Mélenchon’s defeat leaves the left in a lurch before second round of French presidential elections

His die-hard supporters wanted to believe in a comeback until the final minutes, but after all the ballots were counted on Sunday, April 10, Jean-Luc Mélenchon failed to qualify for the second round of the French presidential election. 

On the campaign trail, the far-left candidate had promised his supporters a “historic moment”. Analysts meanwhile noted that the 70-year-old populist was the only candidate capable of pulling out a last-minute surprise in an election long billed as a rematch of 2017.

But in the end, with French President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen making it to the April 24 second round, the 2022 faceoff does look set to be a re-run of the last presidential election.

With 21.95 percent of the votes in the first round, a few percentage points and less than 500,000 ballots behind Le Pen’s 23.41 percent, according to the Interior Ministry’s official results, Mélenchon’s score represents both a success and a failure of the strategy he put in place five years ago.

Mélenchon’s France Unbowed [La France Insoumise] party is, without question, the leading force on the left after the first round of the presidential election. He obtained more than twice as many votes as the combined score of the five leftist candidates in the race: Greens candidate Yannick Jadot, the Socialist Anne Hidalgo, Communist Party candidate Fabien Roussel, Philippe Poutou from the New Anti-Capitalist Party and Nathalie Arthaud from the Workers’ Struggle.

None of these five leftist hopefuls even garnered the minimum five percent of the vote required to receive state reimbursements for their campaigns under French law.

France’s two-round election system forces many voters to adopt a vote utile – or tactical vote – strategy, which sees left-leaning voters casting ballots for candidates they believe will be the best bet to defeat the far-right in the final round. This would translate into left-wing voters casting their ballots for the frontrunner, Macron, as the best bet to keep Le Pen out of the Élysée presidential palace.

But even taking the tactical vote into account, Mélenchon’s score shows a voter base far larger than that of his leftist competitors.

With 7,605,225 votes in total, Mélenchon did even better than the 7,059,951 ballots obtained five years ago, even though this year he did not have the support of the Communist Party, which campaigned alongside him in 2012 and 2017.

At an election after-party at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, on Sunday night, Mélenchon expressed pride “in the work accomplished” and called on his volunteers to rally ahead of the June legislative elections.

“We say to all those who, until now, have not wanted to hear it: here is the strength. We have a strategy,” he said. “We have a programme. We have other elections before us. We will hold our position at every stage. Think about it,” he added.

07:38

Common future, but no common strategy on the left

But if France Unbowed has indeed managed to show its strength during this campaign, there are few indications that it has become the indisputable “force” on the left, as Mélenchon has insisted.

The France Unbowed candidate may have earned an impressive score on Sunday, but he’s still out of the presidential race. What’s more, French left-leaning voters are now forced to choose between a centrist, former investment banker incumbent and a far-right candidate in the second round following the collapse on their side. For this, Mélenchon’s strategy of going it alone is entirely to blame.

The left-wing firebrand, who quit the Socialist Party in 2008, could have united the left behind him after his strong showing in 2017. But the France Unbowed leader, in characteristic form, refused to bend to the democratic process of coalition-building and compromise. Mélenchon has consistently preferred to exclude any discussions with the Greens, the Socialist or Communist parties, including after the debacles in the 2019 European elections, the municipal elections a year later, or the 2021 regional elections.

Instead, he pushed his own L’Avenir en commun [Our Common Future] programme, setting a “L’Avenir en commun or nothing” condition for a coalition. It was a particularly difficult choice for parties on the left who were uncomfortable with Mélenchon’s foreign policy track record.

French presidents have more power than leaders of most other democracies, and are expected to have a sound grasp of foreign policy. But the Ukraine war has compromised Mélenchon’s stature, with opponents highlighting his pro-Moscow, anti-Kyiv positions over the years. Following the Ukraine invasion this year, Mélenchon attempted to rebalance his position during the final weeks on the campaign trail, but his record on the Crimea annexation continued to dog him.

The “vote utile” also benefitted Mélenchon, with many left-leaning voters betting on the candidate as best placed to bring their political family into the second round. But it is in no way a vote of massive support for his programme and even less for the candidate Mélenchon. He himself understood this in the final days on the campaign trail, opting to convince voters by stepping up his criticisms of the extreme right.

The bet was close to succeeding but, like his score on Sunday night, failed nevertheless. With two months to go before the June legislative elections, many questions will be raised in the coming days and weeks – and that includes the future of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

What does the septuagenarian, who had announced that this presidential campaign would be his last, intend to do? His concession speech on Sunday night sounded like a handover: “Of course, younger people will say to me: ‘Well, we haven’t got there yet’. It’s not far off, is it? Do better,” he said in conclusion, before thanking them.

(This is a translation of the original in French.)