The Putin factor in French elections

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has had a powerful impact on the French presidential campaign. Before the Russian attack, there were three Putin supporters among the leading candidates: the far left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far-right contenders Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour.

While Le Pen has proudly staged photo ops with Putin (in 2017), approved of his annexation of Crimea, and presided over a party that received loans from Russian banks, Zemmour has expressed his admiration for Putin, whom he has described as a “patriot.” And Mélenchon, for his part, has long advocated a French exit from Nato, reflecting his anti-Americanism and affinity for the Latin American left of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. All three candidates confidently insisted that Putin would not invade Ukraine.

Though Putin took all three candidates by surprise, Zemmour has been the only one to pay a political price so far. Le Pen immediately denounced the invasion and reoriented her campaign to focus on pocketbook issues like the sudden surge in energy prices. Mélenchon’s response has been more muddled: while saluting Ukrainians’ heroism, he balks at sending them weapons. As with Le Pen, his campaign is primarily focused on domestic social issues, and he has been avoiding discussion of the war whenever possible.

By contrast, Zemmour’s entire campaign has been about shunning immigrants, which has made adapting to the onset of war difficult. He has expressed reservations about welcoming Ukrainian refugees, and with nothing specific to say about rising energy prices, his candidacy has come to seem increasingly irrelevant. He is now polling far behind Le Pen, whom he had previously hoped to challenge for pre-eminence on the far right. In the campaign’s final stretch, the three leading contenders are the incumbent, President Emmanuel Macron, with around 27 per cent, followed by Le Pen and Mélenchon, with around 23 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively.

Among the clearest effects of the war is that the candidate of the traditional, Republican right, Valérie Pécresse, has effectively fallen out of the running. In addition to mismanaging her campaign, her candidacy has been hit hard by a shift in support toward Macron, who has not just reaped the political benefits of the Ukrainian war but has also co-opted some of Pécresse’s policy proposals.

Pécresse has responded angrily to her change in fortune, accusing Macron of “counterfeiting” her programme. But the problem for the Republican right is not just that Macron is peeling away some of Pécresse’s supporters. It is that he has systematically adopted its core positions, including retirement at 65, work requirements for welfare beneficiaries, and a reduction in the inheritance tax. This amounts to a full-scale takeover of the French center right. If Macron is re-elected, he will preside over a formidable big-tent party, and the Republicans will be left with crumbs, squeezed between a resurgent far right and a governing party that is intent on devouring them.

Daniel Cohen, President of the Board of Directors of the Paris School of Economics, is the author, most recently, of The Inglorious Years: The Collapse of the Industrial Order and the Rise of Digital Society (Princeton University Press, 2021).