Since the last departmental elections, many political commentators have been discussing the rise of tripartism.
The FN won more than five million votes in the first round of the last departmental elections, compared to 3.3 million for the PS and 3.2 million for the UMP. In the second round, in the 1,109 cantons where it was present, it achieved an average of 35%, even reaching between 45 and 50% in 99 cantons. This performance suggests even better results in the regional elections, which are to be held proportionally.
We can therefore consider that about one in three voters now votes in favor of the FN, confirming that we have entered the era of tripartism: the political system is now structured around three main formations, each attracting between a quarter and a third of the voters.
As soon as the FN is likely to be present in the second round of the presidential election, everything changes for the two other parties. If Marine Le Pen reaches the second round, one of them will not. Each must therefore try to assert themselves over the other from the first round, which involves completely changing tactics. At the same time, the elimination of the FN becomes the primary goal of the other two parties, their hope being to return to the status quo ante.
Could this current tripartism finally transcend the old left/right divide?
But it should also be noted that the UMP actually encompasses two parties: a conservative sovereigntist party and a centrist liberal party. These two elements will not hold together for long.
The same goes for the PS, which associates a social-liberal party and a social-democratic party (the “rebels”).
Logic would suggest that the liberals from both the “right” and the “left” would eventually group together, and that the sovereigntists of the UMP would join the FN. This would bring more clarity.
Marine Le Pen, on the other hand, has every interest in positioning herself outside a left-right divide that no longer means anything, and which the working classes no longer want to hear about. The sociological root of the FN (which rallies more than 40% of the working-class vote) is reminiscent of that of the Communist Party at the end of the 1960s.
Her main goal on the right is to pluck the UMP fowl by recovering from one side the disenchanted of the nation.
This is undoubtedly possible as long as Marine Le Pen definitively gets rid of all nostalgia of any kind.
