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      Why Boris Johnson Will Be Tested in UK by Local Elections

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      The British prime minister is under fire for lockdown-breaking parties. But many voters are skeptical that the opposition can solve issues such as soaring prices.BURY, England — Oliver Henry tries not to talk politics at his barbershop to avoid inciting arguments among his customers. But when Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain was fined recently by the police for breaking his own coronavirus laws, the bickering at Chaps Barbers was unavoidable.“Some people despise him, and other people really love him,” he said, referring to Mr. Johnson, whose Conservative Party faces an important electoral test Thursday as the prime minister battles a swirling scandal over parties in Downing Street that flouted lockdown rules.As he trimmed a client’s hair last week, Mr. Henry said he voted for Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives in the last general election, in 2019, and, grateful for government financial support during the pandemic, was not planning to abandon the prime minister yet.Whether millions of others feel the same when they vote Thursday in elections for local municipalities could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate. His leadership is again on the line, with his own lawmakers mulling a no-confidence motion that could evict him from Downing Street — and a poor result could tip them over the edge.Bury, England. Millions voting in local elections on Thursday could determine Mr. Johnson’s fate.Mary Turner for The New York TimesOne thing that has saved Mr. Johnson so far is his reputation as an election winner, someone able to reach out to voters in places like Bury, the so-called red wall regions of the north and middle of England. These areas traditionally voted for the opposition Labour Party but largely supported Brexit and turned to the Conservatives in the 2019 general election. What happens in them on Thursday will be watched closely.Elections are taking place only in some parts of the country, with around 4,400 seats being contested in more than 140 municipalities. Voting is also taking place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Conservatives are braced for losses. They are trailing Labour in opinion polls, the prime minister is mired in scandal and voters are feeling the pain of spiking energy, food and other prices.But things may still not be as easy for Labour as they might seem. Many of the seats contested on Thursday were last up for grabs in 2018, when Labour did well, giving it limited room to advance.Voting is for elected representatives known as councilors in municipalities that control issues like garbage collection, highway maintenance and planning rules. Turnout will most likely be low, and many of those who cast a ballot will be thinking more about potholes than Downing Street parties.A statue of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister, in his hometown, Bury.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour is also struggling to make a big breakthrough and win back its old heartland “red wall” areas, like Bury, the birthplace of Robert Peel, a 19th century Conservative prime minister. In recent decades, the area has suffered from deindustrialization.In Bury South, it elected Labour lawmakers to Parliament for years before 2019, when the Conservatives narrowly snatched the seat. But the winner, Christian Wakeford, recently defected to Labour. James Daly, a Conservative, won the other parliamentary seat, Bury North, in 2019 by a margin of just 105 votes.If Labour is ever going to fully regain control over Bury, now should be a good time. At the Brandlesholme Community Center and Food Bank, close to Chaps Barbers, its chairwoman, Jo Warburton, sums up the situation locally in a word: “diabolical.”Meat and poultry stalls at Bury Market. Many people there are struggling with high prices.Mary Turner for The New York TimesSoaring energy bills are forcing some people to choose between eating and heating, she said, adding, “Nobody can afford to live.” Ms. Warburton recently put out a plea for additional donations after having almost run out of food to offer. Even people with jobs are increasingly in need of groceries, including one person who said she had been surviving on soup for a week, Ms. Warburton added.Because the food bank is a charity, Ms. Warburton tries to keep out of politics. But she said that while local Labour Party politicians support the center, she has had little contact with Conservatives. As for the government in London, “they haven’t got a clue about life,” she said.Across town, one Bury resident, Angela Pomfret, said she sympathized in particular with those who have young families. “I don’t know how people are able to survive,” she said. “I am 62, and I am struggling.”Ms. Pomfret said she had been unable to visit her mother, who died during the coronavirus pandemic, because of Covid restrictions, so she was at first annoyed by news about illicit parties taking place in Downing Street at the same time.But while Ms. Pomfret says she will vote for Labour, she bears no grudge against Mr. Johnson and says she is not against him personally.Polling station signs in a Bury community center that also houses the Brandlesholme food bank ahead of elections.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNor is there much hostility toward him at Bury Market, where Andrew Fletcher, serving customers at a meat and poultry stall, acknowledges that trade is a little depressed at present but does not blame the government. “I will be voting Tory,” he said. “I don’t think Labour could do any better.”Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.“I think Boris Johnson is very unpopular, people think he’s either a fool or a crook — and he’s probably both, isn’t he?” he said with a laugh, drinking tea in a cafe at a building he opened as mayor in 1997. The cost of living is also eroding support for the Conservatives, he added. His expectations are cautious, however, and he thinks that Labour will “gain some seats” rather than sweep to a big victory.Trevor Holt, who has spent 39 years as an elected member of Bury Council for the Labour Party and twice served as the town’s mayor, is convinced that Mr. Johnson is a big liability for the Tories.Mary Turner for The New York TimesLabour currently controls Bury Council, and that means that it takes the blame for many things that go wrong locally as well as for some unpopular policies.Moves to build more homes on green spaces have provoked opposition, as have plans for a clean air zone, a proposal — now being reconsidered after protests — that would charge for journeys in some more polluting vehicles.To complicate matters, there is also a fringe party campaigning for more support for an area of Bury called Radcliffe. In the Royal Oak pub, Mike Smith, a councilor for the party, Radcliffe First, who is running for re-election, describes his patch as “an archetypal forgotten ‘red-wall’ town,” comparing it to Springfield, the fictional setting of “The Simpsons.”“If they need to build a sewage works, they’ll try to put it in Radcliffe,” he said.Campaigners and candidates for the Radcliffe First political party at the Royal Oak pub in Bury after canvassing for votes.Mary Turner for The New York TimesAt another table in the pub, which filled steadily before a soccer match was screened, Martin Watmough described Mr. Johnson as “an absolute charlatan,” and said he would support Labour in the local elections, adding that the Conservatives had lost the trust of many voters.But Nick Jones, the leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish, considering the political headwinds against his party generated by the lockdown party scandal. He is hoping to win a handful of seats.Mr. Jones is campaigning not so much for the prime minister as against Labour’s record locally. Speaking in another pub in Bury, he highlighted issues including the clean air zone plan, the state of the highways (“a disgrace,” in his opinion) and the frequency of refuse collections.Nick Jones, leader of the Conservatives on Bury Council, is bullish and hoping to win a handful of seats. Mary Turner for The New York TimesWhen the conversation turns to Mr. Johnson, who visited Bury last week, Mr. Jones is careful to be loyal.But his political pitch has little to do with a scandal-prone prime minister, whose immediate fate could depend on results of elections like these.The message to the voters in Bury, Mr. Jones said, is: “We are not talking about Downing Street, we are talking about your street.” More

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      J.D. Vance’s Victory in Ohio Is More Proof. Trump Has Already Won.

