Presidential: these unforeseen events and reversals that marked the campaign

Nicolas Beytout 11:02 a.m., April 22, 2022

EDITORIAL

After weeks of debates and meetings, the 2022 presidential campaign ends Friday evening at midnight, to make way for the electoral reserve before the second round on Sunday, and the result of the "return match" between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.

An election from which the editorialist of Europe 1 Nicolas Beytout draws lessons.

For him, this presidential campaign was marked by unforeseen events and reversals of the situation which revealed the great indecision of the French.

The surprise is that there were none

We can already take stock on Friday.

You know that it is customary to say that the French presidential election always holds a surprise.

It was the victory of Jacques Chirac over Édouard Balladur in 1995, then the elimination of Lionel Jospin in the first round of 2002, the qualification of Ségolène Royal in 2007, finally beaten by Nicolas Sarkozy, then the crash of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in 2011 to end with the incredible irruption of Emmanuel Macron five years ago.

This time, the surprise is that there was none.

The famous final duel, announced for years, between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will take place.

The French, it seems, didn't want it, and yet it will be on the bill on Sunday.

But, if there was not "the" surprise, the one that upsets the best laid plans, the one that upsets the pre-established electoral scenario, on the other hand there were several unforeseen events and reversals of the situation.

Skyrockets and descents into hell.

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We think of Éric Zemmour, Valérie Pécresse and Anne Hidalgo.

Éric Zemmour's mad dash will remain a case for the pollsters.

Starting from nothing, he climbed rapidly in the opinion polls, stumbled twice, straightened up twice (something that had never been seen in a campaign), to finish far, very far from his ambitions, with 7% of the vote in the first round.

This is the first unexpected.

Then there is the fall below 5% of the votes of the two candidates of the major government parties, Les Républicains and the Socialist Party, which will remain as one of the defining events of the Fifth Republic.

The disaster is not of the same magnitude in both cases (it's much worse for the PS), but it potentially announces cruel tomorrows for both parties.

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In reality, these three campaign facts are indicative of the great indecision in which the electorate found itself for weeks on end.

In the memory of pollsters, such amplitudes in voting intentions had never been observed.

It was said, for example, that curves which intersected (between two candidates) never intersected again.

"Finito" is no longer the case.

Is it because the campaign was soft, inconsistent, that it took place in the absence of the defending champion and main contender for the Elysée, it is possible.

The unexpected theme of purchasing power

The campaign also focused on a theme that was not particularly expected: purchasing power.

Most observers expected the issue of security and immigration to be "the" topics of the campaign.

And for good reason, these themes have imposed themselves in people's daily lives.

But this daily, precisely, was crushed by the question of purchasing power, a subject on which it is quite difficult to have confrontations according to a purely political grid.

A campaign on purchasing power is a campaign to distribute purchasing power.

And that's what happened.

With the Covid and the war in Ukraine, it completely caused the disappearance of essential files on the lifestyle of the State, on public spending and on the country's debt.

As if none of that mattered anymore.

These subjects have not been debated, and yet they will quickly become imperatives during the next mandate.

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The 2022 vintage will not go down as a good year

It is a strange campaign, where there was no or very little debate, and a marked lack of interest on the part of public opinion, this is also an unforeseen event to be included in the balance sheet of the campaign, but in the passive column.

Because we already know that reforms like pensions will be tough, and that it would have been better to have a real political confrontation to give the winner of the election a solid mandate to move forward.

But above all because, more broadly, the debate serves to bring out a dynamic, an adhesion in favor of one candidate or another, and why not a dream.

No campaign, no debate;

no debate, no membership, it is the assurance of having a rejection vote instead.

And that's what's going to happen on Sunday.

There were still disputes over the retirement age (65, 64, 62, etc.), but only at the very end of the campaign, after the first round, in a phase that was all the more surprisingly turbulent. that the previous phase was sluggish.

We'll see what comes out of the ballot box on Sunday evening, but for all these reasons, the 2022 electoral vintage will not be remembered as a good year.