Served by a campaign without much relief and opponents who are struggling to impose themselves clearly, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron, not yet an official candidate, still appears to be the favorite in the April presidential election in France.
Anxious to appear as a statesman focused on the major affairs of the moment – management of the health situation in France, all-out diplomacy around the Ukrainian crisis – Emmanuel Macron has still not entered the arena of presidential election and delays the announcement of a candidacy that is not in the slightest doubt.
To the chagrin of his rivals, who accuse him of campaigning without saying so, and for his own benefit, since this situation has benefited him so far.
The outgoing president has indeed remained stable for months in voting intentions, around 25% in the first round, and winning in the second round regardless of his opponent.
Facing him, a fairly strong far right but divided between two candidates, Marine Le Pen (17.5% in the first round according to a recent poll) and Eric Zemmour (14.5%), and a weakened left, none of the four main representatives does not exceed 10%.
The candidate of the Republican right, Valérie Pécresse, who appeared to be the most dangerous rival for Emmanuel Macron, is starting to lose points in the polls, at 15.5%.
“Macron tries to maximize his status as president, because that is what differentiates him from other candidates. He has every interest in maintaining this image, because it is essentially what puts his opponents at a distance, ”analyzes political scientist Gaspard Estrada.
Reporting as late as possible is a strategy already used by its predecessors. In 1965, General de Gaulle had officially launched a month before the election, a tactic successfully repeated in 1988 by the socialist François Mitterrand.
Two months before the first round of the election, scheduled for April 10, “”we do not see in the polls a trend that endangers the president,” notes Mr. Estrada.
“All these balances can be upset but, at this stage, the vote for Emmanuel Macron takes on the appearance of a default choice. A choice even out of spite, if we observe the lack of enthusiasm for this presidential election, ”said a recent editorial in the daily Le Monde.
Volatility
Elected in 2017 when no one expected him, after having benefited from the discredit of other candidates, the break-up of traditional parties, and the blocking vote on the far right when he found himself facing Marine Le Pen in the second In turn, Mr. Macron, 44, is aiming for a crucial second term to carry out unfinished reforms and carve his image in history.
If he wins in April, he will be the first president to be re-elected for a second term since Jacques Chirac in 2002. Right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist Francois Hollande served only one term.
However, uncertainty remains high and a lot can change between now and April, with many voters still having to make their choice, and the risk of abstention remaining high.
Sign of the volatility of the political situation, 39% of voters did not express a choice, according to a recent study. Of these, 20% are “probable voters”, and 19% “probable abstainers”.
“As long as we do not have the final configuration of the candidatures, at the beginning of March, after the validation of the sponsorships, we are on the wind”, judge Anne Jadot, lecturer in political science at the University of Lorraine. We cannot exclude “the elimination of an important candidate, for lack of sufficient sponsorship, who would reshuffle the cards”, she underlines.
A presidential candidate in France is validated only after having obtained 500 sponsorships from elected officials, mayors or parliamentarians. For the time being, only Mr. Macron, although not a candidate, has obtained them. Some candidates, notably Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, are struggling.
The final list of candidates will be announced on March 7 by the Constitutional Council.
A conquering but torn extreme right
With nearly a third of the voting intentions, the French far right is approaching the presidential election from a position of strength, but divided between Marine Le Pen, its leader still undisputed a few months ago, and a newcomer, the ex-polemicist Eric Zemmour.
The latest polls invariably give incumbent President Emmanuel Macron a wide lead in the first round and re-elected in the second, but a fierce battle for second place pits right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse against Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, usually with a slight edge. for the latter.
Candidate for the third time, beaten in 2017 by Mr. Macron, she watered down certain aspects of her program, renouncing the abolition of dual nationality or the exit of France from the European Union (EU).
Contrary to the enterprise of “de-demonization” of the National Front (FN), renamed National Rally (RN), engaged by Marine Le Pen for a decade, Eric Zemmour overflows it on his right, with a very aggressive campaign against immigration and Islam.
“What is at stake is the leadership of the far right, with two very specific profiles”, explains to AFP Stéphane François, professor of political science at the University of Mons (Belgium).
“On the one hand, we have Marine Le Pen who is trying to soften her speech”, he adds, on the other Eric Zemmour “puts oil on the fire and sends messages to the most radical of the ‘far right”.
Eric Zemmour thus focuses his speech on the controversial notion of a “great replacement” of the European population by a non-European immigrant population and of a “war of civilizations” of which France would be the theater.
“There is a major problem, which is the great replacement of the French people by another people, by another civilization”, he reaffirmed Monday on France Inter radio.
“Recomposition of the political space”
Marine Le Pen reproached him in an interview with Figaro last week for recycling in his party “a series of chapels”, “came then left” from the FN: “traditionalist Catholics, pagans, and some Nazis”.
She especially accused Eric Zemmour, cantor of the “union of the rights” between right and extreme right, of fighting “not to win but to kill” his party by poaching elected officials, including several MEPs. According to her, “only the death of the RN and the failure of Marine Le Pen can allow him to envisage a phantasmagoric recomposition of the political space in 2027, 2032 or 2039”.
One of these defectors, the lawyer and MEP Gilbert Collard, was surprised that Marine Le Pen used against Eric Zemmour the discourse of the left and anti-racist associations against his own party. “When there is no one left at the National Rally, she will end up president of SOS Racisme,” he joked on RTL radio.
Marine Le Pen tried again on Saturday to humanize her candidacy, speaking for ten minutes at the end of her meeting in Reims (north-east) on the “trials” of her life, personal and political, a more common exercise in American electoral campaigns than in France.
“The problem is that the far right is the image of force. When you split the armor, it can be felt as a weakness”, estimates Christian Delporte, specialist in political communication and historian of the media, estimating that “it will not help him to recover the electorate of Eric Zemmour” seduced by more brutal rhetoric.
On the other hand, this sequence can “help him to recover fringes of the electorate of Valérie Pécresse”, according to Christian Delporte.
To the acrimony of the political contest on the far right is added a family invoice since the niece of Marine Le Pen, Marion Maréchal, ex-MP who wishes to “go back to politics”, expressed her preference for the candidacy of ‘Eric Zemmour.
Patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the FN and expelled from the RN by his daughter Marine in 2015 after new controversial comments on the Holocaust, gave him his support. “I do not understand that Marion supports a stranger in relation to the family, however sympathetic he may be,” he confided to the Sunday newspaper.