General mobilization in Emmanuel Macron’s camp: the president-candidate returned to the field on Thursday, in Charente-Martime, facing Marine Le Pen in full swing in the polls thanks to a campaign focused on purchasing power.
Just ten days before the ballot, a new Macron-Le Pen duel is becoming clearer for the second round, as in 2017. “The polls show that there is a match in this election”, acknowledged Gabriel Attal, spokesperson for the government.
Emmanuel Macron is still given the lead in the voting intentions in the first round, around 28%, but Marine Le Pen has exceeded the 20% mark in recent days and the gap is still narrowing a little more in the second round.
A poll in particular, that of Elabe published on Wednesday which gives Emmanuel Macron at 52.5% and the RN candidate at 47.5%, gives cold sweats to Macronie which now focuses its attacks on the far-right candidate , a sign of the danger it represents.
“I will fight to continue to convince”, insisted Emmanuel Macron on his arrival in Fouras for a trip on the theme of ecology, refusing to make “political fiction” and to comment on the polls. The day before, he had for the first time attended the weekly meeting of his campaign committee, to mobilize his troops.
“An election never falls from the sky, you have to go get it”, commented on LCI Gabriel Attal, while a certain euphoria – and therefore a lack of mobilization – had been able to win over the supporters of the head of the State, given great favorite by opinion polls for months.
“He has to campaign thoroughly to show that we are in the game”, assures a majority official a few days before Emmanuel Macron’s big meeting at La Défense Arena on Saturday.
Very mobilized by the war in Ukraine, the outgoing president has so far campaigned at a minimum, at the risk of appearing distant.
“There is a bipolarization at the end of the campaign. I have always said that Marine Le Pen would be the only real problem in the campaign”, confided a few days ago a close friend of candidate Macron.
The radicalism of the other far-right candidate Eric Zemmour “helped her, polished her”, he continues.
The RN candidate has focused her campaign on the theme of purchasing power, the number one concern of the French, while maintaining the fight against insecurity and immigration in the party’s DNA.
And unlike in 2017 when she was dryly defeated in the second round (66/34%), Marine Le Pen could find a valuable reserve of votes in the electorate of the former polemicist and even the most radical part of the supporters of Valérie Pécresse, who stagnates around 10%.
The competition between Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, “it will end in tandem”, estimated Emmanuel Macron Monday in Dijon.
“We reap what we sow,” rejoices Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff, Renaud Labaye. “The planets are aligned, we had a good campaign, very solid” while Emmanuel Macron “does not want to”, he says.
His deputy campaign director Jean-Philippe Tanguy prides himself on having “identified the issue of purchasing power very early on” and the fact “that people were unable to live from their work and their retirement”. Emmanuel Macron, with retirement at 65 and an RSA with obligations, advances “very harsh proposals for the French” and “contrary to what he had promised”.
As in 2017, Emmanuel Macron presents himself as the candidate “of the values of the Republic” against the far right. But a new Republican front to block the far right is not a foregone conclusion.
Given in third position in the polls around 15%, Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced that he would consult the some 310,000 people who supported him online in the event of another Macron-Le Pen duel in the second round of the presidential election, before to give an instruction.
Voting Marine Le Pen “is not an option” for LFI, however assured Thursday the number two of the Insoumis Adrien Quatennens.
Emmanuel Macron also finds himself struggling with a controversy over the executive’s use of consulting firms, in particular the American McKinsey, who points to a supposed connivance with the business community, he who saw his start five-year term polluted by the accusation of being the “president of the rich”.
The government said on Wednesday night that there was “nothing to hide” and denounced the political recovery.