A lesser evil: Young French voters struggle to back Macron despite worries over Le Pen

For many young people in France, the choice between voting for Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s presidential run-off is unpalatable.

Only 67 per of those aged between 25 and 34 cast a ballot two weeks ago in the first round. But given the lack of enthusiasm for both remaining candidates, the number of abstentions is likely to rise further this weekend.

A low turnout among the young is expected because this demographic favoured the far-left politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of La France Insoumise (LFI), whose ideological platform differed substantially from the final two contenders for the presidency. He was narrowly forced into third place by Ms Le Pen on 10 April.

“I expect the young vote overall to fall this time because so many young Melenchonistes will stay home,” said Mij Rahman, a Europe analyst at the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy.

Leila, a French citizen in her late 20s who lives in London, will do exactly that. After supporting Mr Mélenchon earlier this month, she cannot bring herself to back either Mr Macron or his far-right rival Ms Le Pen, who commands slightly higher support than the president among young voters.

Although the 27-year-old, who is Muslim and whose Parisian family are of North African descent, recognises the dangers of electing Ms Le Pen to the Élysée Palace, she feels let down by Mr Macron’s first term in office and cannot vote for him in good faith. She will instead spoil her ballot.

“I feel like I can’t really give him my vote here, even just to block Le Pen,” she told The Independent, adding that she sees him as “condescending and arrogant”.

In what she described as “guilt-tripping” tactics, Mr Macron has urged the French public to go out to vote en masse on Sunday, saying a Brexit-style upset from his political opponent remains a possibility. The latest polls give the République En Marche party leader up to a 15-point advantage over his adversary, far lower than his 32-point margin of victory against her in the second round of the 2017 election.

Asked if she would regret not voting in the event that Ms Le Pen secures a surprise victory, Leila said: “I’m happy with my choice no matter what the outcome. I know it’s controversial, but at the end of the day my vote is my vote.”

The 27-year-old lawyer is far from alone in her decision. A recent YouGov poll suggested 38 per cent of Mélenchon voters will opt for Mr Macron, 18 per cent will pivot to Ms Le Pen (despite the LFI leader saying she should not receive any votes from his supporters) and 33 per cent will not vote for either candidate. The remaining 11 per cent were undecided.

In an attempt to win over wavering younger voters, the current president has recently beefed up his climate change pledges, as he made clear in his televised debate against Ms Le Pen on Wednesday evening.

“Macron’s shift to a stronger environmental and ecological offer… is aimed largely at the young,” Mr Rahman said. “As for whether this is enough to get more young people to vote, I doubt it.”

To woo the younger generations, the president has also watered down his pledge to lift the retirement age from 62 to 65.

But, above all, it seems that Macron can rely, to some extent at least, on young voters choosing him because they simply cannot contemplate the alternative.

Marta Lorimer, an academic at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, said Mr Macron had focused more over the last two weeks on some of the extreme views held by Ms Le Pen, including her desire to ban the veil.

This differed from the early stages of the election, when she succeeded in hiding behind the more extreme Éric Zemmour and focused on the cost-of-living crisis rather than topics such as immigration, Ms Lorimer noted.

In fact, Ms Le Pen’s politics are still closely linked to those of the National Front, according to Ms Lorimer. She rebranded the party, which was founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the National Rally in 2018.

“It has become more evident that yes, Le Pen has detoxified the brand and changed some of its positions, but also that there’s not much of a difference between the fundamentals of the old National Front and the new National Rally,” she said.

“I think voters are beginning to see that. Some voters have always seen it. There’s a large number of people who see Le Pen as a danger for democracy. That’s still an issue she has.”

Célia Belin, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute, warned that a Le Pen victory would be highly disruptive for French and European politics. But she added the caveat that the National Rally leader will most likely not win enough National Assembly seats in June to enact her agenda, even if she were elected president.

However, France under her leadership would see a dramatic shift. “Like the US [under Donald Trump], we would enter a very chaotic, dysfunctional state of French politics,” Ms Belin said.

The international ramifications of this could be considerable, she added. “France would fall into the category of Poland and Hungary, of the nationalist-sovereignist states that fight Brussels. At best, France would be ostracised. At worst, it would really hurt the European project.”

For such reasons, some young French voters will lend their support to Mr Macron on Sunday, despite disliking his policies.

Chloé, who like Leila is based in the UK, chose the Green candidate Yannick Jadot two weeks ago. She will now give Macron her vote, saying she felt obliged to vote “for the least bad option”.

“The alternative is awful. Unless it was Zemmour, I’d vote for whoever was against Marine Le Pen. It could have been Mélenchon, it could have been Pécresse [the leader of the centre-right Les Républicains].”

“We don’t want people to be complacent about it and think, ‘It’s fine, Macron will win anyway’ and then not show up.”

Salome, 19, and Orane, 24, who both grew up in the banlieues of Paris, offered an even stronger pleas for their peers to head out to polling stations across France on Sunday.

“I will vote for him but not by choice,” the 19-year-old political science student said, arguing that Mr Macron had not served the young well.

The prospect of a Le Pen presidency was “dangerous” for people like her, Salome added. “Le Pen is often presented as the defender of the poor and Macron as the defender of the rich. That’s not true, she has never been that.”

Like Salome, Orane, who is studying for her Masters, had put her hopes in Mr Mélenchon. “I was hoping for a president ready to fight for the poorest people, with a clear ambition to eradicate poverty,” she said.

“On the night of the result [of the first round], I saw Macron and I was sad, and then I saw Le Pen and I was terrified,” the 24-year-old Muslim said, imagining her female relatives being prevented from going outside wearing their veils.

“As a non-white, Muslim woman, I’m just scared. So I will vote for Macron. It saddens me, but it’s the only power I have left,” Orane said. “I would say that not voting is a selfish decision,” she added.