No firewall
Good morning! Welcome to Talking Europe for Monday, November 4. I want to thank everyone who has recruited new subscribers by sharing and endorsing this newsletter. If you can think of anyone you know who might be interested, please forward to them. Thank you!
A couple of polls
The French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche published a poll at the weekend on potential presidential matchups. The purpose was to look at the strength of various candidates of the conservative party Les Républicains (LR). As it happens, none of them have much strength at all.
To understand the poll, you need to know that French presidents must be elected with a majority of the vote, so if no one gets a majority in the first round, then the top two candidates move to a runoff election.
A few key points from the poll:
I really don’t like the results of this poll. It has far-right nationalist leader Marine Le Pen in first place in the first round and only six percentage points from the majority in the second round. This is, frankly, really terrible and shows what a pathetic facade the Macron presidency is in case anyone was still counting on it to save Western liberalism.
If you combine the results of all the left-wing parties, you end up with a hypothetical candidate that could make it to the second round, knocking out either Le Pen or Macron in the first round. Who is this candidate? If you ask Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France Unbowed (at 11%), he’ll tell you it’s him. The Greens (EELV), getting between 7.5% and 9% in this survey, believe it’s their leader, Yannick Jadot. The once-mighty Socialist Party (PS) is at 3% or less. Maybe all of these forces will figure out a way to cooperate, and maybe I will become extraordinarily rich and famous. But from how things stand today, neither outcome seems terribly likely in time for the next French presidential election, which will be held in the spring of 2022.
I think this poll is yet another data point that should convince us not to be complacent about the prospects for democracy or about the prospects of the European Union. Le Pen and her National Rally party are in first place in this poll, at least in the first round. The sigh of relief breathed by many mainstream media commentators after Macron was elected in 2017 was based on the notion that he would somehow consolidate his victory and create a solid firewall against nationalism. But he has managed to do nothing of the sort.
Then, just so you get your money’s worth, I’m throwing in one of the tracking polls released in Germany this weekend. Same story, different day, but here are the numbers.
CDU/CSU = Christian Democrats/center right
SPD = Social Democrats/center left
AfD = far right
FDP = pro-business/pro-civil liberties
Linke = far left
Gruene = Greens
Sonstige = others
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