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ELECTION

OPINION: Stop the hysteria, Le Pen won’t win… at least not this year

Given the saturated press coverage, the panicked pleas from France's mainstream politicians, not to mention Brexit and Trump you'd be forgiven for thinking Marine Le Pen was a shoo-in for the Elysée palace, but Paul Smith, a professor of Francophone studies, argues it just won't happen. At least not this year anyway.

OPINION: Stop the hysteria, Le Pen won't win... at least not this year
Photo: AFP

As the dust settles on the failure of Geert Wilders PVV to become the largest party in the new Dutch parliament, the focus of international media attention will shift fully to France, where the presidential campaign will step up a gear on Monday with the first live TV debate between the main candidates – although in reality the campaign has been full speed for the last six months.

In France the electorate will vote twice to choose their new president, in a two-round ballot on April 2″rd and May 7th.

One thing is almost certain: Marine Le Pen won’t win.

For a start there are reasons why the French have two rounds of voting in their presidential election.

The first is historical and dates back to a time when a small number of voters, defined by a tax qualification usually, would gather together to cast their votes, over a series of rounds, until one emerged with an absolute majority.

Later, the Republic reduced this to a two-round system. A candidate with an absolute majority in the first round would be automatically elected, but if that didn’t happen, then there would be a run-off, usually, though not exclusively, between the two best-placed candidates.

The second reason is a practical and political one. On reintroducing popular election of the head of state from 1965, Charles de Gaulle adapted the model. A candidate who achieved an absolute majority in the first round would be automatically elected. If that failed, the two best-placed candidates would go through to a second round where, by definition, the winner must enjoy an absolute majority.

De Gaulle was very clear that the institutional and symbolic strength of the presidency must lie in that moment where a majority backed one candidate. Thus, in France, unlike the USA, a candidate cannot win the presidential election with a minority of the popular vote, as George W Bush did in 2000 and Donald Trump did last November.

The system was designed to prevent an extremist coming to power, though in de Gaulle’s day, the extreme he feared was the French Communist party. Times change, but the principle doesn’t. If you can’t take 50% plus one of the votes cast, you cannot become president.

On paper, then, Le Pen’s chances of being elected eighth President of the Fifth Republic are remote to the point of invisibility.

The numbers are very clear. The most favourable opinion polls give her a first round score of 27%, which is, of course, a remarkable and unheard of figure for a far-right candidate, though roughly what her party scored in the regional elections in December 2015. Her main rivals, Emmanuel Macron and François Fillon on 26% and 17.5% respectively.

So, she looks, at the moment, like a shoo-in for the second round. But then it all falls apart. In the case of a Le Pen-Macron run-off, she would lose by a 60% to 40%. Most of the left would rally to Macron, as would Fillon’s centre-right voters. If Fillon were able to make up the gap between himself and Macron by 23rd April, then he would win the second round against Le Pen by 55% to 45%.

These are very much the scores one would anticipate. Left-wing voters supporting Benoît Hamon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon are willing to vote for Macron, but less likely to accept Fillon and his promise of more austerity and massive cuts in the public service sector. 

Opinion polls need to be handled with care. Pollsters themselves are very clear about the margins of error. But the Wilders case is instructive. Until the Dutch elections, it seemed that polls underestimated the swing towards ‘populism’, if we think that this is what Brexit and Trump mean.

'French First: What a President Marine Le Pen has in mind for France'

In Holland, the opposite occurred. The polls gave Wilders reason to expect that his party would be the largest, but, as seasoned French political commentator Alain Duhamel suggested on RTL last week, the populist vote there hit the glass ceiling.

Le Pen hopes that she can smash through that. But while opponents shouldn’t yield to complacency, she seems unlikely to win this time.

The votes simply aren’t there yet to carry her through the second round to victory.

There’s plenty of populism sloshing around the campaign and almost all the main candidates claim to be against the ‘system’, though that means different things to each of them. It just isn’t necessarily patriotic or nationalistic populism.

