Like a desperate effort, an all out in this campaign which in many respects has been the Stations of the Cross for Valérie Pécresse. On Wednesday April 6, the candidate of the Les Républicains (LR) party and her teams launched the “72 hours to convince” operation. A last assault which could even be only a start, given the late hour.
Activists are thus invited to talk to those around them, to organize apartment meetings, to massively stick up posters and fill mailboxes. Sunday, the big meeting of Valérie Pécresse showed a more combative candidate. As if the LR champion was trying, with what energy she had left, to save as many things as possible.
Because on the right, the hour is serious. Valérie Pécresse continues to lose points in the polls, settling permanently, if we believe these same opinion studies, in fifth place. A far cry from the second-round podium that everyone had been dreaming of at LR for five years now. However on the right, the cause seems heard since the defeat of François Fillon in 2017: a new failure and it is the threat of disappearance, an absence in the second round and it is the explosion. Realistically, training executives have lowered their expectations in recent weeks. It is no longer a question of being in the second round, an option that has become illusory, but only of succeeding in finishing ahead of the far-right candidate Eric Zemmour in the final order of arrival.
If they are key-key in opinion studies, Valérie Pécresse is indeed for the moment always given behind the former journalist of the Figaro. For a certain fringe of the party, closer to the center right, succeeding at least there would limit the damage after the second round. They are convinced of it: finishing behind the far-right candidate would cruelly fuel the battle of the trenches to come concerning the line that the party must choose in order to survive.
Race within the race
Because within LR, two camps are already beginning to clash: on the one hand, those who are more focused on civilizational and security issues; on the other, the supporters of a right center, reputed to be closer to Macronism. A worse score than Eric Zemmour on April 10 and the former could claim that their vision of things is the right one; a better score and the latter will invoke the fact that a straight line “less harsh brings together more French people”.
Whatever the result of this race in the race, this confrontation will necessarily take shape the day after the first round, which should, according to the polls, seal a new confrontation between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. Everyone will closely monitor the voting instructions formulated in particular by the candidate and by the party at the end of the political office convened the next day. “Ni ni” or vote in favor of Emmanuel Macron?
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