CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP
POLITICS – There is never a miracle. A laborious campaign marked by serial hiccups could not turn into a triumph. But with a score around 5%, Valerie Pécresse sign the worst defeat of his political family. Never, from the RPR to the UMP to the Republicans, has the Gaullist right obtained so little during a presidential election.
Worse, the president of the Île-de-France region flirts with the threshold from which an electoral campaign is reimbursed. To the electoral berezina could therefore be added a painful (new) economic crisis for the party on rue Vaugirard. Which would be humiliating for a party whose lowest score in a presidential election was 18% in 1981.
As a reminder, Francois Fillon came in 3rd place in 2017, with 20% of the vote. And this, despite a catastrophic campaign hit by the “Penelope Gate”. A chasm which reveals a stinging failure for the one who emerged victorious from the LR Congress, but who failed to find the right tone in this campaign which turned into the way of the cross. Same Eric Zemmourwhich had neither the territorial roots of LR nor the political experience it had acquired over decades nor the militant machine it had behind it, obtained a better score.
“I had to fight on two fronts: that of the outgoing president and that of the extremes. I have not succeeded in freeing myself from this vice and in convincing you. The reflex of the useful vote played to the full. I assume all my responsibility in this defeat”, recognized Valérie Pécresse, who was paradoxically the only candidate to have been given the winner against Emmanuel Macron in a second round projection.
“It was predictable. But this low is hot”
“It was predictable. But this low, it’s hot”, admitted to the HuffPost an LR frame just after the results are broadcast. Because beyond the electoral slap in the face, it is the future of the Gaullist party that is at stake, whose future now seems modeled on the shipwreck experienced by the Socialist Party since the starving score of Benoît Hamon in 2017. And with the divisions which inevitably accompany debacles of this order. These did not wait to manifest themselves.
“Whatever the numbers, the defeat is brutal, it’s a slap in the face,” said Éric Ciotti, LR Congress finalist and representative of the most right-wing fringe of the former UMP on TF1. “Personally, I will not vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round”, continued the deputy of the Alpes-Maritimes, toasting the politeness to Valérie Pécresse who had not yet spoken, and blurring by this maneuver the message of the Republican front that she wanted to deliver. Because unlike Eric Ciotti, the LR candidate declared that she would vote “in conscience” for the head of state against Marine Le Pen.
“I do not own the votes cast on my name. But I ask the voters who have honored me with their confidence to weigh in the days to come with seriousness the potentially disastrous consequences for our country and for future generations of any choice different from mine that they would consider for the second tower,” said Valérie Pécresse.
An orphan party of Sarkozy
A dissonance among others which portends the worst for the formation of Christian Jacob, torn between the right wing of Macronie and the breach dug by Éric Zemmour. Orphan of a Nicolas Sarkozy who did not deign to come forward or provide minimal support to the candidate LR (which acted like a slow poison on his campaign), the party seems to be committed to a thorough butchering, as the disagreements seem irreconcilable.
Éric Ciotti does not want to vote Emmanuel Macron to block Marine Le Pen? This is precisely the opposite of what Rachida Dati or Damien Abad, president of the LR group in the National Assembly. Which is far from trivial: it is precisely because of the ambiguous position of the Republicans in the face of the Macron / Le Pen duel in 2017 that Valérie Pécresse had left the party.
In this context, it is not surprising to see the former Republicans rallying to Emmanuel Macron to stretch out their former comrades. “I pay homage to Valérie Pécresse, who fought an appallingly difficult fight and clearly states that she will vote for Emmanuel Macron. My ex-political family has only made subtractions: she is paying for it this evening, as she is paying for her political line of splits!”, tweeted the president of the Paca region, Renaud Muselier. On Monday, the right-wing party will meet its strategic council and then its political office. No doubt there will be many disagreements and unenthusiastic prospects.
See also on The HuffPost: These supporters of Valérie Pécresse are already thinking about “the after”