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Commentary
American Interest

Low Turnout and Macron鈥檚 Partial Victory

The French Vote

walter_russell_mead
walter_russell_mead
Ravenel B. Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship

The big news this Monday is that Emmanuel Macron has achieved his sweeping victory in French legislative elections. On paper, at least, he is now the youngest and most powerful French leader since Napoleon.

But there is a problem: turnout. Both in the presidential and the legislative elections, a lot of French people didn鈥檛 bother to vote. Only 44 percent of voters bothered to show up for the last round of parliamentary elections.

Some of it was the lack of suspense. Macron鈥檚 En Marche party was so heavily favored to win that a lot of people saw no reason to vote. And some of it was genuine disillusionment with the tired alternatives on offer; the Left, especially, took a shellacking.

But there鈥檚 something else: French history, from Louis 鈥淟鈥檈tat c鈥檈st moi鈥� XIV, through the Emperor Napoleon, right down through the Fifth Republic with its powerful Presidency, is the story of a country that likes a strong executive.

That said, France is a country that likes to rebel, and the opposition Macron really has to worry about isn鈥檛 in Parliament; it is in the streets. Low turnout could be telling us that many French voters feel alienated from formal political mechanisms; if that鈥檚 true, they could show their true feelings when the inevitable strikes and demonstrations against Macron鈥檚 start to take shape. As Benjamin Haddad in his essay in our pages last week, all that Macron has so far proven is that 鈥渕any political institutions, up until now assumed to be immovably solid, are in fact very fragile and up for grabs.鈥� His victory does not make the country necessarily less volatile.

Louis XVI, Napoleon, Charles X, Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, even de Gaulle: French history is full of leaders who seemed to be in full control of the country thanks to their mastery of its institutions鈥攗ntil, quite suddenly, they weren鈥檛. Macron has conquered the world of institutionalized French politics; it remains to be seen whether he can master the street.