The French ‘Political Class’ Gets Crushed – on the Surface

Jon Blogosphere, Market Commentary, Politics

It designed the rules to protect itself against an election like this.
According to preliminary results of the presidential election in France, the two candidates that came out on top during today’s first round and therefore made it into the second round, to be contested on May 7, are Marine Le Pen, leader of the right-wing anti-euro and anti-EU Front National, and Emmanuel Macron, leader of the centrist, pro-EU En Marche, which he founded just last year.
So congratulations to today’s winners.
This is the first time since the beginning of the Fifth Republic in 1958 that no candidate from the major establishment parties made it to the second round, and that neither of the two winning candidates are backed by parties that have ever held the presidency.
This is also the first time in the Fifth Republic that the winner’s party will have zero or practically zero power in Parliament.
According to preliminary results, Macron got 23.7% of the vote, Le Pen 21.9%, conservative Franois Fillon 19.9%, and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mlenchon 19.2%.

This post was published at Wolf Street on Apr 23, 2017.