The presidential elections that have just taken place have highlighted, more than ever, the shifts and fractures that exist within the French political landscape. In the second round, 28% of voters didn’t go to the ballot box. This is a record since the elections of 1969. In parallel, the declassification or indeed collapse of the major political parties, that began back in the elections of 2017, has greatly accelerated during these elections: neither the socialist party nor the republican party achieved 10% of the votes in the first round. Again this year, the extremist parties gained ground: Jean-Luc Mélenchon made an historic breakthrough in the first round, while Marine Le Pen, at the gateway of the Elysée Palace, got her best score in the second round. Yet it seems that the new political landscape is failing to satisfy the profound aspirations of the French, to represent and defend their ideas for the country. Basically, it appears that these elections have established the crisis of French political “representativeness”.

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