The socialist candidate for the Presidency fails to raise the polls
Sinking in the polls, the socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo lashed out this Sunday at a rally in Paris against President Emmanuel Macron and against the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in an attempt to present herself to the French electorate as the only candidate capable of carry forward a truly progressive program for France. A week before the first round of the French presidential elections, the mayor of Paris promised, if she is elected president of France, “a social, European, secular and ecological Republic.”
Hidalgo invited former Socialist Party voters to return to their origins and vote for her, as well as those who are undecided or tempted to vote for Macron or Mélenchon, as if there were no other alternatives.
The socialist candidate recalled that Macron is “on the right”, as evidenced, according to her, by the policies he has carried out in these five years in the Elysee Palace. “They are not condemned to choose between the right and the extreme right,” warned Hidalgo, born in San Fernando (Cádiz), the daughter of Spanish immigrants and French nationalized at the age of 14. The mayor of Paris warned those who are thinking of voting for Mélenchon to “measure the consequences of this decision well”: a pro-Vladimir Putin candidate; friend of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro; and that he wants to leave the European Union, she recalled.
Macron, who starts as a favorite in the polls, was a minister for the socialist François Hollande, before winning the elections five years ago. He managed to capture a good part of the left-wing vote in 2017 and could do so again in these elections, since the other alternative would be to vote for the extreme right in the second round, according to the polls.
Mélenchon, leader of La Francia Insumisa (the French Podemos), is the best-placed candidate on the left in the polls for the first round. He is third in voting intention and rises in the polls, boosted by the useful vote, since the other left-wing candidates are terrible in the polls. Mélenchon dreams of causing a surprise and going to the second round of the presidential elections.
Ideas that “never die”
Faced with those who predict the death of the French Socialist Party, Hidalgo is clear: “Great ideas never die. Great ideals are indestructible. “Together we can refute these partial and biased polls,” he said at the Hidalgo rally, to which the polls show only a 2% voter intention. “It’s not too late. For ten months, they tell us that everything is decided. Well no. Nothing is decided until the vote does not take place, “added the socialist. “We have a week to convince,” she warned. “Vote according to your heart and the reason for your convictions,” she urged voters.
Before entering the rally in the Cirque d’Hiver hall, Antoine, 33, explained to this newspaper that he will vote in the first round for Anne Hidalgo because “she embodies the European, republican, social, environmentalist and feminist left”, “a left capable of governing” and “with good proposals”. “It will not be a lost vote,” says this Frenchman, who works in a hospital. «Mélenchon is the radical left, the extreme left. Anne Hidalgo is the government left, which is the one that has made progress in France and will be able to continue doing so in the future,” promises this socialist voter.
Jean Pierre Béquet, former deputy and former socialist mayor of the Val d’Oise department, considers that in the first round “it is best to vote according to your ideas. My ideas are socialist, so I vote socialist,” Béquet added. If he had to convince an undecided person to vote for Hidalgo, he would tell him that she is “the one with a program that best corresponds to a social, ecological and republican balance.”
If the first round were held today, Macron would obtain 27% of the votes, followed by the far-right Marine Le Pen, with 22% voting intention, and Mélenchon, with 15%. The far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, would obtain 10.5% of the vote. The moderate conservative candidate, Valérie Pécresse, would achieve 9% support. Environmentalist Yannick Jadot would get 4.5%; the communist Fabien Roussel, 3.5%; and Hidalgo, 2% of votes. Only the two candidates with the most votes go on to the second round, which will take place on April 24.
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