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      J.D. Vance’s come-from-behind victory in the Ohio Republican primary was the first test of Donald Trump’s influence in 2022 election cycle as well as the future of the Republican Party. Spoiler alert: He’s influential.Mr. Vance was endorsed by Mr. Trump, who has also thrown his considerable influence behind candidates for office all the way from U.S. Senate seats down to state-level insurance and safety-fire commissioner.Mr. Vance’s win will likely come as a disappointment to some Republicans who have been quietly hoping that Mr. Trump’s grip on the party is slipping. They see the midterms as an existential moment for the party. They are acutely aware that if the candidates he endorsed do well, the feeling of inevitability that he will be the party’s nominee in 2024 increases, annihilating any hope of reconstituting a political coalition around anything other than fealty to Mr. Trump.And some Republicans have also worried that some of the outlandish candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump could lose winnable races.Yet conservatives must be honest. At this time, there is no moving past Mr. Trump. He has remade the Republican Party in his image, and many Republican voters now crave his particular brand of combative politics.In races across the country, Republicans who have won Mr. Trump’s endorsement mention it constantly. Even those who didn’t win his endorsement still mention him constantly. Mr. Trump might not have endorsed them, but they all endorse him.In his endorsements, Mr. Trump appears to be hedging against any narrative failures by placing his chips all over the table. So far, in 2022, he has endorsed over 150 candidates.Generally speaking, Mr. Trump has made two kinds of endorsements. Standard incumbent endorsements are the first. What is new this cycle is Mr. Trump’s endorsements of so many federal, gubernatorial, state executive and state legislative candidates. Many of these candidates agree with his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. It’s not unreasonable to assume he’s endorsing these local candidates to lay the groundwork to run in 2024. Who better to help shape the outcome of the next election than Republicans who believe the last election was stolen?On the national level, some of Mr. Trump’s marquee endorsements seem risky. Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania was best-known as the former star of “The Dr. Oz Show” and is vulnerable to charges of carpetbagging. The biggest primary endorsement flop is likely to come in Georgia, where Mr. Trump is hoping to unseat Brian Kemp, a popular incumbent governor, with former Senator David Perdue, whose distinction in the race seems to consist mostly of repeating Mr. Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.There’s one candidate quality Mr. Trump can’t resist: celebrity. In endorsing Dr. Oz, Mr. Trump said, “When you’re on television for 18 years, that’s like a poll, that means people like you.” Celebrity also brings with it an edge when it comes to public performance. As Axios reported, Mr. Trump “puts a ton of stock in debates” and was “impressed” with Mr. Vance’s debate performances. In one debate, he thought “all the G.O.P. hopefuls were terrible except Vance. Trump says Vance ‘has the look.’”Republicans discount Mr. Trump’s instincts at their peril. I’ll admit to scoffing at his eager endorsement of the former football star Herschel Walker for Senate in Georgia, and Republicans like Mitch McConnell were reportedly skeptical of the candidate, concerned about parts of his personal history. Mr. Walker has admitted, for example, to playing Russian roulette several times and to being “accountable” for what his ex-wife has called abusive behavior. (He said that he has struggled with mental illness in the past and wrote about it in his book, “Breaking Free: My Life With Dissociative Identity Disorder.”)But when I conducted focus groups in Georgia, I immediately realized that Mr. Trump understood something I didn’t: Many people in Georgia love Mr. Walker without reservation and will forgive him any indiscretion. When I raised the issue of Russian roulette, a Georgia man responded, “He keeps winning.” And indeed, Mr. Walker is going to win the Republican Senate primary easily.In Ohio, before Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Vance in April, Mr. Vance was in third place, polling at about 10 percent, behind Josh Mandel and Mike Gibbons, each at about 21 percent. Without the Trump endorsement, Mr. Vance almost certainly languishes at around 10 percent and finishes fourth.The other characteristic of many of those Mr. Trump has endorsed is their unreserved embrace of “Stop the Steal.” It’s apparent why: When you listen to Trump voters — as I’ve discovered conducting regular focus groups with them — their beliefs are crystal clear. A majority believe the 2020 election was stolen and would like to see Mr. Trump run again in 2024, and even those who don’t want him to run still want him to play a big role in the G.O.P.Inevitably, many of Mr. Trump’s chosen will wind up in office. And whenever one of the candidates loses, there will be a horde of Republican political operatives ready to tell reporters — on deep background, of course — how this or that defeat signals that the Republican Party is finally ready to move beyond Mr. Trump.The problem is that I see absolutely no evidence of this being true. We can tally Mr. Trump’s endorsement wins and losses, but we cannot fail to grasp a key point: Mr. Trump has already won.Whether Mr. Trump’s handpicked candidates win or not, the Republican field that will emerge from these primary battles will be overwhelmingly Trumpy. If Brian Kemp and a handful of the elected officials who voted to impeach Mr. Trump survive their primaries, it will be good for democracy. But it will not be sufficient to blunt Mr. Trump’s wholesale takeover of the party.For that to happen, scores of candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump who win their primaries will need to lose in the general election. Only sustained defeat delivered by high Democratic turnout and right-leaning, college-educated suburban voters refusing to support these Trumpy candidates will change the current trajectory of the Republican Party.Unfortunately, for reasons historical (the party in power almost always loses seats in a midterm) and practical (inflation, violent crime and more), it’s shaping up to be a difficult election cycle for Democrats. Still, some key opportunities exist for Democrats, especially in swing-state gubernatorial and secretary of state races.Ultimately, Mr. Trump’s win-loss record is likely to be mixed. And that won’t be enough to pull the Republican Party from his grip, not in this cycle. On the existential question, Mr. Trump has already won — for now.Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) is a founder of Defending Democracy Together, executive director of the Republican Accountability Project, the publisher of The Bulwark and the host of “The Focus Group,” a podcast.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Ahead of Election, Young People in the Philippines Rally Around Leni Robredo

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      As the election in the Philippines nears, tens of thousands of young people who fear another Marcos presidency are rallying around Leni Robredo, the country’s vice president.VALENZUELA CITY, Philippines — John Benvir Serag knocked on doors in the working-class neighborhood, wearing his pink “Youth Vote for Leni” T-shirt and holding a stack of fliers. He has spent nearly every day in the past month trying to explain to strangers why Leni Robredo is the best person to lead the Philippines.“What are you looking for in a president?” Mr. Serag asked an older woman, ahead of the country’s presidential election in May.“Of course, someone who does not steal,” she responded.“Right! Leni has no trace of corruption,” Mr. Serag said. “Also, she is not a thief.”Anyone who made eye contact with the 26-year-old Mr. Serag in this neighborhood was an opening. Questions about her proposal for clean government? Needed more information about her plans for farmers and businesses?In the past six years, many young people in the Philippines have grown increasingly disenchanted with President Rodrigo Duterte’s leadership: both his brutal war on drugs and his approach to the pandemic. They have watched men and boys being gunned down in the streets and experienced the mental toll from a prolonged shutdown of schools, two years and running.John Benvir Sera, 26, a junior high school teacher, is among the many young volunteers for Ms. Robredo.