VIDEO – Death of Lionel Jospin: April 14, 2002, the day he laughed about a possible defeat against Jean-Marie Le Pen

While Lionel Jospin has just left us At the age of 88, a video that followed him throughout his career, and which is still in everyone's memory, resurfaces.

Four days before the first round of the 2002 presidential election, Lionel Jospin approached the end of the campaign with a certain serenity. When questioned on April 17th by journalist John Paul Lepers about the possibility of being eliminated in the first round, the Socialist candidate dismissed the question with amusement, deeming the scenario highly improbable. In retrospect, this scene has become one of the most striking symbols of the blindness of a segment of the political class to the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front.

However, several signs already exist. Jean-Marie Le Pen is gaining ground in voting intentions week after week, while, within Jospin's inner circle, some are discussing internally a scenario that has become " hot ", without really believing that it could happen.

On April 21, 2002, the election results overturned all expectations. Jacques Chirac came out on top with 19,88% of the vote, Jean-Marie Le Pen qualified for the second round with 16,86%, and Lionel Jospin was eliminated with 16,18%. The shock was immense: for the first time under the Fifth Republic, the far right had reached the second round of the presidential election.

This elimination cannot be explained solely by the rise of the National Front. It also stems from the fragmentation of the left-wing vote in an election marked by a high number of candidates. The “April 21st” election thus enters French political history as the product of a combination of factors: vote dispersion, protest voting, a pervasive climate of insecurity at the end of the campaign, and the overconfidence of the frontrunners.

The other lesson from this episode concerns the polls. None of the six polling institutes had predicted Lionel Jospin's elimination. Twenty-four years later, this episode remains a cautionary tale for all presidential campaigns: in politics, a feeling of strength can mask real fragility, and a candidate's self-assurance never protects against an electoral upset. Lionel Jospin's laughter on April 17, 2002, has thus remained in the collective memory as the moment when a historic defeat still seemed impossible…