But also, among organised labour and workers in precarious jobs, his share of the vote is above average.

His reservoir of votes is concentrated in the ГЋle-de-France metropolitan region and in all the cities where the Greens were leading in the 2020 municipal elections. It is above all the young and educated elite among whom he scored particularly well. In the 18-34 age group, he received about a third of the votes. With a disruptive discourse and a programme that emphasises social and ecological issues equally, he succeeded in winning over especially young voters of the 'climate generation'. Thus, MГ©lenchon received more than twice as many votes as the rest of the candidates of the left combined. Obviously, the widespread longing for unity among the left had led large sections of the electorate to vote strategically, vote utile, in favour of the best-placed of the left candidates. In the fixation on a repeat of the duel between the two, in which polls predicted a neck-and-neck race, the fact that the representative of the radical left, Jean-Luc MГ©lenchon, with 22 per cent in the first round of voting, was only slightly behind Le Pen and missed out on the run-off, however, faded into the background. There was great relief when Emmanuel Macron won the second round of the French presidential election in April by a clear margin against his right-wing populist challenger Marine Le Pen.

The marked society