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesIn this election, many have come out in full force for Ms. Robredo, the country’s vice president, who is an outspoken critic of Mr. Duterte and a frequent target of his insults. They are facing long odds, with Ms. Robredo polling a far second behind the front-runner, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son and namesake of the late dictator.They are also fighting a wave of disinformation that has recast the Marcos dictatorship as what supporters of the younger Marcos call a “golden age.” Some of their peers are swayed by YouTube videos that portray Mr. Marcos as a cool parent, while some among an older generation are nostalgic for strongman rule.Presidential elections in the Philippines have long been a contest for the hearts of young Filipinos. This time, at least half of the record 65 million registered voters are between the ages of 18 and 30.But they have rarely been marked by this level of passion and intensity. As of Feb. 25, two million volunteers had signed up for Ms. Robredo’s campaign, according to Barry Gutierrez, her spokesman. Many of them are first-time voters or too young to vote. Her rallies have drawn tens of thousands of people.Supporters of Ms. Robredo preparing to go house-to-house in Manila to campaign for her. Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times“It’s like my mom’s a rock star every time she goes around, and this is something very surprising to us,” said Tricia Robredo, one of Ms. Robredo’s daughters. “Especially because we’ve been going off our experience the past six years where my mom has been very vilified online.”Dozens of groups have sprouted up, combining their shared interests in K-pop and Taylor Swift with getting the vote out for Ms. Robredo. The “Swifties4Leni” wear T-shirts with the hashtag #OnlyTheYoung, referencing Ms. Swift’s track about youth empowerment against the “big bad man and his big bad clan.”Many of Ms. Robredo’s young supporters are united in their desire to prevent another Marcos from becoming president. Aside from the human rights abuses committed during his father’s 20-year rule, Mr. Marcos — who is known by his nickname, Bongbong — has been convicted of tax fraud, refused to pay his family’s estate taxes, and misrepresented his education at Oxford University.Many of Ms. Robredo’s young supporters are united in their desire to prevent another Marcos from becoming president. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son of the late dictator, is leading in the polls.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesMs. Robredo, a lawyer and an economist, beat Mr. Marcos narrowly in 2016 to win the vice presidency, which is separately elected from the presidency. She has vowed to stop the extrajudicial killings in the drug war. During the pandemic, she sent medical equipment to patients and dispatched supplies to frontliners. She has helped marginalized communities and is usually one of the first top officials to visit disaster-stricken sites.Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Ms. Robredo’s young volunteers has been the wave of disinformation that has lionized the Marcos era and vilified Ms. Robredo as a communist. Spliced videos have also portrayed her as stuttering and unintelligent.Tsek.ph, an independent fact-checking project in the Philippines, found that Mr. Marcos has benefited the most from disinformation this year, while Ms. Robredo has been its biggest victim so far. The group said that of more than 200 election-related posts it analyzed, 94 percent targeted Ms. Robredo; only 10 percent went after Mr. Marcos.“It’s a little late for us to fight that disinformation,” said Mr. Serag, a junior high school teacher who goes by V.J. “But we’re still doing it, even if it’s a little too late. That’s what pushed me to be active.”Preparing campaign literature for Ms. Robredo. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Ms. Robredo’s young volunteers has been a wave of disinformation targeting her.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesOn a recent Thursday, Mr. Serag led a team of 20 other volunteers in the neighborhood of Gen T. de Leon, where posters of Mr. Marcos and his running mate, Sara Duterte, the president’s daughter, were plastered outside many homes.Just a week before, several of Mr. Marcos’s supporters in the next neighborhood had dumped a bucket of water on them.“What are you looking for in a president?” Mr. Serag asked a middle-aged woman who runs a stall.“Someone who can help us find jobs,” the woman replied.“Leni has set aside a budget of 100 million for small and medium enterprises and when it comes to employment —” Mr. Serag began, before he was cut off.Dozens of groups have sprouted up, combining their shared interests in K-pop and Taylor Swift with getting the vote out for Ms. Robredo. Above, one such group, K-Pop Stans for Leni.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York Times“Isn’t Leni a ‘yellow?’” the woman asked, referring to the “yellow” Liberal Party. The party of the Aquino family, which has produced two former presidents, has been seen by some as an elitist group that has failed to improve the lives of ordinary Filipinos.“No, she’s independent,” Mr. Serag responded. He pressed on: “Even if we do away with the political colors, yellow or whatever, let’s think about what she really has done. She really has helped a lot of communities.”The youth vote remains divided between Ms. Robredo and Mr. Marcos. Many young people remain big fans of Mr. Marcos — a survey has shown that seven out of 10 Filipinos aged 18 to 24 want him to be president. The country’s textbooks dwell little on the atrocities of the Marcos era. Mr. Marcos’s young supporters say they enjoy watching his YouTube videos, which often feature his family in game-show segments.One volunteer on Mr. Serag’s team, Jay Alquizar, 22, had a speaker blasting a rap and pop jingle touting Ms. Robredo’s achievements, which he carted through the streets. A group of teenage boys cycled past him. Some shouted Mr. Marcos’s initials: “BBM, BBM!”A campaign rally for Ms. Robredo. Presidential elections in the Philippines have long been a contest for the hearts of young Filipinos.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesMr. Alquizar spoke into his microphone. “We are not here for a fight, we just want to inspire you,” he said. “That is what we see as the young. You need to see that, too. Because the future is not only for you. It’s for the next generation.”Mr. Alquizar said he was inspired, in part, by his grandfather, a former police officer, who was tortured during the Marcos regime after speaking out against human rights violations. “The word ‘sorry’ from the Marcos family,” he said in an interview. “We just want to hear that from them.”In past elections, the youths in the Philippines were mostly concerned about bread-and-butter issues such as jobs. They were often frustrated by the political dynasties that dominated the establishment, but felt there was little they could do to change it. Youth turnout in the 2016 election was about 30 percent, compared with 82 percent for the general population.Maria Tinao, 16, a high school student in the city of Caloocan, said she was always disillusioned about politics, believing officials had joined government just to enrich themselves. A self-professed “pageant fanatic,” she had been more focused on winning beauty contests and listening to K-pop than thinking about her country’s leaders.Then in 2017, Kian Loyd delos Santos was shot twice in the head.A supporter of Mr. Marcos, in blue, debating volunteers from Youth Vote for Leni. Some supporters of the Mr. Marcos have cast his father’s dictatorship as a “golden age.”Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesHis death shook Ms. Tinao. He was 17. The police officers who shot him were found guilty of his murder.In January, Ms. Tinao saw an interview with Ms. Robredo and was impressed. She started researching the vice president’s stance on the drug war. Although she was too young to vote, she wanted to work on swaying people who could.“We want a change, a real change for this country,” Ms. Tinao said.For the next few months, Ms. Tinao was relentless in talking about Ms. Robredo’s policies to her mother.“I was annoyed at first,” said Monica Tinao, 43, a volunteer church worker, who was considering voting for Isko Moreno, the mayor of Manila.But she remained curious about the appeal of Ms. Robredo. In March, she decided to attend a rally for the candidate. She saw the young volunteers distribute free food and water. Her daughter was in front of the stage.That night, the elder Ms. Tinao, who lives in a neighborhood of Marcos supporters, found her daughter’s banner promoting Ms. Robredo and strung it up on her front gate.Ms. Robredo onstage during a campaign rally in Pampanga, the Philippines, in April. Her rallies have drawn tens of thousands of people.Hannah Reyes Morales for The New York TimesJason Gutierrez More

