ABSTRACT
French electoral politics has experienced a high level of volatility throughout the last decade. Turmoil started one year before the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers as the 2007 national elections marked the collapse of the electoral order in place since the previous realignment era in the 1980s. The political revolution initiated by the election of Nicolas Sarkozy broke old patterns with massive voter transfers between the right and the far right. The eruption of the economic crisis in 2008 increased the pressure on a party system already in disarray. The inability of Presidents Sarkozy and Hollande to deal with rising debt and unemployment fostered the rise of radical alternatives both at the far right and the far left of the political spectrum. However, the failure of established major parties ultimately benefited centrist newcomer Macron. His election in 2017 put an end to the bipolarization between the left and the right, giving birth to a new realigned party system structured by new poles, in which the century-old Socialist Party lost its major-party status through a brutal process of disalignment.
