The figures do not add up. The French Left says that — no matter what — it will refuse to vote for rightist Marine Le Pen in the second and final round of the presidential election, scheduled for April 24. The Left’s main champion, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, repeated four times: “Don’t vote for Le Pen.”

This is a sharp difference from the 2017 election, where he initially declined to make a statement against her. However, the left-wing voters might not heed their leaders’ instructions. At least if the first forecasts about the second round are to be believed.

All polls predict so far that Mr. Macron will garner between 51 percent and 54 percent of the vote in the second round, barely more than Madame Le Pen, who is expected to get between 46 percent and 49 percent. This is at odds with the first round’s returns.

That round counted 32.39 percent of the votes for Monsieur Macron and the global moderate camp; 32.52 percent for Madame Le Pen and the global rightist camp; 31.92 percent for Monsieur Mélenchon and the global Left. 

On the face of it, a Macron-Left coalition should rally 64.31 percent of the vote. How come it falls much behind such figures? Conversely, what about Mme. Le Pen’s predicted rise of between 12 percentage points and 15 points? The arithmetic rationale is that one half of the Left at least is prepared to support Mme. Le Pen against M. Macron.

Indeed, a lot can happen in two weeks. Left-wing popular support for the Hard Right candidate may eventually wither and wane. Still, the hard fact is that, as of today, many Left Wingers feel more compatible with what is branded as “Fascism” than to what is perceived as  “elite supremacy.” 

Should it mean that French politics are hopelessly “radicalized”? Perhaps. Then again, too, one should wonder how radical the radicals really are. M. Macron’s first mandate was marred, one will remember, by the Yellow Vests.

They mounted a near insurrection and then widespread strikes and demonstrations against pension reform. On both accounts, the protesters’ goals were not to bring about change but on the contrary to resist change by all available means. 

Likewise, the platforms of both Mme. Le Pen and M. Mélenchon are not about an overhaul of French society but rather about the consolidation of a French society as it is. That is to say an extensive Welfare State.

This comprises free medicine, free college, a 35-hour work week, at least five weeks’ vacation a year, and retirement at 62. That’s what they promise to defend against hypercapitalism, European unity, and globalization. It’s about what their constituencies truly care.

Look at, say, the confrontation, within the Hard Right, between Mme. Le Pen and Eric Zemmour. She won (at the end of the day M. Zemmour barely got seven percent of the vote) because she acted as a loving “mother” and he overplayed the severe “father.” 

Mme. Le Pen insisted she would “protect” the French; he offered them, in a Churchillian manner, “blood, sweat and tears.” She focused on the average Frenchman’s purchasing power; he babbled about a “reconquest” war against the Saracens.

One may surmise, then, that the left-wing voters who think about supporting Mme. Le Pen on April 24 are not converting to the Far Right but rather claiming Mme. Le Pen as one of theirs. A different approach, with different long term consequences.

At any rate, the 2022 game will not be over once the president is elected — or reelected. Will the three camps that emerged yesterday from the voting booths hold until the coming National Assembly, or will they split?

If the once dominant Socialist Party is clinically dead — its candidate, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, got less than two percent — what of its conservative rival, the Republican Party, which won less than five percent? We will know soon enough.