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      Convincing Victory Disguises Challenges for France’s Macron

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      France’s runoff election was marked by a record level of abstention, and many cast a ballot only to keep the far right from power — a testament to a growing disillusionment.ROYE, France — There is no doubt that President Emmanuel Macron of France won a convincing re-election over Marine Le Pen, his far-right challenger, on Sunday. Mr. Macron scored a thumping 17 point margin of victory, becoming the first French leader to be re-elected to a second term in 20 years.In the view of many, the electoral system worked as it was intended to, with nearly 60 percent of those who voted joining together to defend against a xenophobic and nationalist far right widely regarded as a threat to French democracy.That is, perhaps, unless you are a supporter of Ms. Le Pen, who was blocked in the final round for a second consecutive time.“I think we’re heading into five more years of crisis, probably worse, because people are just fed up,” Sébastien Denneulin, 46, a Le Pen supporter, said on Monday morning in Roye, a northern far-right stronghold.Even as Ms. Le Pen has edged her party into the mainstream, ensconcing it firmly in the political establishment, her supporters say they are growing frustrated with a lack of representation in the political system.In the far-right stronghold of Roye, in northern France, two out of three voters backed Marine Le Pen in the runoff.James Hill for The New York TimesThe far right enjoyed its strongest ever showing at the ballot box on Sunday, as Ms. Le Pen widened her appeal with pocketbook issues important in parts of the country like this northern region, where in the past two generations voters have shifted to the far right from the political left along with deindustrialization.The challenge now for Mr. Macron will be how to lure back into the political fold the 41.5 percent of voters who cast ballots for Ms. Le Pen — and the roughly 28 percent who opted not to vote at all. Despite the president’s clear victory, the election results disguised myriad challenges that could make his next five years in office even more tumultuous than the last.As French news media organizations drew up maps of the nationwide breakdown of the runoff vote, they showed a widening and deepening fracture along the French equivalent of American blue and red states.In the reddest areas of France, there was frustration that Ms. Le Pen had been defeated once again and a strong sentiment that her supporters were continuing to be shut out of the political system.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen in Paris on Sunday. In the reddest areas of France, there is a strong feeling among them that they are being shut out of the political system.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesIn Roye, some people gathered at the QG brasserie voiced anger when they learned of the results on their smartphones on Sunday evening. One man set fire to his voter’s card.Tony Rochon, 39, a roofer, said he had voted for a Le Pen — either Marine or her father, Jean-Marie — all of his life. But each time, he said, other political parties had united to deny a Le Pen victory in the presidential race. Then the same thing had happened in legislative elections — also a two-round system — effectively marginalizing Ms. Le Pen’s influence in Parliament.In 2017, for instance, while Ms. Le Pen garnered 34 percent of the vote in the presidential election, her party secured only eight seats in Parliament — not even enough to form a parliamentary group.That year, Mr. Macron promised to introduce proportional representation in Parliament, which experts say would better reflect the population’s political beliefs. But he failed to fulfill his pledge.“That’s why the only option for us is to take to the streets,” said Mr. Rochon, who joined the Yellow Vest anti-government protests in Paris. “Macron has no legitimacy.”Tony Rochon, center right, holding his daughter, reached in frustration for his friend’s phone as news of Mr. Macron’s victory came in. He had voted for a Le Pen his whole life.James Hill for The New York TimesHe and his wife, Adelaide Rochon, 33, a dental assistant who has also always voted for Ms. Le Pen’s party, said they believed that the vote had been rigged.“We don’t know a single person around us who voted for Macron,” Ms. Rochon said. “It’s impossible that he won.”Not impossible, actually.In Roye, a town of 6,000 people, two out of three voters backed Ms. Le Pen in the runoff. But nationwide Mr. Macron drew many votes — 47 percent, according to one poll — not necessarily because people endorsed him, but because they joined the so-called Republican front against the far right, whose politics remain anathema to a majority of French despite Ms. Le Pen’s persistent efforts to remake and soften her image.For others, like Madeleine Rosier, a member of the leftist France Unbowed, a choice between Mr. Macron and what she deemed an unacceptable far-right candidate was no choice at all. She did not cast a ballot on Sunday after voting for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran leftist who came in third place in the first round.“I didn’t want to grant Emmanuel Macron legitimacy,” she said.The abstention rate — the highest in a runoff since 1969 — reflected the widespread disillusionment with the political system that sent protesters from towns like Roye to the Champs-Élysées in Paris as part of the anti-government Yellow Vest movement in 2018, the biggest political crisis of Mr. Macron’s first term.Madeleine Rosier, a member of France Unbowed, did not vote on Sunday because she “didn’t want to grant Emmanuel Macron legitimacy.”James Hill for The New York TimesThat anger persists in many pockets of the country. In another measure of political disillusionment, more than three million people cast blank or null-and-void ballots — and that does not include the 13.7 million who opted not to vote at all.Étienne Ollion, a sociologist and professor at the Polytechnique engineering school, said the importance of such voters and those who reluctantly backed Mr. Macron to keep Ms. Le Pen from power, as well as the level of abstention give Mr. Macron “a relatively limited legitimacy.”The election results underscored a growing sense of “democratic fatigue and democratic fracture” in France, Mr. Ollion said.Given Mr. Macron’s unfulfilled pledge to reform Parliament, Chloé Morin, a political scientist at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a Paris-based think tank, said there were doubts about Mr. Macron’s “capacity to take into account this extremely divided political landscape and opposition parties that will inevitably, in all logic, be little represented” in Parliament.Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an ally of Mr. Macron and a former Green member of the European Parliament, said in an interview that “an unfair French electoral system” had led to governing that ignores the political opposition and various actors of society.“To have a Parliament where someone who gets 42 percent of the votes only has about 20 lawmakers, that’s unacceptable,” he said, referring to Ms. Le Pen.Shortly after Mr. Macron was re-elected on Sunday, there were immediate signs that discontent surrounding French democracy would mark his second term.Demonstrators in Lyon, France, after Mr. Macron’s re-election on Sunday. The sign reads, “Down with Macron, the Robin of the bourgeoisie,” referring to Robin Hood.Laurent Cipriani/Associated PressHundreds of protesters gathered in Paris and other big cities to oppose Mr. Macron’s second term. The protests were marred by violent clashes with the police, who fired tear gas in Paris to disperse the crowd.Protesters in Paris converged from the city center to the large Place de la République, chanting a song originating from the Yellow Vest movement, “We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want it, we are here!”By midnight, the police had cleared the Place de la République of protesters. But they had scrawled, in red, a warning on the large statue of Marianne, an emblem of the French Republic, in the middle of the square: “Beware of revenge when all the poor people stand up.”Norimitsu Onishi More

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      If Biden’s Plan Is Like a ‘New Deal,’ Why Don’t Voters Care?

