Protests in France over pension reform JULIEN MATTIAZUMA PRESSCON | EUROPAPRESS
The two forces of extreme right and extreme left are the most benefited from the movement against the pension reform
26 mar 2023 . Updated at 5:14 p.m.
The far-right National Union party Marine Le Pen and the leftist coalition New Ecological and Social Popular Union (NUPES) would be the two formations with the most votes in possible early elections with 26% support each.
Both formations would look like this benefited from the recent wave of protests against the pension reform with an increase of 5 points since November in the case of Unión Nacional and of one in the case of NUPES, according to an Ifop survey published by The Sunday Journal.
«The great lesson is that the National Union is in the lead. It is something unprecedented. He has a wild card electoral base. There are almost no categories in which it is very weak», explained the managing director of Ifop, Frédéric Dabi.
The big losers would thus be the parties that support the majority of the president Emmanuel Macronsince the Renaissance coalition of the own Macron would fall to third place (22%, 5 points less). The traditional party of the French right, The Republicans, also fell, although only by one point, which went from 11 to 10% of voting intentions.
«In this survey there is a loser and it is the current majority. If there was a vote, the punishment would be very clear,” Dabi stressed.
The study is based on 1,094 interviews with people aged 18 or over, representative of the French population, conducted between March 20 and 21, 2023.
One of the main causes of the fall in popularity of the parties that support Macron is the pension reform that raises the retirement age and that they support both the parties of the presidential majority and the Republicans, although with nuances.
This same Sunday, the government spokesman, Olivier Véran, called on all political forces to condemn the violence in the recent protests, in reference to the serious riots on Thursday on the last day of the general strike against the reform.
“Violence must be condemned unreservedly, without a ‘yes, but’. Obviously I am not confusing the demonstrations in recent weeks organized by the unions, the families who continued to march on Thursday and the rebels who come to sow chaos in the country, “said Véran.