While Socialist Party presidential candidate François Hollande won the election first round on Sunday, it was far-right Front National party leader Marine Le Pen who came out of the contest the most jubilant. Her nationwide 17.9% slice of the vote was the highest the far-right has ever obtained in presidential elections, well beyond what opinion polls predicted, and has elevated her to the position of a broker of votes for the next round. For as Hollande and second-placed Nicolas Sarkozy now move on to the final play-off on May 6th, the outgoing president is now launched on a desperate and dismal chase for support from the far-right electorate. But is Marine Le Pen on the threshold of transforming the Front National into a significant and popular force on the Right, or will she more likely belly-flop from the crest of a temporary wave of protest from a politically disenfranchised section of French society? For an answer, and an explanation of her success, Michaël Hajdenberg turned to Sylvain Crépon, a sociology professor and a recognised expert researcher on the Far Right, and the Front National in particular.
Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages with soundtracks of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. The coverage will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th. Here he follows far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen on her campaign trail in the Seine-et-Marne département (county) that lies just east of Paris, where she was hounded by supporters of the radical-left Front de Gauche alliance.
Journalist Claire Checcaglini spent eight months undercover as an activist in the French far-right Front National party, whose leader Marine Le Pen hopes to draw a significant score as a candidate in this spring’s presidential elections. Checcaglini rose through the party ranks as a militant, engaged in canvassing, branch discussions and party meetings, and socializing with fellow members. She recounts her experiences in a book, Bienvenue au Front – Journal d'une infiltrée, (‘Welcome to the Front – An infiltrator’s diary’) which went on sale in France on February 27th, extracts of which are published here by Mediapart.
France’s blue collar workers, junior white-collar staff, the unemployed and the retired make up a lower class that is also the majority among the country’s electorate. Hit hardest by the current economic crisis, and largely ignored by the traditional Left, there are consistent indicators that a significant proportion is being won over by the Far Right Front National party presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen. In this interview with Mediapart, social geographer Christophe Guilluy offers an insight into an economic and social groundshift in France that has produced an abandoned and despairing category of the population, what he calls “a new lower class which the Left does not really understand”.
