Far right seizes France’s conservative heartlands

Growing grievances over a rural-urban divide help Marine Le Pen’s National Rally make inroads.

Sylvie Casenave-Péré has been in politics for exactly 10 days and she is already in the thick of France’s election race against a high-profile adversary. 

The 65-year-old packaging executive is running for a seat in parliament with President Emmanuel Macron’s liberals. That pits her directly against Marie-Caroline Le Pen, the sister of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose far-right National Rally party is on the ascendant. 

On a quiet Monday morning in the small town of Sablé-sur-Sarthe, some 250 kilometers west of Paris, Casenave-Péré is handing out leaflets and greeting shoppers with gusto: “Send me to the National Assembly, I’m super motivated!”

This new recruit is part of a desperate push from Macron’s centrist coalition to hold back the tide of the far right in the region of Sarthe in the two-round snap election on June 30 and July 7.