So whereas Brexit and Trump were ‘yes or no’ questions, France, like Holland, is offering voters a variety of ways to express their frustrations. Le Pen is not the only option.

That doesn’t mean that she can never win the presidency. In June, there will be elections to the National Assembly and five years as the leader of a large parliamentary bloc in opposition to Macron or Fillon might well strengthen Le Pen ahead of the 2022 election.

Failure on the part of one or the other to deliver on their promises could well signal the end of the Fifth Republic.

Paul Smith is an Associate Professor in French and Francophone studies at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

READ ALSO: Why winning the presidential election could be a poisoned chalice

ELECTION

German Greens’ chancellor candidate Baerbock targeted by fake news

With Germany's Green party leading the polls ahead of September's general elections, the ecologists' would-be successor to Angela Merkel has become increasingly targeted by internet trolls and fake news in recent weeks.

German Greens' chancellor candidate Baerbock targeted by fake news
The Greens chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock on April 26th. Photo: DPA

From wild claims about CO2-emitting cats and dogs to George Soros photo collages, 40-year-old Annalena Baerbock has been the subject of a dizzying array of fake news, conspiracy theories and online attacks since she was announced as the Greens’ chancellor candidate in mid-April.

The latest polls have the Greens either ahead of or level with Merkel’s ruling conservatives, as the once fringe party further establishes itself as a leading electoral force in Europe’s biggest economy.

Baerbock herself also consistently polls higher than her conservative and centre-left rivals in the race to succeed Merkel, who will leave office after 16 years this autumn.

Yet her popularity has also brought about unwanted attention and a glut of fake news stories aimed at discrediting Baerbock as she bids to become Germany’s first Green chancellor.

READ ALSO:

False claims

Among the false stories circulating about Baerbock is the bizarre claim that she wants to ban household pets in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Another fake story firmly denied by the party claimed that she defied rules on mask-wearing and social-distancing by embracing colleagues upon her nomination earlier this month.

Baerbock has also been presented as a “model student” of Hungarian billionaire George Soros – a hate figure for the European far-right and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists – in a mocked-up social media graphic shared among others by a far-right MP.

More serious online attacks include a purported photo of Baerbock which in fact shows a similar-looking naked model.

The Greens’ campaign manager Michael Kellner said that the attempts to discredit Baerbock had “taken on a new dimension”, that “women are targeted more heavily by online attacks than men, and that is also true of our candidate”.

Greens co-leader Annalena Baerbock earlier this month. Photo: DPA

Other false claims about the party include reports of a proposed ban on barbecues, as well as plans to disarm the police and enforce the teaching of the Quran in schools.

While such reports are patently absurd, they are potentially damaging to Baerbock and her party as they bid to spring a surprise victory in September.

“She has a very real chance, but the coming weeks are going to be very important because Baerbock’s public image is still taking shape,” Thorsten Faas, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University told AFP.

In a bid to fight back against the flood of false information, the party has launched a new “online fire service” to report fake news stories.

READ ALSO: Greens become ‘most popular political party’ in Germany

Russian disinformation

Yet stemming the tide is no easy job, with many of those who peddle disinformation now using private messaging services such as WhatsApp and Telegram rather than public platforms such as Facebook.

The pandemic and ongoing restrictions on public life will also make it harder for the campaign to push through their own narratives at public events.

Miro Dittrich of Germany’s Amadeu-Antonio anti-racism foundation claims that lockdown has “played a role” in the spread of fake news.

“People are isolated from their social environment and are spending a lot more time online,” he said.

Another factor is Russia, which has made Germany a primary target of its efforts to spread disinformation in Europe.

According to the European anti-disinformation platform EUvsDisinfo, Germany has been the target of 700 Russian disinformation cases since 2015, compared to 300 aimed at France and 170 at Italy.

As an outspoken critic of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, Baerbock may well become a target of such attacks during the election campaign.

By Mathieu FOULKES

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