemmour, whose more hardline nationalism won him fourth place and 7%”, the broadcaster added.

Nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan has also endorsed her, meaning the National Rally leader can “count on an impressive 33% of the entire vote”.

Macron, who won 27.8% of the vote, is widely expected to pick up the 5% of voters who backed Green candidate Yannick Jadot, as well as the 4.8% that voted for the conservative Valérie Pécresse. Both have endorsed the president after dropping out in the first round. But calculating the rest of Macron’s vote is slightly more tricky.

With the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon out of the race, his millions of voters could find themselves acting as “kingmakers” in the second round, The Guardian said. Mélenchon has urged his supporters not to vote for Le Pen, but has not directly endorsed Macron.

They “could decide the election as Macron tries to win them over in order to hold back the far-right”, the paper added, but they could stay at home with their candidate out of the race. The “youth vote”, which largely backed Mélenchon, “will be crucial” for Macron.

“Some of his supporters have told pollsters they will vote for Le Pen on the opposite end of the political spectrum”, the FT said, while “polling from both Ipsos and Elabe shows Mélenchon supporters splitting their votes three ways between abstaining, backing Macron and voting for Le Pen in a second round”.

This means that the president faces a battle to hold together a “republican front” made up of the political centre, soft-right, soft-left and hard-left in order to beat Le Pen’s ready-made coalition of “populists and nationalists”, the paper added.

Unlikely bedfellows

While the run-off between Macron and Le Pen is a direct repeat of 2017’s election, “the 2022 race has so far been anything but a replay of the contest Macron won five years ago”, France 24 reported.

“This race has been all but a procession to a predictable result”, with Macron moving to “temper the festivities” of his first round victory.

His presidency has “left mainstream conservatives in tatters and leftists exasperated”, the broadcaster added, with experts warning that “the republican front isn’t certain to sweep to the rescue this time and carry Macron to a second term”.

Mélenchon’s voters are by no means the natural bedfellows of the incumbent, who has “pledged to continue his economic reforms and maintain his policy of liberal internationalism” if he wins a second term, the FT reported.

One Mélenchon voter told The Guardian they were “worried about people not bothering to turn out to vote in the final round”, adding: “I voted Mélenchon because he was fighting for equality and there were a load of racists running for president. I’m wondering what to do myself, whether to vote Macron or just a blank ballot.”

That sentiment has been echoed by other supporters of the leftist firebrand. Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice, told The Washington Post: “Left-wing voters really have the key to this election in their hands. They’re the kingmakers.”

“The mood in France is nervous, it’s rebellious”, The Economist said. Macron has “his work cut out trying to win over voters on the disappointed left and centre-right”.

“As he himself warned supporters at a recent rally outside Paris, there is no room for complacency.”