How has Emmanuel Macron changed France?

“The greatest change that has occurred during Macron’s presidency is the polarisation of the French political system,” says Gilles Ivaldi, a researcher in politics at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po in Paris, France. Ivaldi explains that Macron seized the centre-ground of French politics. “Because of that, he’s weakened all the previously dominant parties of the left and right and therefore he’s opened space for more radical parties,” he says. Ivaldi says his surveys of the French electorate show more and more people are placing themselves on the right in French politics. “The polarisation is asymmetrical. It has happened more to the right of the French party system than to the left of it,” he says. This shift to the right was already happening before Macron, but the manner of his victory – and his shift to the right during the past five years – exacerbated it, according to Ivaldi.