Abstract:

Abstract The French Presidential election, which took place in April 2022, was a turning point for French politics for several reasons. The 2022 election, which resulted in the re-election of Macron, demonstrated that the political transformation that started in 2017 in France has now consolidated. This political transformation continues its development through two new camps. Accordingly, nationalists and internationalists (globalists) appear as two rising ideological camps in French politics. Because of the fact that central right and left parties are not able to produce politics that can convince the voters, the extreme right and extreme left parties have been increasing their vote rates with populist strategies since 2017. The present study offers an analysis on the transformative effect of the radical left and radical right parties on French politics with populist strategies. Accordingly, the concept of populism was subjected to a theoretical discussion. In order to verify the hypotheses of the study, the data collected by qualitative and quantitative research methods were brought together and examined. Accordingly, the programs and election strategies of the candidates participating in the 2022 elections were subjected to content analysis with the qualitative method. The elections results were also analyzed with the data obtained from the French governmental resources. The inability of the center-right and center-left to produce convincing politics has turned into two types of electoral behavior. As a result, Macron, who has an ambiguous ideological stance, can easily be re-elected as the president of France.

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