France does not feel like it is entering a season of political turbulence. It barely feels like it is going through an important election. Away from the headlines — the disintegration of the old centre parties, the renaissance of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the limp performance of Éric Zemmour — there is a widespread sense of apathy.
That was the atmosphere on the streets of Paris on the night of the first round. The Trocadéro, overlooking the Eiffel Tower, was occupied not by enthusiastic political activists but by tired partygoers who left the building littered with broken glass. The only detritus of the election were a huge “Zemmort 2022” tag (a contraction of Zemmour and the French word for death) and the occasional trampled campaign flier.
Even the presence of Le Pen in the run-off for a second time did not worry the locals, a stark contrast with 2002, when Marine’s father, Jean-Marie, made the second round and jolted the French youth into organising mass demonstrations against the threat of a far-Right presidency. This is the real story of the 2022 election so far. We are witnessing a phantom campaign.
Another striking example of the exceptional disinterest in this year’s campaign: TF1, France’s oldest and most popular TV channel, decided to broadcast the hilarious medieval time-travel movie Les Visiteurs at 10 pm, only two hours after the announcement of the official results. It was the earliest that the channel had ever cut away from its election debrief.
The impression of apathy is backed empirically. Of registered citizens, 26% abstained, the highest number since 2002. 68% found the election “uninteresting”, according to the pollster Ipsos. A month before the first round, “tiredness” was the strongest emotion associated with the election.
Away from the verbal provocations of Zemmour, the electoral platforms this year were uniformly bland. Even the relatively lacklustre 2017 campaign entertained radical ideas like universal income, enormous public-sector spending cuts, and a potential French exit from the EU. Large-scale rallies, normally essential rites of passage for presidential candidates, were virtually absent from the last few weeks.
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