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      RICHMOND, Va. — As Chris Frelke surveyed the Thomas B. Smith Community Center, he conceded that the beige-and-green cinder block structure was not much to look at. But Mr. Frelke, the parks director in Virginia’s capital, spoke with excitement describing the image in his mind’s eye: One day, there would be a pristine new complex capable of providing services from child care to community college classes.That dream complex is not some remote fantasy. The city of Richmond intends to build it in the next few years using $20 million from the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s trillion-dollar coronavirus-relief law. Richmond will receive a total of $155 million, a cash infusion that its Democratic mayor, Levar Stoney, called “a once-in-a-lifetime sort of investment.”“This is akin to our New Deal,” Mr. Stoney said.Unlike the New Deal, however, this $1.9 trillion federal investment in American communities has barely registered with voters. Rather than a trophy for Mr. Biden and his party, the program has become a case study in how easily voters can overlook even a lavishly funded government initiative delivering benefits close to home.Mr. Biden’s popularity has declined in polls over the past year, and voters are giving him less credit for the country’s economic recovery than his advisers had anticipated. In Virginia, Democrats got shellacked in the 2021 off-year elections amid the country’s halting emergence from the depths of the pandemic.Ambivalence among voters stems partly from the fact that many of the projects being funded are, for now, invisible.At Richmond’s Southside Community Center, slated to balloon in capacity with the help of rescue plan funding, Linda Scott, a 75-year-old pickleball enthusiast, said she had heard nothing of the coming upgrades.“I know that we’re getting lots of money,” said Ms. Scott, a self-described independent who voted for Mr. Biden. “But what we’re doing with it, I’m not sure.”Thirteen months after Mr. Biden signed the emergency package, that money is starting to fuel a wave of investment on city infrastructure, public services and pilot programs unlike any in decades.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan,” Mr. Biden has said to House members, “and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”Doug Mills/The New York TimesCity and county leaders are spending confidently, boasting of the generational improvements they are making with the help of Mr. Biden’s legislation.The city of Richmond plans to use $78 million to create four activity centers, overhauling two existing facilities and building two. Rescue plan money will also fund more than $30 million on affordable housing initiatives and smaller amounts on public safety and health.Mr. Stoney allowed that it was not clear how much voters had processed that barrage of spending when the projects were far from completion. In cities like his, the money must make its way through city councils and contract-bidding processes; in some states, the path to deploying funds has been even longer as governors wrangle with conservative legislatures.“I wish we could snap our fingers and say: Oh, there’s a new community center right here today!” Mr. Stoney said.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsMidterms Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the 2022 election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering, though this year’s map is poised to be surprisingly fairGovernors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.Other initiatives will kick in faster but affect fewer people: In Richmond, the mayor’s office has endorsed a grant of about $350,000 to Daily Planet Health Services, clinics for low-income residents, to expand capacity to care for people without homes.Richmond plans to use more than $30 million from federal rescue plan funds on affordable housing initiatives.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesDr. Patricia Cook, the organization’s chief medical officer, said the money could be applied quickly: “We’d be able to fill the rooms that day.”Getting voters excited about the American Rescue Plan is a tall order when so many are preoccupied with the price of gasoline and the cost and availability of other basic goods — concerns the emergency-spending bill was not designed to address.A Gallup poll in March found that more Americans said they worried a great deal about inflation than any other issue. Crime and homelessness, both targets of rescue spending, were not far behind.The American Rescue Plan, which also funded direct relief payments to voters and health programs like vaccine distribution, has been criticized by Republicans and some economists for pumping too much money into the economy and probably contributing to inflation.Mr. Stoney said he had encouraged the White House to work with mayors and treat them as the “tip of the spear” in promoting its aid. Many Americans were still in a gloomy mood because of the pandemic, the mayor said, and Democrats had not done a very good job of communicating about the plan.“Not just the president, but it’s difficult even for us sometimes to break through some of the noise that’s out there,” he said.Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond says that if Democrats don’t find a way to effectively convey their role in the rescue plan to voters, then Republicans would take credit for spending the money.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesOnce in a LifetimeThe political predicament confronting Mr. Biden and his party was embedded in the structure of the American Rescue Plan. Within the $1.9 trillion law, a $350 billion fund for state and local governments was designed to meet a dire set of circumstances along the lines of the Great Recession: a potentially catastrophic short-term budget shortfall followed by a slow economic recovery.Mr. Biden declared it would help states and municipalities rehire all “those laid-off police officers, firefighters, teachers and nurses.”The $350 billion in rescue funds would be handed out by 2022 in increments, with recipients given until 2026 to spend it. That timeline was meant to gird states and cities against another economic slowdown, said Gene Sperling, the presidential adviser overseeing the rescue plan.Yet rather than limping through a recovery, the country enjoyed the fastest economic growth in nearly four decades and saw the unemployment rate plummet. Government revenues surged across much of the country, and governors of once-beleaguered states, like California and Minnesota, announced proposals to give residents tax cuts or one-time rebates.Some state and local government payrolls are smaller than they were before the pandemic; many municipalities face a backlog in services from courts to coroners’ offices, and they are not immune to inflation and fuel shocks.The rescue spending still represents something of an insurance policy against a new recession. But for state and local leaders, the money is clearly something more than that.As government revenues began returning, the Treasury Department issued guidance encouraging cities and counties to treat rescue funding as a flexible resource that could be deployed for purposes faintly related to Covid-19.Some initiatives will kick in faster but affect fewer people: In Richmond, the mayor’s office has endorsed a grant of about $350,000 to Daily Planet Health Services, a network of clinics for low-income residents.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesIf municipalities could make the case that a social problem worsened because of the pandemic, then they could probably use rescue plan funding.Under the federal legislation, Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz knows that Toledo, Ohio, is due $180 million over two years, a colossal sum for a city of about 270,000 people.His administration outlined a combination of short- and long-term improvements, including demolishing blighted buildings, creating affordable housing projects and targeted spending on public safety and child care.Mr. Kapszukiewicz is a rare Democrat who may have been helped politically by the funding. The mayor won re-election by a wide margin in November; in his victory speech, he cited the American Rescue Plan as a reason for his city to be optimistic.“None of us in public life have ever had an opportunity like this,” Mr. Kapszukiewicz said.Cities and counties cannot enact programs that would go bankrupt once the money expires. That has encouraged governments to use it on one-time investments that could be completed by the 2026 deadline — and underwrite policy experiments on a limited scale.Construction on a home that will be offered for sale through the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust in Richmond.