Emmanuel Macron won the first round of the presidential election in France, with 27.8% of the vote, but the final outcome of his duel with Marine Le Pen (23.1% in the first round) remains very undecided, according to El Periódico de Catalunya. In an editorial published on April 11, the center-left Catalan daily even believes that “nothing is going well” – in French in the text – in its Pyrenean neighbor, while uncertainty weighs on the ballot.
The newspaper lists one by one the results of all the candidates victims of “the implosion of political space” French provoked by the Macron-Le Pen-Mélenchon trio. These alone bring together “more than seven out of ten voters”, points out the newspaper. Not very enthusiastic about the poster for the second round, The newspaper ensures however that the final victory will depend on the voices of a part of the voters mélenchonistes and those of the abstainers of the first turn.
Consequently, the strategy of the candidate of the National Rally “will be based on an observation: a ‘political majority’ extreme right in France is not possible, but it is possible to build a ‘social majority’ of rejection, in the form of an anti-Macron referendum”, writes the columnist Rafael Jorba.
On the other hand, the outgoing president will have to “regain the vote on the left and on the right of the government – the remnants of the PS, the ecologists and the republican right –, but he will also have to sacrifice part of his reformist program to seduce a fringe of the radical left of Mélenchon” .