Why Le Pen Surged—and Zemmour Flopped
Nathan Pinkoski
April 11, 2022
A month ago, amid the heat of the French presidential campaign, the magazine L’Incorrect released the unedited video of a debate from 2019. It featured the darling of French conservatism, Marion Maréchal, and was about how to bring together the factions of the right. If united, the right could easily be the most powerful electoral force in France. Yet its forces are divided along both class and ideological lines, between the mostly bourgeois and centrist Les Républicains (LR) and the more working class and nationalist Rassemblement National (RN), led by Maréchal’s aunt, Marine Le Pen.
Maréchal argued that a nationalist agenda could transcend class divisions. The right would have to remain uncompromising on immigration and national identity but permit enough economic liberalism to satisfy the conservative bourgeoisie.
Maréchal’s opponent was skeptical. Because class divides run so deep, he argued, an effective French nationalist party should focus on the working classes who suffer most from mass immigration, not on the bourgeoisie who benefit from it. He doubted whether enough conservative, middle-class people were willing to choose patriotism over their pocketbooks. Maréchal dismissed this as a “very Marxian vision of society” and remained hopeful that the right could transcend class divides.
Her hope won’t be realized any time soon. As the results of the first round of the presidential election on Sunday showed, the French right is now split into three parties; unity appears more elusive than ever.
We might think that Maréchal’s opponent in that 2019 debate had the last laugh—save for the fact that it was Éric Zemmour. His 2022 campaign attempted to achieve the unification that Maréchal dreamed of in 2019, and, indeed, she endorsed him. Yet Zemmour’s attempt at rapid political realignment didn’t even reach the election’s second round. To understand why Zemmour failed—and why Le Pen succeeded in his place—our best guide is Zemmour in 2019.
As a candidate, Zemmour had no clear electoral base to start from, and less than half a year to build his own. His strategy was to build an electorate from the 20 percent who voted for the conservative François Fillon in 2017. These voters thought the LR had betrayed conservative causes but remained allergic to Le Pen’s name and economic populism. By all accounts, they were politically homeless.
Zemmour, a longtime proponent of Bonapartism, a French tradition that favors an active state over hands-off government, might have promised a dirigiste economic program to build a broad coalition. But Fillon drew his support from the conservative segment of the bourgeoisie. To gain traction with those voters, Zemmour in 2022 had to tone down his economic Bonapartism.
In 2019, Zemmour had warned against trying to build a popular coalition by talking about budget deficits. The working classes “don’t give a damn about that,” he told Maréchal. But in 2022, Zemmour broke his own rule. He criticized incumbent President Emmanuel Macron for running up the national debt. He made tax cuts a key part of his program and accused Le Pen of creating a new socialist party.
Initially, the Zemmour of 2022 seemed to get the better of the Zemmour of 2019. As a candidate, Zemmour won important endorsements from conservative elites. Politicians in both the RN and LR, some of whom had served in prior governments, defected to his new party, Reconquête!. Conservative academics and jurists quietly but enthusiastically worked on his constitutional and legislative projects.
But elite support didn’t translate into popular support. Zemmour ended up with the opposite problem of Donald Trump, who in 2016 generated massive popular support in the GOP base but failed to win over conservative elites. This personnel shortage crippled Trump’s control over his administration. Zemmour, by contrast, could have staffed an intellectually coherent government. But he couldn’t get the votes.
Meanwhile, Zemmour’s rival followed the advice he offered in 2019. Bypassing the bourgeoisie, Le Pen concentrated on mobilizing the working classes. Le Pen has spent the past five years making low-key visits to working-class voters in small towns and rural communities. Investing in these voters is a gamble; they often fail to turn up in local elections, which led to the RN’s embarrassingly poor showing in the 2021 regional elections. But her strategy is paying off in the presidential race. Polling consistently shows that she now draws over 30 percent of the working-class vote. No other candidate comes close to these numbers; the hard leftist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who purports to be the champion of the classes populaires, gets about 20 percent. Le Pen is now in a much stronger position to challenge Macron than she was in 2017.
Zemmour ran an energetic campaign with massive rallies, but he wasn’t able to overcome events that entrenched traditional divides. Some attribute his poor showing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, after which 10 percent of the Fillon electorate swung to Macron, part of an apparent rally to the flag. Zemmour, alleged to be pro-Putin, fell several points in the polls. Yet this analysis fails to explain why support for Le Pen, who is vulnerable to the same charge, increased at the same time.
In fact, Zemmour’s weakness preceded the invasion of Ukraine. He wanted the election to revolve around questions of immigration and national identity. But as the economic consequences of Covid politics hit, and inflation rose, middle-class voters worried about their wallets. The defining election issue now is purchasing power. Macron claims to be the economic technocrat with the unique competency to solve the crisis. Much of the Fillon electorate credits this claim. Throughout January and February, over 20 percent of those voters decided to back the incumbent, decisively weakening Reconquête! and the LR.
Bourgeois support went to Macron and then to Mélenchon, who managed to accomplish with the leftist bourgeoisie what Zemmour couldn’t achieve with the bourgeois right. Because of Mélenchon, the once-great Socialist Party got less than 2 percent. All these results were anticipated in one of the most important electoral studies of the campaign. Rather than conduct complicated national studies, it simply focused on the professional classes affiliated with the business and administrative school l’ESSEC-Cergy. In this study, Macron came in first, with 49 percent of participants backing him. In second place was leftist Jean-Luc Mélanchon, then Zemmour in third, with 10 percent. Marine Le Pen was last, with only 1 percent of the elite alumni supporting her.
That dynamic will play out in the election’s second round. While Le Pen can expect tepid support from the bourgeoisie, she can depend upon a solid basis of support from the working classes. Her political future depends on whether the working class will turn up to support her. Macron’s hinges on whether the leftist and rightist bourgeoisie will unify behind him. He will aim to persuade those spooked by Le Pen’s economic populism that they should opt to protect their wallets with Macron rather than embrace the patriotic cause with Le Pen.
In 2019, Maréchal argued that social fractures play a role in France’s divides, but not a decisive one. Taking a stronger line, Zemmour reminded her then that “classes exist.” The results of the first round are a reminder of that truth. The French right fractured on the class divide.
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