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesMayor Michelle Wu of Boston, a progressive Democrat, has pledged to spend hundreds of millions on affordable housing initiatives. Ms. Wu, who campaigned on eliminating fares for mass transit, is using about $8 million of rescue plan money — from more than half a billion allotted to her city — to make three bus lines free for two years.She hopes demonstrating the value of free transit will create momentum to enact the policy without federal money.“Our goal is to resist the temptation to divvy up these funds into 10,000 photo ops,” Ms. Wu said, “and instead truly focus on transformational change.”Ms. Wu said she had been up front with her constituents that the federal money made her transit policy possible, but she said many were not focused on its origins.“I think if you talk to people out and about, living their lives in our neighborhoods, they don’t care where the funding comes from,” she said.The potential of these programs is unproven, and in many cases years away — a challenge for Democrats who would like to run on a record of concrete accomplishments this fall.“You tell them about the American Rescue Plan,” Mr. Biden said to House members, “and they say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’”Linda Scott said she had heard nothing of the coming upgrades to Richmond’s Southside Community Center. “I know that we’re getting lots of money, but what we’re doing with it, I’m not sure,” she said.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York TimesChris Frelke, Richmond’s parks director, said the city would spend $78 million creating four community centers.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times‘It Just Does Not Connect’A short drive from Richmond’s Thomas B. Smith Community Center is where the city of Richmond ends and Chesterfield County begins. A historically Republican suburb that is wealthier and whiter than Virginia’s capital city, Chesterfield County has already received more than $34 million through the American Rescue Plan. A second installment of that size is due later.The Republican-led county board has announced a major upgrade of parks and other construction projects, including a school and police station.The county’s finances remained sturdy throughout the pandemic and are now so robust that the board of supervisors approved a reduction in the real estate tax. The rescue plan funding allowed the county to accelerate some projects, local officials said, but they would likely have undertaken many of them without federal help.Christopher Winslow, the Republican chair of the county board, said the projects would have a “long-lasting and significant effect on citizens.” But in a fiscally robust county like his, Mr. Winslow said, the funding was less a rescue than a “bonanza.”By the time the first tranche of rescue money arrived, Mr. Winslow said, there was “a sense that the real pain was largely behind us.” That view is shared by many Republicans in Congress, who criticized the original price tag of the legislation and proposed clawing back some of the money.During a recent meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors, several White House officials, including Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, urged city leaders to do more to promote the rescue money — or risk seeing Congress redirect some of the funding elsewhere.After shedding its conservative roots to back Mr. Biden for president in 2020, Chesterfield County shifted back to the right to support a Republican, Glenn Youngkin, for governor.Lashrecse Aird, a former Democratic state legislator who represented a slice of Chesterfield County, said the rescue plan was of “no value whatsoever” to Democrats in Virginia’s 2021 elections. Ms. Aird, who lost her seat in the House of Delegates in November, said voters were scarcely aware of the federal aid.“It just does not connect. That is just the honest to goodness truth,” Ms. Aird said. “Even when you’re talking about schools, so much of this stuff is so far down the line before it’s anything you can see.”Richmond’s Southside Community Center is slated to balloon in size and capacity.Parker Michels-Boyce for The New York Times More

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      How Hated Is Macron? It Could Decide the French Election.

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      Given the choice between a president they suspect of despising ordinary people and a far-right candidate they detest, many French voters may stay home.LE HAVRE, France — As an ardent supporter of President Emmanuel Macron of France, Nicole Liot was all smiles after seeing him at a recent campaign stop. But she was also worried about the final round of the French election this Sunday. In her lifetime, she had never seen such intense dislike for a president among some French.“There are presidents who weren’t hated like this even though they weren’t saints,” Ms. Liot, 80, said, positing that what has become known as Mr. Macron’s “little phrases” fueled the aversion. “Like when he told someone, ‘You’re searching for a job? Just cross the street and you’ll find one.’”As anti-Macron protesters burned tires and blotted the sky with smoke over the northwestern city of Le Havre, Ms. Liot added, “Maybe people won’t forgive him for these mistakes of language and attitude.”No French president has been the object of such intense dislike among significant segments of the population as Mr. Macron — the result, experts say, of his image as an elitist out of touch with the ordinary French people whose pensions and work protections he has threatened in his efforts to make the economy more investor-friendly.Just how deep that loathing runs will be a critical factor — perhaps even the decisive one — in the election against his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. Recent polls give Mr. Macron a lead of around 10 percentage points — wider than at some points in the campaign, but only a third of his winning margin five years ago.“Macron and the hatred he arouses is unprecedented,” said Nicolas Domenach, a veteran political journalist who has covered the past five French presidents and is the co-author of “Macron: Why So Much Hatred?,” a recently published book. “It stems from a particular alignment. He is the president of the rich and the president of disdain.”Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, at a meeting in Avignon.Daniel Cole/Associated PressNo doubt Mr. Macron could end up winning re-election despite his unpopularity. Even if a groundswell of voters does not turn out to vote for him, what matters for him is that enough voters come out to vote against her — to build a “dam” against the far right.It is a long-established strategy to erect a so-called “Republican front” against a political force — her party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front — that is seen as a threat to France’s democratic foundations.But given the choice between a president they find disdainful and a far-right candidate they find detestable, many French voters may just stay home, or even vote for Ms. Le Pen, tipping the scales in a close election.Every chance she gets, Ms. Le Pen has done her best to remind voters of “these terrible words” — “these words of disdain” — that now stick to Mr. Macron, as she did at a big campaign rally in the southern city of Avignon last week.