... The final result came as a shock even to observers aware
of the last-minute Fillon surge. The candidate given up for dead only a few
weeks ago won by a margin of 16 points over Juppé, while Sarkozy finished a
distant third, six points behind Juppé.
What happened? Were the polls simply wildly wrong? As in the
case of the Brexit and Trump votes, pollsters had picked up the last-minute
change in the temper of the race and correctly gauged the direction of the
trend toward the winning position or candidate, but in each case they made the
wrong prediction, and in the case of Fillon the final margin was far greater
than the predicted one and well beyond the usual margin of error. Of course
primary polling is extremely difficult, especially when the party in question
has held no previous primary, making it hard to predict which respondents are
likely to vote. But poll watchers, severely chastened now three times in a row,
must refrain from drawing quick conclusions.
Where does this leave the race for the Republican
nomination? Having failed to predict Fillon’s victory, I should hesitate to
hazard a guess, but his lead is large enough that it will presumably be difficult for Juppé to overcome. Unless,
of course, it galvanizes left-wing voters, who may have stayed home in round
one of the primary, to turn out in large numbers in order to put Juppé over the
top. Fillon is well to Juppé’s right, so this is not impossible.
Can Fillon’s victory be put down to a “Trump effect?”
Perhaps, in the sense that a Juppé-Le Pen matchup would in some ways resemble
the Clinton-Trump contest. Juppé is a solid centrist technocrat, well-known
after many years in politics, but linked to policies that were unpopular in the
past, such as increasing the legal age of retirement. Fillon is also closely associated
with retirement reform, but he is younger, and by the time he overhauled the
French pension system, opposition had dwindled. Juppé’s reform effort is
remembered for triggering a month-long general strike and turning the country
upside down, whereas Fillon’s reform passed relatively easily. In style Fillon
has nothing in common with Trump: he is soft-spoken and disarmingly mild in
demeanor, though beneath the surface he is a tough and savvy political
infighter.
The big question, of course, is whether Fillon, if he
emerges as the candidate after next week’s run-off, can defeat Marine Le Pen.
This was to have been Juppé’s role, and polls have consistently shown him as
the candidate most likely to stop Le Pen—if not the only one able to do so. Because
Juppé was so widely expected to win, there has been less polling regarding a
Fillon-Le Pen face-off in the second round. But as yesterday’s vote showed, the
polls may not be accurately reflecting the volatile mood of the electorate in
any case, and the final round is still a long way off.
In any case, the left is in a shambles, and no left-wing
candidate is likely to make it to the second round of the presidential
election. President Francois Hollande’s approval rating has fallen into the
single digits, and he is likely to be beaten if he decides to run in the
upcoming Socialist primary.
There is, however, one major source of uncertainty on the
left. If Juppé is knocked out by Fillon, a space opens up in the center of the political spectrum, and two other men could vie for the role of
center-left opposition: Prime Minister Manuel Valls and former Economy Minister
Emmanuel Macron. Valls, out of loyalty to the president, has not yet declared
himself a candidate, but he is chafing at the bit, especially now that Macron
has thrown his hat in the ring. Macron, who has never been elected to anything,
declared his candidacy in the week before the primary of the right, and this
may have contributed to Juppé’s lackluster showing, as voters who might have
cast their ballot for him decided that the much younger and still untarnished
Macron would make a better standard bearer. Polls show Macron doing well, but
once again one has to wonder what the polls are really reflecting. He has no
party behind him, which will complicate a presidential run, although he has
raised a substantial amount of money from both small donors and large contributors.
It would take a foolhardly prognosticator to speculate about
what French voters are thinking. The Front National is already the first choice
of working-class voters in France and has been for some time, so it is hard to
see her picking up more votes from that quarter as Trump is thought to have
done in the United States. In order for Le Pen to win, she has to draw votes
away from the center-right Republicans. Does the unexpectedly large margin of
Fillon’s surprising win indicate a surge of anger among Republican voters, a
rejection of the notion that what they really want is a staid and relatively
pro-European alternative to Le Pen’s xenophobia and anti-EU rhetoric? Will they
then take the next step and abandon Fillon for Le Pen when they get the chance
next year? Such speculation goes too far. But Sunday’s vote is highly
unsettling. It suggests that, just as in the UK and the US, something deeply
troubling is roiling under the surface, perhaps ready to erupt with explosive
force.
If that happens, the EU will almost surely collapse. The
Western democracies will all have swung far to the right, except for Germany,
where Angela Merkel has just announced that she will seek a fourth term. Matteo
Renzi is about to lose a key referendum vote in Italy, which may force him to
resign. Come next year, the political universe may look far different from what
most observers would have imagined a year ago. The consequences of these
changes would be incalculable.
And yet, and yet … this primary vote may well mean nothing.
The Republican primary voters are not a good sample of the general electorate
or even of the entire right-wing electorate. And one shouldn’t exaggerate the
differences between Fillon and Juppé. If either is elected, it’s quite likely
that the other will receive an important ministry. Their platforms are not that
different. The styles of both are subdued, dignified, and correct. They are
more similar to each other in manner than either is to Sarkozy, much less to
Trump. So the significance of this vote, however surprising, should be kept in
perspective.
One final note: Nicolas Sarkozy’s political career is
probably over, and his legal problems may well land him in jail.
