The five keys to the first round of the French presidential elections

The first round of the French presidential elections, which will be held tomorrow, Sunday, will have to answer five major questions.

WILL THE PEN SURPASS MACRON?

No poll predicts this, but the trend is that the far-right Marine Le Pen has been advancing for several days while the candidate for re-election, the centrist Emmanuel Macron, remains stagnant.

In some polls, even the difference between the two is less than three points, which is within the margin of error. If that dynamic continues, the extreme right candidate could achieve a very symbolic victory this Sunday, which would serve as a springboard for the second round, which will take place on April 24.

For this, he has a good reserve of votes among those who now opt for the far-right Eric Zemmour (9% of voting intention), who has marked a downward trajectory in the polls.

It would be a personal success for the candidate, who has seen many of her main allies abandon her in favor of Zemmour and that she would see the strategy of smoothing the most controversial axes of her program, such as immigration or anti-Europeanism, validated.

WILL MÉLENCHON REACH THE SECOND ROUND?

The leftist candidate repeats what he sees in the second round, although the most optimistic polls put him 4 points away from second place.

But Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who at the age of 70 is facing his third round on the Elysée, accelerates in the final stretch with calls for a “useful vote”, trying to bring together the left-wing electorate.

It is a clear call to the voter of environmentalist Yannick Jadot (5% intention to vote), communist Fabien Roussel (3%) and socialist Anne Hidalgo (2%), who can give him the push he needs to overcome Le Pen and avoid the face-to-face of five years ago.

RECORD ABSTENTION?

The level of participation is the big unknown of this first round, because its final percentage will largely depend on the results. There are several surveys that ensure that abstention can be around or above 28.4%, similar to 2002, the highest in the history of the Fifth Republic.

In the midst of a pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the campaign has generated less interest than in the past in a presidential election, the preferred elections of the French, which usually lead to 80% of the census to the polls.

Almost two-thirds of the French say they are not interested in this election, and 12% even confessed that they did not know that there was an election day this Sunday.

Next to the question of participation is that of the undecided, since almost a third of those who say they will go to vote say that they still do not know for whom or say they can change ballots at the last minute.

WILL THE MODERATE RIGHT WING HAVE ITS WORST HISTORICAL RESULT?

Five years after being absent for the first time from the second round, the moderate right is again on the way to not being in the decisive duel and, if the polls are right, its candidate, the president of the Paris region, Valérie Pécresse, points to the worst result in the history of Jacques de Gaulle's party, Jacques Chirac or Nicolas Sarkzoy.

In 2017, former Prime Minister François Fillon, beset by a corruption scandal, was less than half a million votes away from beating Le Pen, but ended up leaving the “Gaullist” party out of the second round for the first time in its history.

Elected in a primary closed to militants, Pécresse has been falling in the polls, to around 9% given by the latest polls, which has already begun to reopen the internal wounds between supporters of the hardest and most moderate wing.

DEATH BLOW TO THE SOCIALIST PARTY?

The Socialist Party candidate, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has not managed to get her campaign to permeate the left and the polls put her at 2%, even below the threshold at which the State refunds campaign expenses (5%).

A far cry even from the 6.4% that Benoît Hamon had in 2017, who signed the worst result in the history of François Mitterrand's party, five years after François Hollande became the second socialist president elected by universal suffrage.

The debacle that is being announced may call into question the survival of the party, broken between the line of Hidalgo and that of its first secretary, Olivier Faure.

(With information from EFE)

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