For the candidates, it’s simple: the Agricultural Show is THE sequence not to be missed, the one that can reverse the trends. During the previous campaign, in 2017, François Fillon had learned of his indictment the morning of his arrival at the Salon and had delayed it for a few hours, just enough time for the controversy to take off.
The outsider Emmanuel Macron then took advantage of this wavering to refine his presidential position. But once elected, his visits to the show were not always easy, like the last in 2020, where “yellow vests” were waiting for him to challenge him. Two years later, the outgoing president is about to declare himself a candidate.
Will he come to the Salon as president or as a candidate?
Gaspard Gantzer: Both configurations are possible. If he is there simply as president, there will be an advantage. It is that there will be media concentration around him. He will be able to continue to play on ambiguity, as he has been doing for a few weeks. If he is a candidate, this will be an opportunity for him to get back in motion and immerse himself in a first crowd bath.
Is the visit to the Show an easy-to-master communication sequence?
It is an extremely delicate exercise. Because it’s very long: several hours, sometimes ten hours on site. And anything can happen at any moment. Because there are angry people, of course, among professionals. But also all these unknown visitors who cannot be verified a priori and who can challenge the President of the Republic at any time.
In 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the only candidate to have shunned the show on the model of François Mitterrand, who only went there once for the 1981 campaign, but never then as president. All the others have made it a must in their dialogue with the French, with obviously the champion in all categories: Jacques Chirac, who in thirty years has only missed one edition because of a car accident.
Did François Hollande use it at delicate moments of his presidency, for example to regain popularity?
Gaspard Gantzer: He has often tried and I must admit that it has not always been successful. Why ? Because there was a lot of hostility during these Salons. We had very difficult living rooms in which there were boos, sometimes even spitting. Each time, François Hollande managed to recreate the dialogue. But the images, from a media point of view, were very bad because we often retained the worst of these visits.
The presidential election promises to be totally unpredictable. Can the visit to “the largest farm in France” change the countryside?
I don’t know if the campaign will play out in full at that time. In any case, what is certain is that the rural and agricultural world is essential in the vote next April and, on the other hand, it is always an opportunity for a presidential candidate to show that he is popular and close to people.
During his last visit, on February 22, 2020, Emmanuel Macron had walked the aisles of the Porte de Versailles for 12 hours, between criticism, whistles and cheers. For the moment, his entourage maintains the mystery around his displacement, a classic technique to make it a media event.