On the right and on the left, the battle of the incarnation for 2022

There will have been no start. The great democratic fatigue that gripped the country during the first round of regional and departmental elections did not dissipate in the second round: a new abstention record confirmed the deep disinterest of the vast majority of the electorate for this. ballot. Rarely has the gap between the political staffs, who expected a lot from this meeting, considered the first act of the next presidential election, and the voters, have been so deep: despite repeated calls for mobilization, there are 30 million voters who shunned the ballot box, or 65.7% of those registered, 10 points more than in the Europeans of 2019 which marked the previous record. The fact that two out of three voters did not come must first invite modesty and prudence: it would be wrong to draw too general lessons from these local elections marked by national disinterest. The scenarios are not played out in advance, neither one way nor the other.

The only certainty, the regional have opened the game of possibilities of the presidential election. The conservative right, given so far bloodless between LREM and the RN, wakes up, delighted, in the position of the first opponent, strong of the electoral breakthroughs of the barons Xavier Bertrand, Valérie Pécresse and Laurent Wauquiez. The ballot also reassured the left by showing it the stability of its electoral base: by adding all its forces, it is nearly a third of voters who recognize themselves in this current of values.

But the most striking fact is the weakening of the National Rally (RN) and its president, Marine Le Pen, affected in turn by abstention and shunned by her own voters as a final proof of its trivialization in the political landscape. . As for macronism, it once again demonstrates its flagrant weakness in the local elections (third defeat since coming to power in 2017), and confirms that it is first and foremost a personal adventure, built for the sole presidential election. .

Yet it would be wrong to believe that the game is over and that the regional have swept away the springs of the clash between Emmanuel Macron and the leader of the RN: the reasons for the rise of national-populism have not evaporated in the last fortnight. , not more than the game of attraction-repulsion which is tied around the personality of the President of the Republic. The current electoral misfortune of LREM thus in no way predicts the berezina for the Head of State in 2022. Because we can regret the effect of the personalization of power that it induces but it is a fact: the presidential election does not take place. wins only by meeting a personality, a program and an electoral expectation. It responds to a very different dynamic than an intermediate ballot. With the regional page closed, it is therefore a new phase which opens for the different political families: finding their champion, winning the battle of incarnation.

In this game, we know, the left starts with a clear disadvantage. The fifty shades of the left do not adapt well to the choice of a single candidate: on subjects that annoy, such as the relationship to secularism, there are many opportunities to be divided. But there are also many opportunities to get closer if we focus on the key subjects of the new social-ecology: the fight against global warming and inequalities in particular.

However, the logic of dispersion risks regaining its rights, each camp (rebellious France, environmentalists and the Socialist Party) seeming determined to play its own part. It is to be feared that partisan logic will once again prevail over the need for union. And condemn the left to candidacies of testimony, far from the dynamics of candidates marked on the right and the extreme right, which trust for the time being the first places in the opinion.