In the latest Ipsos-Sopra Steria barometer for franceinfo, Marine Le Pen would qualify for the second round of the presidential election with 18.5% of the vote. If the scenario is confirmed, the candidate supported by the National Rally will need substantial vote transfers from her competitors to hope to enter the Elysée.
At this stage, however, she does not plan to appear alongside Éric Zemmour after April 10. In a joke, his entourage first responds that he does not see “why Zemmour would want to support a socialist”a reference to the attacks of the ex-polemicist who has repeatedly portrayed his rival as “a woman of the left”.
Of course, the real reasons lie elsewhere. First, there is the image risk. Marine Le Pen believes that direct support from Éric Zemmour is more cumbersome than anything else. A joint poster with such a sulphurous candidate risks undermining his work of “normalization”. And to reactivate the Republican front. “The vote reports of his electorate are already very good”, says an adviser to Le Pen. So why bother with Zemmour if voters are ready to migrate on their own, without voting instructions?
Second reason: the political meaning of such a poster. “There is nothing to negotiate on the merits with Zemmourjudges an elected RN, who adds: We are not going to resume our reform of first names?
In fact, the candidate of the National Rally considers that there is no programmatic added value in her competitor. Nothing that characterizes or is worth staging a reunion. “We’re not going to go with him to ‘crack hill’sweeps for example a support, alluding to this place of drug trafficking located in the north of Paris. Zemmour has no fiefdom, no land, no cause”decides an adviser to Marine Le Pen.
Finally, and this is the third explanation, nothing says that Éric Zemmour supports the RN candidate on the evening of the first round. This applies to him as to Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. “I anticipate a reaction not commensurate with the events“, already warns an RN executive. Ditto for Nicolas Dupont-Aignan: “I don’t see it at all in the mood of the gathering”, slips a former Debout la France who joined Marine Le Pen. To fill up on votes, the candidate is relying instead on the strength of her own speech, on the evening of April 10.