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If the impact on voters of the debate between the two presidential rounds is traditionally limited, Marine Le Pen will seek on Wednesday night to avoid a shipwreck similar to the one she experienced in 2017. For his part, Emmanuel Macron will try above all to send signals to voters by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Rise to the challenge. Since her failed debate between the two rounds of the 2017 presidential election, Marine Le Pen has had only one obsession: not to suffer the same humiliation in front of Emmanuel Macron in 2022.
He has done everything possible so that this unmissable meeting, the face-to-face meeting between the two finalists in the presidential elections – with a special broadcast on Wednesday, April 20 from 2:00 p.m. (Bogotá-Quito-Lima time) on France 24 in Spanish – be a success.
Arriving five years ago poorly prepared and tired for television debate after having multiplied trips, Marine Le Pen learned from her mistakes. No event is on the agenda of the National Group (RN) candidate for this Tuesday, who indicated on Monday that she intends to prepare at home, in her office, “in a completely normal way”, for this step required by the presidential elections since 1974.
Marine Le Pen, however, has surrounded herself with her supporters to prepare for the debate: according to ‘Politician‘, are present along with his campaign manager, Christophe Bay, his deputy and former Nicolas Dupont-Aignan right-hand man, Jean-Philippe Tanguy; his chief of staff, Renaud Labaye, as well as Jordan Bardella, Sébastien Chenu, and his special adviser, Philippe Olivier.
The candidate also says that she is “extremely serene” with her program. Unlike 2017, when she had decided between the two rounds not to leave the euro zone, Marine Le Pen this time avoided a last-minute change of course and should attack Emmanuel Macron head-on on the question of purchasing power, an issue that stood out throughout the campaign.
An uncomfortable exercise for the outgoing president
The issue is different for Emmanuel Macron. This time he will have to defend the results of his five-year term against attacks from his rival, who denounces “a form of deep contempt for the French” on the part of the head of state.
Being the outgoing president is not always comfortable in this type of exercise. In 1981, François Mitterrand described Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then at the Elysee, as “a passive man”. More recently, in 2012, François Hollande’s famous anaphora, “I, President”, had allowed him to highlight the many failures of then outgoing President Nicolas Sarkozy.
If he seems to want to downplay the event, the head of state continues, on Tuesday, carefully preparing a debate that he says he takes “very seriously”, he told France Info on Friday.
To help himself, Emmanuel Macron surrounds himself, according to ‘The Parisien‘, by the General Secretary of the Elysee, Alexis Kohler, the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, the Minister of Overseas, Sébastien Lecornu, his communication adviser, Clément Léonarduzzi, and his speech adviser, Jonathan Guémas.
Emmanuel Macron will have to take advantage of everything that allows him to strengthen his presidential stature against Marine Le Pen. Therefore, he should not hesitate to highlight the role he tried to play in the Ukraine crisis, while recalling the links between the far-right candidate and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Convincing the voters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon
Emmanuel Macron will also have to use this debate to convince a left-wing electorate still unsure about making the effort to vote for him against Marine Le Pen. Although Jean-Luc Mélenchon obtained almost 22% of the votes in the first round of the presidential elections, the majority of his most faithful followers placed the blank or null vote at the top (37.65%) of the consultation on the second round led by Francia Insoumisa last week, ahead of Macron’s vote (33.4%) and abstention (29%) -the vote for Le Pen was not proposed-.
The two candidates have so far faced each other from a distance. Emmanuel Macron refused to participate in debates before the first round. The RN accused him of “running away” from the discussion. The head of state responded that none of his predecessors in office had participated in the exercise.
The latest Ipsos-Sopra Steria poll gives a 56% intention to vote in favor of Emmanuel Macron compared to 44% for Marine Le Pen, could their television confrontation reverse this projection?
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