“Accelerate to the end”: Emmanuel Macron, given a winner in the opinion polls, and Marine Le Pen throw their last forces into battle on Friday, the final day of the official campaign for the second round of the presidential election.
While multiplying in the media, the outgoing president will hold a last meeting in Figeac, in the rural department of Lot which voted massively for him five years ago.
The objective is to “continue to accelerate until the end” of the campaign and “avoid a demobilization” of the voters, explained Thursday his entourage, the day after the highly anticipated face-to-face between the two adversaries, which did not not change the dynamic favorable to the outgoing president in the polls.
– “Nothing is decided” –
Emmanuel Macron is declared the winner within a range of 55.5 to 57.5% of voting intentions. This gap widened over the course of the campaign but it remains less than in 2017 when the candidate En Marche won the election with 66.1% of the vote, against the same far-right candidate.
“Nothing is decided”, warned Thursday the candidate president, calling on his supporters to “redouble their efforts”, during a trip devoted to the suburbs and urban renewal in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Friday, after the morning of France Inter, Emmanuel Macron “will speak in Figeac, in the heart of France, of rurality, relocations …”, according to an adviser.
Before the second round on Sunday, Emmanuel Macron presents the ballot as that of the choice between “a republican project and a project to leave the Republic, its secularism, its fraternity”.
– “Front anti-Macron” –
The candidate of the National Rally held Thursday evening in Arras, the prefecture of Pas-de-Calais, her last meeting, which took on the appearance of “everything except Macron”. Castigating “a nonchalant, condescending Emmanuel Macron, and boundless arrogance”, during Wednesday’s debate, Marine Le Pen promised to be “the president of respect for the French”.
Sunday, “the question will ultimately be quite simple: Macron or France?”, She launched, calling to vote “for the only front which is republican, the anti-Macron front”.
The candidate is thus trying to divert to her advantage the notion of “republican front” and “everything but the far right”, a lever activated in 2002 against her father then in 2017 against herself to block the far right.
Marine Le Pen will still be in the field on Friday. She will put an end to her campaign in Abbeville, in the Somme, the city where she came first in the first round ahead of her opponent.
The challenge for the two finalists in these last combative hours is to mobilize the abstainers, convince the hesitant and seduce the electorate of the leader of the Insoumis Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the largest reservoir of votes at the end of the first round ( nearly 22%).
The third man in the presidential election, who has already projected himself into the June legislative elections, refused to give any instructions in the second round other than “not a vote for Ms. Le Pen”.
An additional risk factor for voter demobilization, the three school zones will be on vacation this weekend, with in particular the start of spring break for the Paris region.
According to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 601,833 new powers of attorney were established between the day after the first round and until Wednesday inclusive, knowing that it is possible to give power of attorney until the day of the election.
For the candidates, on the other hand, the campaign will stop this Friday at midnight in mainland France.
Public meetings, distribution of leaflets and digital propaganda of the candidates will be prohibited. No interview, poll or estimate of results may be published before the results on Sunday at 8:00 p.m.
In Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, in Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon and in French Polynesia where the ballot is brought forward to Saturday, the campaign ended locally Thursday at midnight.