According to a poll conducted by the Elabe polling company for the BFM television station, 59 percent of the viewers polled found Macron to be more persuasive than Le Pen.
In 2017, a poll conducted by the same company concluded that 63 percent of viewers found Macron more persuasive.
Currently, estimates of the vote in the elections scheduled for April 24 show that Macron will receive about 55.5 percent of the vote.
Civil war
Notably, during this debate, Macron accused Le Pen of risking a “civil war in France” if she was elected president and fulfilled her pledge to ban the headscarf in public.
This comes after Le Pen confirmed her adherence to her controversial idea of banning the headscarf, which she considers “a uniform imposed by Islamists”, stressing at the same time that she “does not fight Islam”. Macron replied, “You will ignite a civil war. I say that honestly.”
Macron added, “You are pushing millions of our citizens out of public space,” considering that this would be a “law of ostracism,” but Le Pen replied that it would be a “law to defend freedom.”
He added: “France, the home of enlightenment and universalism, will become the first country in the world to ban religious symbols in public places. This is what you are proposing, and it is illogical.”
And he added, sarcastically, “How many policemen do you propose to enlist to pursue those who wear the hijab, the kippah, or any other religious symbol?”
After seeming to have withdrawn in recent days from this project, Marine Le Pen reiterated yesterday that she “is with the ban on the veil in public places”, considering that this issue “is related to the emancipation of women and the curbing of Islamic ideology.”
She added, “I am fighting Islamic ideology, which is a way of thinking that undermines the foundations of our republic, undermines equality between men and women, undermines secularism and undermines democracy.”
The issue of the headscarf has been a sensitive and recurring topic in French politics for years. The wearing of visible religious symbols is currently prohibited in schools and state administrations, but not in public places.