“They are the words of a power without empathy,” she said as the crowd booed.Both she and Mr. Macron are now vying in the campaign’s closing days for the voters who cast ballots for other candidates in the first round of the presidential election on April 10, on whom the election now hinges.Waiting for Mr. Macron, while smoke from from tires set on fire as part of a protest against the president rose in the distance.James Hill for The New York TimesThe most critical bloc voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran leftist who came in a strong third. On the left, many feel betrayed by Mr. Macron’s rightward tilt over the course of his presidency.Ms. Le Pen is trying especially to appeal to voters who feel the same emotions of hate and disdain so often heard among Ms. Le Pen’s core backers — many in Mr. Mélenchon’s camp.Roland Lescure, a lawmaker and spokesman for Mr. Macron’s party, La République en Marche, said he was convinced that “rejection for Marine Le Pen” would prove more potent than the dislike for the president, which he recognized.The rejection was not just of the person of Ms. Le Pen, he said, “but above all of an ideology, of a political history and of a platform, which, when one reads it, is extremely harmful.”But Ms. Le Pen has grown so confident in her widening appeal after taking calculated steps to soften her image that she has even dared seize the term “dam” for herself — beseeching voters six times in her rally to build a “dam against Macron.”The calls for dams on both sides underscored how the final vote boils down to an unpopularity contest: The less-disliked candidate wins.It is especially true in this race, which features the same finalists as in 2017. But if Ms. Le Pen was seen as a bulldozer of far-right ideology back then, in the current campaign she has tried to present a softer, more personable side.Mr. Macron meeting with voters on his way to the Museum of Modern Art André Malraux in Le Havre.James Hill for The New York TimesAnd if Mr. Macron was once seen as a fresh face who inspired many with his promises to change an ossified France, this time he has been cast by his haters as a kind of malign king.A former investment banker, whose tax policies have favored the wealthy, Mr. Macron has been unable to shake off his image as the president of the rich, even after his government provided massive subsidies during the pandemic.His “little phrases” over the years to or about regular folk have cemented that unsympathetic image, creating the kind of political and cultural schism opened by Hillary Clinton’s description of Donald J. Trump’s supporters in 2016 as “deplorables.”It has also not helped Mr. Macron that he barely bothered to campaign initially, absorbed in diplomacy around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but also as part of a strategy to hold himself out of reach of his opponents.For many French, the approach only reinforced the impression of aloofness from a president who has concentrated powers in his own hands and considered campaigning beneath him.Voting in the first round of the presidential election in the Paris suburb of Trappes. Polls give Mr. Macron around a 10 percentage point lead in the second round.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs Mr. Macron finally engages the race, he is now being confronted with the raw emotions that have shaped much of his presidency.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More

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      French Candidates’ Economic Programs Hold Key to the Election

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      Promising tax cuts, higher wages and changes in the retirement age, President Macron and Marine Le Pen vie for undecided voters.PARIS — As President Emmanuel Macron wove through crowds during a campaign stop in northern France last week, an elderly voter got in his face to protest one of his most unpopular economic proposals: raising the retirement age to 65 from 62 to fund France’s national pension system.“Retirement at 65, no, no!” the woman shouted, jabbing a finger at Mr. Macron’s chest as he tried to assuage her. The boisterous exchange was caught on camera. Two hours later, he retreated, saying he would consider tweaking the age to 64. “I don’t want to divide the country,” he said on French television.Mr. Macron’s reversal on a key element of his economic platform, in an industrial region backing the far-right firebrand Marine Le Pen ahead of France’s presidential election next Sunday, was a reminder of the social distress dominating the minds of voters. He and Ms. Le Pen have starkly divergent visions of how to address these concerns.As they cross the country in a whirlwind of last-minute campaigning, their runoff will hinge to a large extent on perceptions of the economy. Worries about widening economic insecurity, and the surging cost of living amid the fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine, have become top issues in the race, ahead of security and immigration.Ms. Le Pen won by a comfortable margin in the first round of voting last Sunday in places that have lost jobs to deindustrialization, where she has found a ready audience for her pledges to bolster purchasing power, create employment through “intelligent” protectionism and shield France from European policies that expanded globalization.An open-air produce market in Paris, in December. Economic insecurity and the cost of living have become top issues for voters in the presidential runoff.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesWhile Mr. Macron is still expected to win in a tight race, workers in restless blue-collar bastions may yet prove a liability. Despite a robust recovery in France from Covid lockdowns — the economy is now growing at around 7 percent, and unemployment has fallen to a 10-year low of 7.4 percent — many feel inequality has widened, rather than narrowed, as he pledged, in the five years since Mr. Macron took office.After France’s traditional left-wing and right-wing parties collapsed in the first round of voting, both candidates are scrambling to lure the undecided and voters who gravitated to their opponents — especially the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon — in large part by recasting major planks of their economic programs to appeal to those struggling to get by.Pensions is a case in point. Mr. Macron has worked to recalibrate his image as a president who favors France’s wealthy classes, the business establishment and white-collar voters as he set about overhauling the economy to bolster competitiveness.In 2019 he was forced to set aside plans to raise the retirement age to 65 after raucous nationwide strikes shut down much of France. He had sought to streamline France’s complex system of public and private pension schemes into one state-managed plan to close a shortfall of 18 billion euros, or about $19 billion.Following his confrontation in northern France last week, Mr. Macron insisted that he would continue to push back the retirement age incrementally — by four months per year starting next year — but that he was open to discussing an easing of the plan in its later stages.“It’s not dogma,” he said of the policy. “I have to listen to what people are saying to me.” Mr. Macron has struggled to achieve his goal of raising the retirement age to 65.Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesMs. Le Pen accused Mr. Macron of engaging in a policy of “social wreckage” and of blowing with the wind to capture votes, although she has also shifted gears after the protectionist economic platform she advanced five years ago spooked businesses. She dropped plans to withdraw from the European Union and the eurozone.Today, Ms. Le Pen favors maintaining the current retirement age of 62, abandoning a previous push to reduce it to 60 — although certain workers engaged in intensive manual labor like construction could retire at the lower age.As Ms. Le Pen seeks to rebrand her far-right National Rally party as a kinder, gentler party than the one she steered in 2017, albeit with a clear anti-immigrant message, she has focused on economic issues close to blue-collar voters’ hearts.She got out front on one of the biggest issues of the campaign: a surge in the cost of living.While Mr. Macron was trying to broker a cease-fire in Ukraine, Ms. Le Pen was visiting towns and rural areas across France, promising increased subsidies for vulnerable households.She has pledged a 10 percent hike in France’s monthly minimum wage of 1,603 euros. She is also vowing to slash sales taxes to 5.5 percent from 20 percent on fuel, oil, gas and electricity, and to cut them altogether on 100 “essential” goods. Workers under 30 would be exempt from income tax, and young couples would get interest-free housing loans.Her France-first policy extends even further: To make up for increased spending on social programs, she has said she would slash billions in social spending on “foreigners.”Marine Le Pen speaking to supporters on April 10 after the first round of the French election. She has tried to recast her far-right party in a kinder, gentler form.