Macron remains the clear favorite – but rivals turn up the volume two weeks after the vote
Candidates in the looming French presidential election are seeking their views on the war in Ukraine, as polls suggest incumbent President Emmanuel Macron remains the favorite to win.
Backed by his shuttling diplomacy and toughness toward Moscow since its forces invaded Ukraine, the president is jumping high ahead of him for two weeks, but he has faced accusations of evading a real debate.
Asked on Sunday about his meager campaign, Macron told France 3 that “in a moment of war” no one would understand if he was out for elections “when decisions must be taken in the interests of our compatriots”.
After a major upset in the first round on April 10, Macron’s opponent in the run-off will be far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen – a repeat of five years ago.
But her far-right rival Eric Zemmour, conservative Valérie Pécresse and left winger Jean-Luc Melenchon still hope to break out of the group to reach the second round on April 24.
“Everything can be decided in the next two weeks”, with four out of 10 potential voters undecided, Adelaide Zulkarkasic of the BVA pollster told AFP.
Zemmour crowded thousands of people on Sunday, waving French flags under a clear sky near the Eiffel Tower.
He urged his supporters to have more energy after delivering a speech that struck familiar notes of nostalgia for French greatness and swipes at non-settler immigrants.
“Nothing and no one will prevent us from writing the fate of our country, and nothing will steal this election from us,” he pledged.
Now, Zemmour is down 10 percent in some polls, far below Le Pen by about 20 percent and Macron by about 30 percent.
Le Pen strove to show serenity as the allies – including her niece Marion Marechal – deserted her for the more hawkish Zemmour.
Instead, Le Pen pounded the sidewalks, campaigning on French streets and market squares, again on Sunday striving to portray herself as more diffuse and more efficient than her competition.
“Eric Zemmour’s program is brutal in form but very limited in substance, while I have a bill ready to pass” on Islam and immigration, she told weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche on Sunday.
With Zemour and Le Pen battling for the hard right and Macron’s pro-business and law-and-order voice, Valerie Pecresse struggled to make her voice heard.
Recently, a positive Covid test prevented her from halting the planned campaign.
split left
And on Sunday, leading leftist candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon – with between 12 and 15 per cent – rallied his supporters in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.
While left-wing resistance, including the 2018-2019 “yellow vests” protest, pursues the presidency of former banker Macron, a slew of competing candidates from the left have left no real imprint in this year’s election.
“We suddenly told ourselves we were going to make it” in the second round, Melenchon told the audience.
“We will talk about serious things, not financial fantasies like those or racist fantasies like the others,” he added, targeting Macron and Le Pen.
Left-leaning voters are divided between Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo – taking just about 2% for the once-powerful Socialist Party – and Communist candidate Fabian Roussel and Green Party leader Yannick Gadot.
The problems of Pecres and Hidalgo, candidates respectively from the traditional bastions of the right and left that have dominated France for years, illustrate the long-term factors beyond Ukraine that have destabilized French politics.
“The systematic voter who voted out of service, the voter who was loyal and loyal to political parties or candidates … no longer exists,” said Anne Moxel, director of research at the Paris Center for Political Research.
“Voters have a more independent individual relationship with politics and their electoral choices, they are more mobile, they are more volatile,” she said.
Especially since “the majority of the French do not feel that they are represented by those in political office.”
(AFP)
