Macron Surging in Polls

The latest polls show Emmanuel Macron’s new movement with a massive lead ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections. Le Monde has the visualization:

According to Reuters, other surveys are only slightly less optimistic, showing 335 to 355 seats for La République En Marche. The center-right Les Républicains and the center-left Socialists have all but conceded the victory, and are now pleading with their discontented voters to keep the margins for Macron down.

“It’s all exploding. This was a solid fiefdom for us, but our huge pool of voters dried up after the presidential election,” Sebastien Vincini, a top Socialist official, said of his south-western Occitanie region, where Socialists held two thirds of the constituencies but expect to lose most of them.

FN chief Marine Le Pen topped the first round of the presidential election in April in Vincini’s Occitanie region, and Jean-Luc Melenchon’s far-left France Unbowed, which helped kill the Socialists’ chances in the presidentials, is getting stronger there.

But still for Vincini, “the biggest threat … comes from French voters’ desire to give Macron a majority”.

As we noted last week, Macron is likely to barge out of the gate with a series of labor market reforms. After all, he campaigned on just that, and given a mandate, will be sure to push his advantage as quickly as possible. But even still, it may not be smooth sailing. Labor unions will not take these reforms lying down, and given the fact that Macron’s coalition is by definition going to be broad, he may find friction even among his allies.

One thing is for sure, however: we are witness to an epochal realignment in French politics taking place. Though Macron has centrist inclinations, his party leans Left, and his rise has devastated the Socialists, perhaps permanently. There’s still fight in Les Républicains, however, who need to recalibrate their message in the wake of Marine Le Pen’s strong showing in the Presidential race in order to consolidate the Right.