Getting all the votes for the second round is now the challenge for the two finalists in the presidential election. In Béthune in the Pas-de-Calais where Marine le Pen came out on top on Sunday April 11, her supporters were on the market Monday April 11 in the morning, to try to convince the undecided, including left-wing voters.
“Pull out the outgoing!”: the watchword is simple for these RN activists and it goes very well with Bernadette. Éric Zemmour’s voter in the first round, she is ready to vote Marine Le Pen in the second, on one condition: “I will listen to what she will say about Europeshe explains. I want us to stay in Europe.”
To convince citizens of the left, the matter is more delicate. Thus, a green voter ostensibly refuses the “Marine president” leaflet. Another who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon still prefers to give his voice to Emmanuel Macron: “I don’t like Le Pen’s ideas at all, it’s a bit racist all the same: with my family, it doesn’t fit at all.”
Same rejection for Jean-Marc who voted communist on Sunday. He will take a Macron bulletin on April 24 to block the RN: “I’m so afraid of what could happen. And then, to say that they have changed a lot is to be very wrong. There is no need to say that their speech has evolved a lot: there is really limits to hatred. Me, the FN, I have always written it with “hate”.
A label that activists are trying to get rid of: here we put little emphasis on the RN anti-immigration program and we try to reassure the undecided. Jeanne-Marie, 84, did not vote in the first round and is hesitating for the second…“Macron is a bit for the rich and that annoys me… And then Marine Le Pen, as I am of Polish origin, she risks sending us back to Poland! But it’s true that we should that she tries: she is young.”
“I had a drink with her and…I think I’ll vote for her.”
Marie-Jeanne, at 84at franceinfo
On the leaflet, a single measure evokes national preference, ten others salaries, pensions, prices and taxes… And that speaks to Gérard, a retired postman, who voted Fabien Roussel on Sunday. He will vote RN in two weeks: “Purchasing power, in France, is a bit hard, he sighs. And it would be necessary to close the borders a little and filter!“In this former mining and labor basin, the strategy of the RN is now to federate against Emmanuel Macron, with in particular as a pushback measure the retirement at 65, carried by the outgoing president.
Presidential 2022: the National Rally goes on the hunt for votes in Pas-de-Calais – the report by Jérôme Jadot
listen