Jean-Luc Mélenchon repeated it four times, on the evening of the results of the presidential election: “We must not give a single voice to Mr.me Le Pen ! » If he did not call to vote for Emmanuel Macron, the vehemence of his call gave credence to the idea of a combat vote against the far-right candidate. A form of inflection compared to 2017, when the wording had been more ambiguous. From now on, a consultation with still vague contours must be organized among the some 310,000 people who supported his candidacy. Three options should be offered to them, the same as in 2017: abstain, vote blank, vote for Emmanuel Macron. Already, the polls show a possible scattering of votes from the left, between Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen, and abstention.
According to FIFG projections for Paris Match and Sud Radio published Monday, April 11, 39% of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s voters in the first round would be ready to vote for the outgoing president in the second, but 41% would prefer to vote blank or void, or abstain. They would finally be 20% to slip a Le Pen ballot into the ballot box. The proportions are similar among the voters of the ecologist Yannick Jadot, who called as early as 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, “to block the far right by depositing, in the ballot box, an Emmanuel Macron ballot on April 24”a clear instruction which does not prevent its electorate from dispersing.
“I can’t give discharge right now”
On the left, the only candidate to publicly assume a white vote on April 24 is Nathalie Arthaud. “The workers do not have to endorse their future oppressor with their votes”, she wrote in a statement. Around Jean-Luc Mélenchon, many of them also advocate it. Free of their word, personalities who have joined it in recent months have made their choice. And the Macron vote is the subject of a deep rejection. The writer Annie Ernaux, for example, considers in an interview with Liberation: “No need to tell you that I will never vote for Marine Le Pen, I will always fight her. But I don’t want to say, today, the day after the first round, that I will vote for Macron. It is necessary, during these fifteen days, to interrogate him, to demand answers and commitments. I cannot give discharge there, immediately, to Macron, it is not possible. »
Also a member of the Popular Union Parliament, director Xavier Beauvois burned his voter card on the evening of the results, according to a video posted on his Twitter account. The novelist Pierre Lemaître writes, on the same platform: “I hope that those who chose not to block the far right in the first round will not give us moral lessons in the second. » The former boss of Sud Radio and ex-“yellow vest” Didier Maïsto reacted Sunday evening, on the web-TV QG le Média Libre: “I will not vote for the far right, I will not vote for Mr. Macron, whatever the circumstances. » He justified: “I have never seen such repression, such contempt. » Among the elected representatives of La France insoumise, the expression is different, but there is no question of campaigning for the Emmanuel Macron vote. As summarized by the deputy of Seine-Saint-Denis Eric Coquerel: “It is up to him to convince the French. »