Lessons From the French Election
- David Broder
Macron managed to defeat the far right this time. But to get rid of the National Front for good, the Left will need to make a comeback.
With the Left absent, the barriers against the National Front increasingly shaky, a weak-on-conviction vote for the president, an uncertain outcome at the legislative elections, and opportunities for the radical left, Roger Martelli analyzes the lessons of the French presidential election.
1. For the third time since the election of the French president by universal suffrage, the Left was absent from the second round.
The novelty, this time, was that this ill fate struck both the governmental left and right. Most of the voters for the two blocs that had previously shared the National Assembly now found themselves faced with — at best — a default option.
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