The French were called this Sunday, in the second round of the presidential election, to decide between two projects and two worldviews to which everything is opposed. Like in 2017, Emmanuel Macron, favorite match, won this second round against Marine Le Pen. The French were faced with a historic choice: to renew the outgoing president or choose a woman and thus push the far right into the Elysee. An explosion that would have resonated far beyond French borders, comparable to British Brexit and the election of Donald Trump in the United States in 2016.
The arrival of Marine Le Pen, 53, at the head of a nuclear power, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the engine of the European Union would have been an earthquake of a magnitude greater than would have occurred. in the heavy context of a war at the gates of Europe.
“The cat lady” and purchasing power
Marine Le Pen slipped her bulletin around 11 a.m. into her “sailor” bastion of Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais). The day before, the last day of the campaign for the second round, the candidate of the National Rally contrasted her relationship with the French with that of the outgoing president, according to her who had descended “from Olympus exclusively for a few days “. “, and the” toxic relationship “with” people “.
Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, “the cat lady”, who focused her campaign on purchasing power rather than immigration or insecurity, is the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pierrette Lalanne. . After a DEA in criminal law, she became a lawyer for the Paris Bar in 1992. She is the mother of three children, born in a period of eleven months (a girl in 1998 and twins in 1999). ).
In 1993 he ran for the first time in the Paris legislative elections (District XVII), under the banner of the National Front (FN), a party co-founded by his father, which he joined in 1986. Then, in 1998, she left the Paris bar to join the FN’s legal department before obtaining her first political term as regional councilor for Nord-Pas-de-Calais (she was there until 2004 and again from 2010 to 2015 and from 2016 to 2021 inland). the new region of the Highs of France).
A claimed “demonetization”
In April 2003, Marine Le Pen became vice president of the FN. Elected to the European Parliament in 2004 – she will sit until 2017 – she also became regional councilor of the Île-de-France – until 2010. In January 2011 she was elected president of the FN. Four years later, his father will be permanently removed from the governing bodies of the party, renamed the National Rally (RN) in 2018 as part of a vindicated “demonetisation” campaign.
In the years to come, Marine Le Pen will continue to look forward to softening her smiling image a lot. Whoever judges that his demonization is the result of a media and political “system” that is “afraid” will confess to having “a thousand differences” with his father, who nevertheless supports women. He had even planned to invite him to the Elysee for his hypothetical enthronement. By revealing her passion for cats, Marine Le Pen has softened her image. “Who would suspect a cat woman? Even the Jean-Jaurès Foundation wondered.
During the campaign, Marine Le Pen also attacked the “redemonization” strategy initiated by the outgoing president. She also tried to overcome the notion of a “Republican front”, a lever activated in 2002 against her father and then in 2017 against herself to block the far right. “To [de la campagne] he changed abruptly between the first and second rounds “, he told Europe 1 and CNews, denouncing that” all the media, the institutions trigger the demonization “of his party. “It’s a French tradition, but I don’t think it’s very democratic. »
Left by the family
Let’s go back to 2012. That year, in April, Marine Le Pen announced her first candidacy in the presidential election. He failed in the first round, finishing third (17.9% of the vote). On May 7, 2017, she was defeated in the second round (with 33.9% of the vote) against Emmanuel Macron. One month later, she was elected deputy for the Pas-de-Calais, with 58.6% of the vote. On April 10, 2022, despite the competition of Eric Zemmour joined by several RN executives, he again reached the second round of the presidential election, with 23.1% of the vote.
However, his older sister, Yann, supported Eric Zemmour in the race for the Elysee, as did his niece (and Yann’s daughter), Marion Maréchal. Marine le Pen can, however, count on the support of her older sister Marie-Caroline and her father.
And this Sunday, if France – and the world – held its breath, it was because the colossal bet, inherent in any presidential election, was further aggravated by the possibility of seeing the far right take power. “Millions of our compatriots leaned towards his party and his project because it gave the feeling that he was responding to the problem of purchasing power. But their answers are not viable. An ambiguity has been created, but I think the foundations of the far right are there “, Emmanuel Macron dropped on Friday at France Inter, assuring that his opponent had managed to” move forward in disguise “. “Marine Le Pen is the heiress of a father, a party and an ideology that was also based on a lot of anti-Semitism,” he added.
Our record on the presidential election
If Marine Le Pen, who had declared herself “against wokism and against all” deconstructions, “had seized the Elysee, the tremors would have been felt on Sunday evening. And the next day, it would have been to dive into the unknown.
Discover the results of the second round of the 2022 presidential election per city, department and region for 20 minutes.