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesShe has also vowed to create jobs and re-industrialize the country by prioritizing French companies for government contracts over foreign investors and dangling a host of expensive tax incentives to encourage French companies that have branched out overseas to return to France.While she has abandoned talk of a so-called Frexit — a French exit from the European Union — some of her proposals to protect the economy would amount to essentially that, including a pledge to ignore some European Union laws, including on internal free trade. She has said she would withhold some French payments to the bloc.Mr. Macron has branded such promises “pure fantasy” and is proposing to retain many of his pro-business policies, with modifications.Having vowed to lure jobs and investment, under his watch foreign companies have poured billions of euros into industrial projects and research and development, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in tech start-ups, in a country that has not easily embraced change.At the same time, he has faced a challenge in discarding the image of an aloof president whose policies tended to benefit the most affluent. His abolition of a wealth tax and the introduction of a 30 percent flat tax on capital gains has mainly lifted incomes for the richest 0.1 percent and increased the distribution of dividends, according to the government’s own analysis.After a growing wealth divide helped set off the Yellow Vest movement in 2019, bringing struggling working-class people into the streets, Mr. Macron increased the minimum wage and made it easier for companies to give workers “purchasing power bonuses” of up to 3,000 euros annually without being taxed, a policy he has pledged to beef up.The candidates have tried to address concerns about rising fuel prices in blue-collar areas like Stiring-Wendel, a former coal mining town in France’s northeast.Andrea Mantovani for The New York TimesAs inflation has surged recently, Mr. Macron has also authorized billions of euros in subsidies for energy bills and at the gas pump and has promised to peg pension payments to inflation starting this summer. He has vowed new tax cuts for both households and businesses.His economic platform also aims for “full employment,” in part by pressing ahead with a series of pro-business reforms that has continued to lure the support of France’s biggest employers’ organization, Medef.“Emmanuel Macron’s program is the most favorable to ensure the growth of the economy and employment,” the group said last week, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s platform “would lead the country to stall compared to its neighbors and to put it on the sidelines of the European Union.”For all the differences, the pledges by Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen have one thing in common: more public spending, and less savings. According to estimates by the Institut Montaigne, a French economic think tank, Mr. Macron’s economic plan would worsen the public deficit by 44 billion euros, while Ms. Le Pen’s would widen it by 102 billion euros.“These shifts are significant enough to think that some of their proposals cannot actually be applied — except if they put in place budget austerity measures that they are not talking about,” Victor Poirier, director of publications at the Institut Montaigne, said. More

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      Macron Vows Ambitious Green Policies, Wooing the Left in Runoff

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      France’s president is trying to tap into the country’s large pool of left-wing voters, but many are hesitant to back him.MARSEILLE, France — On a stage erected on lush green lawns overlooking the sun-soaked Mediterranean port of Marseille, President Emmanuel Macron declared on Saturday to a crowd of supporters, “The politics that I will carry out in the next five years will be environmental, or will not be!”It was an ambitious promise for a president whose green policies have been criticized at repeated climate protests, condemned by courts for “inaction” and marked by failure to meet goals. But above all, Mr. Macron’s vow was a direct appeal to voters to his left, who hold the key to a final victory in the second round of the presidential election — and for whom climate has become a key issue.Mr. Macron devoted about three-quarters of his hour-and-a-half speech to environmental issues. He promised to appoint ministers responsible for long-term environmental planning, to plant 140 million trees by 2030 and to rapidly cut dependence on oil and gas by developing nuclear and renewable energy.“Inaction — not for me!” he told a cheering crowd of some 4,000 people who gathered in the Parc du Pharo, on the heights of Marseille, for what was possibly Mr. Macron’s last rally before the April 24th vote.The event symbolized Mr. Macron’s strategy for the runoff between the centrist incumbent and his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen: wooing the left with progressive policies and campaigning in working-class cities where he is trying to shed his image as an aloof president detached from everyday realities. If large numbers of left-wing voters stay home for the second round of voting, or migrate to Ms. Le Pen’s camp, it could spell serious trouble for Mr. Macron.Stewart Chau, an analyst for the polling firm Viavoice, said Mr. Macron’s main goal was to “seek voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” the far-left candidate who came in third overall in the first round of voting — but first in Marseille, with 31 percent of the vote.In September, the president unveiled a multibillion-euro plan to tackle crime and poverty in Marseille.Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, held a news conference on her foreign policy agenda this week in Paris.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockPromising a “complete renewal” if he is re-elected, Mr. Macron also used his speech to attack Ms. Le Pen, accusing her of wanting to curtail freedom of the press, challenge gender equality and lead France out of the Europe Union. He is trying to revive the “dam” that mainstream voters have long formed by voting for anyone over a Le Pen — either his current opponent or her father, Jean-Marie, leaders of the French far right since the 1970s.Saturday’s rally capped an intense week of campaigning for Mr. Macron, touring the country since Monday to make up for a lackluster initial campaign. Visiting only places where Ms. Le Pen or Mr. Mélenchon came out on top in the first round, he is risking engaging with angry residents, in an attempt to show that he, too, can feel their pain.By contrast, Ms. Le Pen, who has long striven to soften her public image, has been more risk-averse, limiting her campaign trips this week. Instead, she has tried to cement her credibility with two news conferences on her institutional overhaul proposals and her foreign policy agenda.But those events partly backfired after her party’s refusal to accredit some media outlets caused a stir, and as she detailed contentious plans to seek rapprochement with Russia and quit NATO’s integrated military command.Ms. Le Pen has been more exposed to scrutiny since another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, failed to make the runoff. His incendiary comments opposing immigration and Islam drew much of the attention away from Ms. Le Pen, who has long been known for similar stances.“The form confronts the substance,” said Mr. Chau, the analyst, adding that Ms. Le Pen’s sanitized image now clashed with “the reality of her ideas, which are anything but appeased, anything but softened.”At a rally on Thursday in the southern city of Avignon, Ms. Le Pen mentioned immigration only three times, despite it being the cornerstone of her platform. She has proposed deporting foreigners after they have been unemployed for one year, giving priority to native-born French for social housing and benefits, and abolishing the right to citizenship through birth in France.Supporters of Ms. Le Pen on Thursday in Avignon.Daniel Cole/Associated PressHer supporters were blunter. “She still wants to kick out the immigrants,” said Aline Vincent, a French flag in her right hand, who attended Ms. Le Pen’s rally along with about 4,000 others. “But she doesn’t say it the same way.”In Marseille, Daniel Beddou, said he “was very worried” about the rise of the far right. Holding a European flag in his left hand, he said he was pleased by Mr. Macron’s environmental plans. He said they embodied the president’s “at the same time” approach, referring to his habit of borrowing policies from both the left and right.As he appeals to the 7.7 million voters who backed Mr. Mélenchon in the first round and appear to hold the key to a final victory, Mr. Macron has toned down some of his proposals, like a plan to raise the legal retirement age to 65 from 62, which he now says could be softened.On Saturday, he also insisted on long-term “environmental planning” — a concept that was a cornerstone of Mr. Mélenchon’s platform — promising to appoint a minister “directly responsible” for it, assisted by two ministers in charge of the energy and environmental transition.“There’s a real willingness to speak to a working-class electorate, a left-wing electorate that we lacked in the first round,” said Sacha Houlié, a lawmaker and spokesman for Mr. Macron’s campaign.What to Know About France’s Presidential ElectionCard 1 of 4Heading to a runoff. More