Shorouk Express
Delapart, France’s most popular YouTuber, kicked off 2025 by wading into politics. In a 15-minute video posted to his channel, Delapart said he supports same-sex marriage, abortion rights, tighter immigration controls, tougher approaches to crime and opposes drug legalization — broadly aligning himself with mainstream right-of-center politics in France.
The party that historically represented that camp, Les Républicains, appears to be trying to jump on the bandwagon.
Les Républicains have been in dire straits since Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 centrist campaign blew up the main left-right divide in French politics. After Macron won the presidential election in 2017, many Les Républicains supporters decamped either for his party, now called Renaissance, or the far-right National Rally that Marine Le Pen has worked to present as a more polished, professional political force. The Les Républicains candidate in the 2022 presidential election, Valérie Pécresse, won a paltry 4.78 percent of the vote in the first round.
Getting Delapart on side would be a coup for a political movement that has seemed lost and in desperate need of fresh blood to woo young voters.
So when Les Républicains’ parliamentary leader, Laurent Wauquiez, shared Delapart’s video, it set off a flurry of speculation that a competition for his backing has begun, though Wauquiez’s team did not respond to a request for comment. Pierre-Louis Tanzer, head of Renaissance’s communications operations, told POLITICO that “all parties have noticed that he’s starting to discuss politics.” Tanzer described Delapart as “politically engaged citizen.”
Both Renaissance and Les Républicains have struggled to catch the youth vote. Just 13 percent of voters 34 or younger backed Macron’s party in the first round of last year’s snap election, while Les Républicains scored 8 percent with that demographic, according to a Harris Interactive poll. Both parties registered their best scores with voters older than 75.
