Europe

Five things to watch in France’s election

by Mallory Shelbourne - 04/22/17 10:25 PM ET

Voters in France are set to head to the polls Sunday as the country holds the first vote in its bitterly fought presidential election, a closely watched race testing voters’ anger at the political establishment.

The vote, which comes just days after a terrorist attack in Paris that left one police officer dead and stoked terrorism fears, could have reverberating consequences for the U.S. and its European alliances.

While center-left candidate Emmanuel Macron is the favorite in polls, attention has swelled around far-right candidate Marine Le Pen ahead of a two-person runoff next month should no candidate reach the 50 percent threshold on Sunday.

Here are five things to watch in the election:

What happens to the ‘populist’ wave?

The 11-candidate French election is the latest test of the populist tide that spread after the United Kingdom’s vote last year to leave the European Union and President Trump’s victory in November.

While Europe’s populist surge was briefly quelled last month when far-right politician Geert Wilders lost in the Netherlands’ parliamentary elections, France’s vote may re-ignite the fervor.

This election includes both right- and left-wing populists, with the National Front’s Le Pen and La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A runoff with Le Pen and Macron would also be notable, since it wouldn’t include the mainstream parties that have governed in France for decades.

“It wouldn’t be the classic left vs. right divide but two views of the world clashing,” Jerome Fourquet of French pollster Institut français d’opinion publique told Reuters. “Macron bills himself as the progressist versus conservatives, Le Pen as the patriot versus the globalists.”

Relationship with Trump

Trump could gain a vocal ally in France depending on who wins.

Trump this week called Le Pen the “strongest on borders” and “the strongest on what’s been going on in France.” While he didn’t explicitly endorse Le Pen, he also predicted Thursday’s deadly shooting on the Champs-Élysées would “probably help” her.

Meanwhile, former President Obama has also signaled his preference in the race. Obama spoke by phone with Macron this week to wish him “all the best,” though a spokesman said he wasn’t formally endorsing a candidate.

A former top Obama aide, Ben Rhodes, also wrote Saturday on Twitter that a Le Pen victory would be “devastating.”

While some of Le Pen’s campaign rhetoric on immigration and security echoed Trump’s, she recently criticized Trump for backtracking on his position on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) when he said he no longer viewed it as “obsolete.”

“Undeniably he is in contradiction with the commitments he had made,” Le Pen told a French radio outlet last week, CNN reported.

“I am coherent, I don’t change my mind in a few days. He had said he would not be the policeman of the world, that he would be the president of the United States and would not be the policeman of the world, but it seems today that he has changed his mind.”

Mélenchon has also criticized Trump for taking military action in Syria earlier this month.

If recent terror attacks affect the race

France has been rocked by terrorism in the last few years, from the coordinated 2015 Paris attacks to Thursday’s killing of a police officer on the Champs-Élysées shopping strip. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria claimed responsibility following both attacks.

Terrorism has drawn intense debate to the issue of immigration, with Le Pen staking out a hardline position and promising tougher immigration and border controls to beat “Islamist terrorism.” She has also called for stripping “jihadists of their French citizenship.”

FiveThirtyEight said Friday that the election was too close to call, with Macron leading at 22 percent and Le Pen just behind him with 20 percent, according to recent poll averages.

The outcome of the election could dictate how France continues to respond to the growing global migrant crisis.

Macron said solutions to terrorism were not as simple as Le Pen suggested and that there was “no such thing as zero risk.”

Security commitments

While the Trump administration has recently affirmed its commitment to NATO, Le Pen has vowed to at least partially withdraw from the alliance.

France’s departure could place an additional burden on the U.S. and other member states, both militarily and monetarily. France has one of the most powerful militaries in the world and holds a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Several leading candidates representing both the far left and far right have proposed taking France out of NATO’s military command or removing it altogether.

“It would be catastrophic — the undoing of 65 years of foreign and security policy,” François Heisbourg, an analyst with the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, told The Washington Post. “This is big.”

France’s security moves could have implications concerning Russia. Le Pen has shown a warmness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom she met last month, and has criticized western sanctions against Moscow.

Will France hold a referendum to leave the European Union?

In a document laying out the National Front’s platform in February, Le Pen promised to hold a referendum on France’s membership to the European Union (EU) should the organization refuse to get rid of its shared currency and the lack of border restrictions.

But the National Front isn’t the only French party critical of the EU. Mélenchon has also expressed disapproval over France’s membership.

Macron, who worked as an economic adviser to France’s current President François Hollande before becoming economy minister, is pro-European Union. He also supports the EU keeping in place sanctions it imposed over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Tags Barack Obama France