French President Emmanuel Macron gives a speech following his re-election in Paris, April 25.

Photo: Julien Mattia/Zuma Press

As French President Emmanuel Macron won an unexpectedly comfortable re-election over Marine Le Pen, leaders throughout the West breathed sighs of relief. But a closer look at the results reveals reasons for concern, and raises an intriguing question: Can what Mr. Macron has done—create a new party of the center and lead it to victory—happen elsewhere, even in the U.S.?

The French presidential election of 2012 was the last traditional contest between center-left Socialists, the heirs of François Mitterrand, and center-right Republicans, the heirs of Charles de Gaulle. François Hollande, the Socialist, won 28.6% of the vote in the first round, followed by the Republican Nicolas Sarkozy with 27.2%. Taken together, these parties of the center commanded a sizable majority of the electorate. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front received 17.9%, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left, 11.1%, combining for only 29%.

In contrast, the 2022 French election marked the collapse of the traditional center parties. The Republicans received only 4.8% in the first round, and the Socialists did even worse at 1.7%. While these parties withered, the fringe flourished. With 22% of the vote, Mr. Mélenchon doubled his 2012 vote share, while far-right candidates Ms. Le Pen and Eric Zemmour together garnered more than 30%. Mr. Macron, who began the latest transformation of French politics by assembling a new party of the center in 2017, managed 27.9% in the first round, up modestly from five years earlier.

In sum, the center’s share of the first-round popular vote declined from 55.8% in 2012 to 34.4% in 2022, while the extremes rose from 29% to 52.2%. Mr. Macron’s victory concealed the weakening of France’s center and rising support for its fringes. If the French president stumbles in his second term, his country’s political system will be left with no popular centrist party, and the door could open to the extremist forces he has managed to keep at bay.

Although there are many differences between the presidents of France and the U.S., there is one key similarity: Like Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden was elected to revitalize the center of his country’s politics. But unlike Mr. Macron, Mr. Biden didn’t understand why the electorate made him president. As a result, he has lost the confidence of 1 in 5 Americans who voted for him less than two years ago.

The recently released Harvard-Harris poll reveals the magnitude of—and reasons for—the president’s decline. In 2020, Mr. Biden received majority support from key groups of swing voters, including independents, moderates, suburbanites, and Hispanics. Since then, approval for his performance as president in each of these key groups has fallen sharply to a level incompatible with his re-election. As the poll shows, majorities of these groups (and many others) reject his approach to key issues such as crime, immigration, public schools and energy.

More than three-quarters of American voters support bills that would significantly expand federal funding for public safety and help communities hire 100,000 additional police officers. More than 60% want the Keystone pipeline to be completed and become operational as part of a broader plan to increase energy supplies and slow the transition from fossil fuels. Eighty percent of Americans (including 77% of Democrats) think that Title 42 Covid border restrictions should be extended, not scrapped, and 68% believe that the Biden administration’s immigration policies encourage illegal immigration. Six in 10 Americans believe that new state laws restricting gender education in public schools make sense and that the left’s attack on them is overblown.

Mr. Biden fares no better on the economy. Americans overwhelmingly identify inflation as their most important concern, and they blame the administration, not Vladimir Putin, for rising prices at the pump and in grocery stores. Only 20% think that their personal financial situation has improved under this president, while 48% say it is getting worse.

As of now, only 37% of Americans want Mr. Biden to run for re-election, and policy failures are just part of the reason. More than 6 in 10 Americans have concluded that he is simply too old to do so, a total that includes 60% of moderates, 68% of independents, 69% of suburban dwellers, and 73% of Hispanics.

At the same time, only 45% of Americans want Donald Trump to run again, and a race between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump in 2024 could feature the least popular combatants ever seen in a U.S. presidential contest. This could open the door for something we have not seen since Ross Perot

in 1992—a serious insurgency from the center. In the Harvard-Harris poll, 58% of respondents said they would be willing to consider a “moderate independent” as an alternative to unappealing major-party candidates.

Unlike in France, this strategy has never succeeded in the U.S. But serious elected officials in both parties are beginning to wonder whether they should follow the trail Mr. Macron has blazed.