First round of the 2022 presidential election: “The surprise is that there is no surprise”

Published on: 04/11/2022 – 07:49 On the front page of the press, this Monday April 11, the reaction of French and foreign dailies to the first round of the presidential election, at the end of which Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen qualify for the second round, as in 2017. The +: Receive the France 24 press review every morning on your iPhone or any other mobile. And also by becoming a fan of our Facebook page… On the front page of the press, the arrival at the top of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election, as in 2017.”Bis repetita”: “Unsurprisingly, a new Emmanuel Macron-Marine Le Pen duel awaits voters on April 24”, announces 20 minutes. “The surprise is that there is no surprise! The Macron-Le Pen match, this return match which it seems the French did not want, will take place,” quips Le Figaro, which believes that the president can consider the sequel “with serenity”, given his “substantial lead”. “Return match, Macron advantage”: Le Parisien / Today in France also evokes the “serenity” of Emmanuel Macron, who “significantly improves his score in 2017 after 5 years at the Élysée, with 27.6% of the voice, which none of his predecessors had achieved before him, apart from cohabitation”. Marine Le Pen achieves the best score of the far right in the first round of a presidential election: 23%. Its progression in particular, and that of the protest vote in general, worries La Croix, which speaks of the installation of a “dangerous cleavage”, in France and envisages a result in the second round “much less certain than in 2017”. This uncertainty alarms Liberation: “This time, it really sucks”. The newspaper accuses Emmanuel Macron of having engaged in a “cynical” calculation, by participating in the “normalization of far-right populist discourse” – a calculation “risky for a second round which promises to be much more dangerous than the first”. “The threat of seeing Marine Le Pen come to power has never been greater”: “Not her”, headlines L’Humanité, calling for a blockage to the far-right candidate in the second round, at the unison of the presidential candidates, Éric Zemmour and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan excepted. It is still necessary that the voters move. Without reaching the historic level of 2002, abstention continues to climb: nearly 26% in the first round. According to Mediapart, this demobilization will be “at the heart of the equation for the duel of the second round” and “decisive for the balance to tip one side or the other”. Determining also, the choice of the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who “leaves by the front door”, according to Le Parisien, who judges that the deputy of Bouches-du-Rhône “can be satisfied with having been the only one to save the ‘honor of the left’, with 22.2% of the vote. “The fate of the second round is largely played out among the supporters of the candidate of rebellious France. Le Monde also warns that “the debacle” of Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the Republicans, and even more that of Anne Hidalgo, for the Socialist Party, also limit Emmanuel Macron’s “reservoir of votes” for the second round. According to Liberation, Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, should benefit, at least in part, from the postponement of votes for Eric Zemmour, “the great cleared” of the first round, with 7% of the vote.Like the French press, foreign dailies take note of the new Macron / Le Pen duel – to do with Herrmann’s drawing for La Tribune de Geneva, which shows two voters leaving the polling station: “At the last moment, I decided to vote as usual!”, says one. “Same”, says the other. “Macron/Le Pen, act II”: “Unsurprisingly, two Frances came out of the polls”, writes Le Temps, another Swiss daily. “Two Frances not irreconcilab them”, hopes the newspaper, which thinks that the French, “through the importance of the vote for the far right and for the radical left, are calling for help”, and that “ignore it, or not take this into account, would be an open door to a second term in the form of a wound”.>> To read: Seen from the United States, transatlantic unity against Moscow put to the test of the Macron-Le Pen duel Orient Le Jour recalls that five years ago, Emmanuel Macron promised to “reconcile the French”. The newspaper believes that “never for decades have they (yet) seemed more divided than during Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term” – divisions for which the newspaper blames him, for having sought to “monopolize the republican space” , having walked “most of the time on one leg, the right, contrary to the promise of ‘at the same time'” and embodied, “rightly or wrongly, France from above against that from below” . ?️ “The fact that political debate is now focused on the possibility of the far right coming to power, even though the right-left divide has not disappeared, is very bad news for democracy.” ? https://t.co/RgnLuf8CAP @AnthonySamrani #France— L’Orient-Le Jour (@LOrientLeJour) April 11, 2022 “Emmanuel Macron has improved his score, but also raised the far right”: for the newspaper Belgian Le Soir, the second round promises to be tight for the outgoing president, “alone or almost in the face of all populism”. “Apart from the two names on the ballots in two weeks, this time almost everything is different,” warns the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The German daily is particularly moved by the fact that “the terrible images coming from Ukraine did not dissuade a good half of the French people from giving up on the former admirers of the war criminal Vladimir Putin”. “A bitter observation”, for the newspaper, which hopes to see Emmanuel Macron “fight” for “his office at the Élysée and for a free Europe”. Find the Press Review every morning on France 24 (Monday to Friday , at 7:20 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. Paris time). Also follow the Revue des Hebdos every weekend in multicast.