After a weekend of mobilization in all camps, it’s time for the official campaign on Monday, which gives the candidates – including the favorite Emmanuel Macron – two weeks to raise awareness among the French who have so far been rather in the background.
Thirteen days before the first round on April 10, and the day after meetings full of fervor on the right and on the left, nothing is yet folded.
But the polls of voting intentions, which are only a snapshot with margins of error, follow one another and place the outgoing president far ahead of the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who is closely followed by the leader of the radical left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The ex-polemicist Eric Zemmour and the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse are vying for fourth and fifth places.
Nearly four out of ten voters sure to vote have not yet made their choice and are “in hesitation”, Adelaide Zulfikarpasic, director of BVA Opinion, reminded AFP on Friday.
And abstention ostensibly hovers over this atypical presidential election.
The health crisis linked to Covid-19 and the war on the European continent, in Ukraine, crushed a campaign which was slow to really take off, despite candidates firing on all cylinders.
– Macron in socialist land –
When Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the best placed on the left according to the polls, gathered thousands of people on the Prado in Marseille on Sunday, one of his rivals, Yannick Jadot, filled the Zénith in Paris for the biggest meeting of the history of French ecology with between 3,500 and 4,000 people.
The Insoumis leader warned against “a low-cost second round” between Mr. Macron and Mrs. Le Pen, who narrowly missed the second round march in 2017.
The far-right candidate Eric Zemmour claimed “100,000” people for his rally on Sunday at the Trocadéro where he said he was the “only right-wing candidate”, where Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon had held a meeting in 2012 and 2017 , losing the presidential election in the process.
Mr. Zemmour, who is slowly eroding in the polls, was accused of having left chanting “Macron assassin” in the crowd. He condemned these remarks.
The RN candidate had a hectic weekend for her first trip to Guadeloupe.
In this tense context, Emmanuel Macron – who is campaigning at the very least – travels to Dijon on Monday on the lands of the socialist left to meet high school students. He has made education one of his priorities for a possible second term.
Fearing to bear the brunt of an election that would be decided in advance, he appealed to abstainers on Sunday, stressing that “an election is the best way to make your choices”.
– Speaking time and posters –
Speaking time, official posters, campaign clips: With the start of the official campaign on Monday, candidates are expected to follow strict rules.
No more wild postings or all-out interviews. The speaking time of the twelve presidential candidates, from President Macron to the Lutte Ouvrière candidate Nathalie Arthaud, is now counted according to the principle of strict equality, each having the same airtime in the media.
A sorting not always easy to do when the Head of State is in the spotlight as President-in-Office of the European Union and because of the conflict in Ukraine.
Candidates around 1 or 2% in the polls complain enough, like Jean Lassalle on Sunday who denounced “a soft dictatorship”.
Monday also begins the time for campaign clips on radio and television, as well as professions of faith in the mailboxes of some 48.7 million French people registered in March 2022 on the electoral lists, according to INSEE.
The official campaign ends on April 9 at 00:00, the day before the election. A second round is scheduled for April 24.