If the second round were held today, the outgoing president would defeat Le Pen by 53.5% of the support compared to 46.5%
They have six days to convince their compatriots to vote for them. The outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, and the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, will face each other at the polls on the 24th, five years after their first electoral duel. The campaign enters this week in the final stretch. It will be the clash between two visions of France, Europe and the world.
Next Sunday the Gauls will elect more than just a president for the next five years, as Macron and Le Pen agree. “April 24 is a referendum for or against the European Union, for or against ecology, for or against our youth, for or against our Republic,” the outgoing president said Saturday at a campaign rally in Marseille. Le Pen considers, for his part, that “a choice of society and even of civilization” is at stake in these elections.
Macron and Le Pen are these days hunting and capturing the votes of the undecided and the abstentionists. In the first electoral appointment, there was an abstention of 26%, that is, 12.8 million people stayed at home and did not go to vote. Now they want to convince them to go to the polls.
They are also in the midst of seducing left-wing voters, whose candidates were eliminated in the first round. The president plays the green card these days to try to attract the young and green vote. Le Pen seeks to conquer the anti-Macron vote, especially among the ‘yellow vests’ and the voters of the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The latter could have the key to the Elysée Palace on Sunday.
If the second round were held today, Macron would defeat Le Pen by 53.5% of the vote compared to 46.5% of support that the far-right would achieve, according to the latest Elabe poll. In 2017, when the two leaders met for the first time at the polls, they were further apart. The candidate of The Republic on the Move won the elections by 66.1% compared to 33.9% of the candidate of the extreme right and became at 39 years old the youngest president in the recent history of France.
Although the electoral poster is the same as it was five years ago, the two candidates have changed. Macron is no longer the young man who promised a political revolution with a project “neither left nor right.” He has been president for five years. And now he has a balance to defend, for better and for worse.
credible alternative
In recent years, Le Pen has carried out a process of “demonization” of her party to make it more presentable to the electorate and present herself as a credible alternative to Macron. He softened his speech, swept anti-Semitism under the rug, expelled his father and the most radical elements of the party and has used the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour as a lightning rod for criticism. Beside her, Le Pen appears more subdued.
Now she presents herself to voters as a “good family mother” who protects the most vulnerable and as the candidate of the “people against the oligarchy.” The far-right candidate urges the French to vote for her and against Macron and that “caste that governs us.”
The candidates are preparing these days with their campaign teams for Wednesday’s debate, in which they will present their visions for France and the European Union. Both are aware of what is at stake. And they could tip the scales one way or the other.
Mélenchon, blank or abstention
The far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was a point away (21.95%) from the far-right Marine Le Pen (23.15%) in the first round of the presidential elections in France and at the gates of qualifying for the second round. His followers are divided on how to vote on the 24th, where they will have to choose between Macron’s and Le Pen’s ballot.
The ‘neither Macron nor Le Pen’ triumphs among the voters of La Francia Insumisa. Two-thirds of Mélenchon’s supporters will abstain in the second round (28.96%) or vote blank or null (37.65%), according to a survey conducted by the party among 215,000 supporters. 33.4% opt for Macron.
Voting for Le Pen did not appear among the options in this survey, since those responsible for the party consider that Regrouping National is a racist and xenophobic party. “Not a single vote for Mrs. Le Pen,” the far-left leader repeated several times after coming third in the first round, without clearly asking for a vote for Macron. According to a recent poll by the Ipsos Institute, 33% of Mélenchon voters will vote for Macron, 16% for Le Pen and 51% are undecided.
La France Insumisa is not going to give a voting slogan for the second round to its 7.7 million voters. “Each one will decide and vote in conscience, as they want,” as the party explained when it announced the survey. Mélenchon voters will be decisive in deciding who is the next president of France.
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