Our Blog - French Presidential Election - Part 3

After a less-than-stellar turnout of 72%, the lowest in a presidential run-off since 1969, President Macron has gotten the nod for a 2nd term. This is the first time a sitting President of France has won re-election since Chirac in 2002. Macron got 58.55% of the vote in the 2nd round to Le Pen's 41.45%. These percentages do not include the 8.6% of ballots that were cast but were either blank or invalid. While in the US, we have the concept of a "write-in candidate", they don't really have that concept here. If a registered voter wants to do a "protest vote", they can turn in an envelope (so deemed to have voted) but they would not have put the paper of either of the 2 candidates in that envelope. That is called a "blank" or "white ballot".

If we look at the results by region, Le Pen actually did quite well in the Northern part of France (like around Calais), the area along the border with Italy, two departments near Narbonne and Perpignan (on the Mediterranean close to Spain), Corsica, and about 2/3 of the overseas departments. In a couple of cases, these are areas with migrant issues and so her anti-immigration stance plays very well in those areas.

The next step for Macron was to announce a new Prime Minister and a new cabinet. May 16th, Macron named the current Labor Minister, Elisabeth Borne, as the new Prime Minister. She is the first woman to head the French government in more than 30 years, and is quite well-known in the government, having served as transport minister, ecological transition minister, and labor minister. He followed up the prime minister announcement with a new cabinet with only 3 senior ministers staying for the second term. The core cabinet (consisting of the Prime Minister and 17 other ministers) is evenly split between men and women.

In June, the legislative elections are held. This also has 2 rounds (the 12th and 19th of June) and will elect the 577 members of the National Assembly. This is important for Macron and his agenda for the 2nd term, since he needs to have a majority in the National Assembly to be able to pass items in his agenda.