Chronic. Overshadowed for a time by the pandemic and then the war in Ukraine, the social question is making a comeback in the presidential campaign. It is she who leads the last week preceding the first round, with the highlighting of shock proposals around purchasing power: abolition of VAT on a basket of basic necessities (Marine Le Pen), smic at 1,400 euros net per month (Jean-Luc Mélenchon), purchasing power bonus of up to 6,000 euros without charges or tax (Emmanuel Macron), salary increase of 10% over a five-year term (Valérie Pécresse), freezing of energy prices (Anne Hidalgo).
The surge in oil and gas prices, the return of inflationary tensions at the end of a health crisis which has profoundly disrupted the functioning of the economy are fueling a concern that is not only cyclical: at the rate of the crises that the country for five years, no one can swear what the future will hold. Those who are struggling to make ends meet fear that they will once again become its victims. The electoral behavior of the middle and working classes, their fear of downgrading have become the major issue at the end of the campaign.
Ideologically dated
The fact that the match is centered around a very small number of candidates – Emmanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen and, to a lesser extent, Jean-Luc Mélenchon – reveals the disqualification of the two major parties that once dominated political life. Anne Hidalgo thought she was doing well by entering the campaign on the promise of a substantial increase in the salaries of teachers, who have long been the electoral clientele of the Socialist Party. She drew a blank. Valérie Pécresse thought she would find breath by reactivating the winning slogan of 2007 ” Work more to earn more “ and by adding a strong security component. Both have nevertheless appeared ideologically dated, constantly referred to the respective balance sheets of the left and the right in power, accounting for the years during which France suffered the shock of globalization against a background of deindustrialization and unemployment. massive. In the role of implacable prosecutors, Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the left, Eric Zemmour on the right.
The cracks that got the better of both sides, because the popular electorate abandoned them, had been there for a long time. They appeared in 1992 at the time of the referendum on Maastricht, deepened in 2005 during the referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty and have since continued their work quietly, leading to the start of political recomposition in 2017. The Macron-Le Pen duel then supplanted the traditional left-right alternation around the divide between “progressives” and nationals.
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