The authoritarian drift of the Macron government

The end of Emmanuel Macron's mandate must be seen as an authoritarian regression that France has already experienced on several occasions since the French Revolution.

How can Macron's popularity rating be so high despite the calamitous  and  authoritarian management of the health crisis?

Indeed, the daily Le Figaro announces that "  The Head of State is progressing in all categories of the population " and that nearly half of the French (46%) now have a good opinion of him, which is much more. as its recent predecessors on the same date before the election.

However, popularity rating does not mean intention to vote, which is, for him, at half of his popularity rating ( between 23% and 26% depending on the configurations) which indicates that even if he satisfies half of the population , only a quarter of them are convinced enough by their political performance to vote for him.

In fact, it is the same percentage of votes (24%) for Macron in the first round of the 2017 presidential election . After more than four years in power and so many seduction operations, Macron would continue to convince only this quarterback, loyal since 2017.

This quarter of the electorate is therefore its political base, which is little. According to Ipsos , it is made up of a very wide range of voters who are a little older, better off and city-dwellers than the average electorate.

This base seems insensitive to the concept of freedom and willing to give it another five years at the Elysee Palace, even after the discovery of its authoritarianism and its apparent disdain for the parliamentary process.

The management of the health crisis punctuated by the decisions of one man since March 2020 exposed this state authoritarianism that Macron's electoral base ignored in 2017, which it cannot do today when she is about to vote again for him.

However, another way was possible to manage the pandemic more effectively while respecting the freedoms of the French. Both upstream and downstream of the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in France, the actions supposed to protect them against the pandemic were often not only strongly coercive but also flouted .

The authoritarianism of Macron and the government is therefore also expressed in the absence of mea culpa . Indeed, the President never doubts his judgment while this blindness will have terrible health consequences for the French in the years to come, both in terms of physical and mental health .

The only possible conclusion is that Macron's electoral base accepts these authoritarian drifts. It is true that other sections of the electorate are probably also ready to accept an authoritarian democracy, if one considers the various political agendas on the right and left still in favor of a strong and interventionist state. But let's give these voters the benefit of the doubt for now.