Emmanuel Macron returns to the field on Thursday anxious to widen his lead, less marked according to the polls, over Marine Le Pen, in what presents itself, unless surprised, more and more like a remake of 2017.
Ten days before the first round of the presidential election on April 10, the president-candidate, who is campaigning at the very least at the risk of appearing distant, goes to Charente-Maritime, to Fouras, to meet residents and traders, like in Dijon on Monday.
“He must campaign thoroughly to show that we are in the game,” says a majority official.
He will notably defend his environmental record, criticized, by speaking of state investments to clean up an old landfill now buried whose waste threatens to flow into the ocean, according to his campaign team.
This new visit to the field, a few days before his big meeting at the Paris Arena on Saturday – the first and probably the last of the first round – comes at a time when the gap is narrowing with his far-right opponent. according to the polls of voting intentions of the first and second round.
In the event of a Macron-Le Pen duel in the second round, he would win 52.5% against 47.5%, indicates an Elabe survey published on Wednesday. The two candidates were given respectively at 56% and 44% last week.
– “Nothing to hide” –
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 assured Wednesday evening that there was “nothing to hide” and denounced political recovery. He was immediately tackled by the Senate inquiry committee, dominated by the right-wing opposition LR, accusing the executive of “minimizing the influence of consultants”.
Another hot topic: purchasing power, the dominant theme of this atypical campaign against a backdrop of soaring prices, including fuel, partly linked to the war in Ukraine.
For the expert in political communication Philippe Moreau Chevrolet, there is “a big misunderstanding with the power”.
“The feeling of loss of purchasing power of people is extremely strong and is measured at the pump, on constrained expenses, while for the executive, who reasons in large masses (…) the purchasing power has progressed and we released a lot of money and aid,” he told AFP.
Opposite, the candidate of the National Rally, at around 20%, after having operated for months a programmatic refocusing precisely focusing her campaign on purchasing power. And less on immigration, a field invaded by his rival Eric Zemmour who refers to the conspiracy theory of the “great replacement”.
– The unknown Mélenchon –
This is one of the unknowns of the ballot: will the leader of the Insoumis, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, succeed in reaching the second round, which he had failed to do in 2017?
With around 15% of the voting intentions, he moved into third place.
The LFI candidate is accelerating the deployment of his troops in working-class neighborhoods in order to mobilize an electorate inclined to abstain, while also agitating the “scarecrow” of the far right.
Wednesday evening, he called a big meeting for “the union of popular neighborhoods” in the Franc-Moisin district in Saint-Denis.
Faced with this leading trio, the other candidates, from Eric Zemmour to Anne Hidalgo via Valérie Pécresse and Yannick Jadot or the communist Fabien Roussel, are not giving up but things are starting to get seriously tough.
And some in their entourage no longer hesitate to think openly about the post-presidential and legislative elections in June.
Candidate LR was to present to the press on Thursday her program, if elected, of the “First Hundred Days” of a Pécresse presidency, while the socialist Anne Hidalgo goes to the mining basin of Pas-de-Calais.
Ecologist Yannick Jadot has planned a trip to the Paris suburbs of Ivry-sur-Seine where he is to discuss the issue of air pollution.
Another paradox of this end of the campaign: it could end with less politics, because of the equality between the 12 candidates which forces the audiovisual media to deploy tactical treasures to comply with it. A rule perceived as a blessing for the “small” candidates, finally out of media anonymity.
“In the space of 48 hours, we had more invitations than in five years”, they say in the entourage of the far-left candidate Philippe Poutou.