In the second round of presidential elections, a lot is at stake today in France. For some time now, this country has been arriving at the polls in cockroach wings. Mixed feelings combine. The need for change risks spurring disruptive directions. This is frightening. But it is a country with structural problems that seek, so far without remedy, solutions at the ballot box. Hence the discouragement in the face of elections, with the daily anguish of an increasingly hard life. The vote gathers the same citizen's anger that leads to constant street protests.

As contradictory as it may seem, this is the good news. The established French democracy still requires answers based on democratic legitimacy. So as far as the good news goes. The frustration accumulated in years of industrial dismantling pushes in crescendo towards the right its working class, submerged in massive unemployment in territories abandoned to their fate. The popularity enjoyed by the emblematic French left is bankrupt.

In the first round, Anne Hidalgo, Socialist mayor of Paris, represented the traditional party of Mitterrand and was left with a miserable 1.7% of votes, without even the right to a State subsidy. The traditional right did not fare any better. Valérie Pécresse of the Republicans, the party that grouped the center-right coalitions of De Gaulle's 5th Republic, also collapsed. She also failed to achieve the 5% required to redeem political debt.

In 2017 and already dropping, Socialists and Republicans were excluded from second round, for the first time in history, but, at least, they achieved 26% of votes. This time they do not add up to 7%. The collapse of traditional politics is complete, at the presidential level. There is a total recomposition of the Gallic political spectrum, divided, among emotions and prejudices, by frustration, anger and fear.

Disturbingly, political preferences continue on an increasing course towards left and right extremes. In 2017, the extremes scored less than 50%. In 2022, they reached 58%. Citizen discontent is reflected in spontaneous movements such as the Yellow Vests. And even to the ballot boxes comes this systematic anti-system force, from the extreme left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon's "La France Insoumise" to the extreme right of the provocative Eric Zemmour of the Reconquista party and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally.

Representing two France, this Sunday Macron and Le Pen will dispute the seat of the Elysée. French dualism is a constant theme in the lackluster contemporary democratic song. Political myopia was universal. There is no place in the West where globalization has not left painful wakes of straggling losers. The weakened state let abandonment grow to the rhythm of the unknown force of market spillovers. Thus came Brexit, Trump and the perennial populist threat in Europe. For some time now the reader has been familiar with these letters.

France, like so many developed countries, lives splintered realities. Two incredibly opposite worlds separate the cosmopolitan urban landscape from the pre-industrial and rural countryside. In large cities, the standard of living has improved, even pandemic. Peripheral France, on the other hand, has 10% more poverty on average, more unemployment and has reached a point of such distress that special programs sell products that are about to expire for those who have less than 300 euros available per month for food.

These horizons are not so far apart. The center of booming Paris is surrounded by a miserable peripheral circle. In the depressed banlieue of Trappes, 25 km south of the Eiffel Tower, Mélenchon swept 61%. In the abandoned steel factories of the North, Le Pen reached 48%. And that duality is replicated in town after town.

This time, however, the social discontent and the permanent controversy over an institutionalism burdened by privileges, incompetence and corruption contrasts with Macron's renovating management. His mandate addressed massive labor trainings, initiated costly reindustrialization investments in Deep France, reformed the educational system and streamlined social programs. He thus achieved the political consolidation of a broad middle-class centrist community that nurtures a party 5 years ago non-existent: La República en Marcha. The pandemic stopped it in its tracks. Macron's primarily economic and business accent had to land. The neo-liberal president did not hesitate and reoriented himself, socializing without labels, towards purely welfare. And he did it with panache. This dried up the flows of the traditional left and right.

Fueled by bad policies of reception and assimilation of migrants, the extreme right is still anchored in xenophobic prejudices that are still dragging on. But its drive does not capture the majority of the electorate. Hence Marine Le Pen had to adapt her inflammatory xenophobic and anti-European rhetoric to day-to-day needs in order to present herself as a moderate, nationalist and at the same time socially popular option. She is the champion of the forgotten France of the territories. The results of this effort have her in the second round.

Compared to 2017, both Macron and Le Pen improved their electoral result in the first round. But those who did not vote for them were more. In this second round, Macron discovered that his flow was dangerously close to that of Le Pen. He had to desist from his confident idleness. In the first round he successfully played the statesman card on the Ukraine crisis and did not even accept debates. The imminent danger of Le Pen forced him to a campaign that, more than new proposals, emphasizes the danger for Europe and, perhaps, the world, of a French president who weakens NATO, undermines the European Union and stimulates threatening populisms beyond France.

April 20 was the great Macron-Le Pen debate. In 2017, Macron had crushed her. That humiliation is reputed to be responsible for Macron's huge margin of victory, 66% to 34%. This time, Le Pen came better prepared. Perhaps Macron overestimated her rhetorical strength. Neither overwhelmed. But that plays against Macron, because Le Pen held her own on mined ground and, compared to 2017, for the voter it was an unexpected surprise. It will not change the numbers, but anything is possible.

Mélenchon was only 1.2% behind Le Pen. His 7.7 million voters will decide the contest. He asked his supporters not to give a single vote to Le Pen. But the left demands concrete social intentions from Macron. Macron's narrative is not to make, however, last-minute compromises. His axis is to counterpose to the anger against the system the fear of an imminent danger. From 4 points of difference, in the first round, he went to 11 points of advantage. But it is all very volatile. After the debate, it decreased to 6%. Macron's victory seems a fait accompli, were it not for the fact that in politics nothing is written in stone.