have the debates between the two rounds already made it possible to reverse the trends?

Every five years, the debate between the two rounds is the last key moment of the presidential campaign. At the polls, is he really a game-changer? In 2017, the image of Marine Le Pen seeming to lose her nerve over Emmanuel Macron remained. “In the wake of this debate missed by Marine Le Pen, the current head of state took three or four points”explains Brice Teinturier, Deputy CEO of the Ipsos Institute.

Certain candidates got carried away, others agreed before the antenna to remain courteous, like Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin in 1995. What remains of the debates are especially small sentences which make fly. In 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing said to François Mitterrand: “You do not have, Monsieur Mitterrand, the monopoly of the heart.” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing had won with 400,000 votes in advance, causing some to say that the debate had won him the election. In relative terms, they have only very rarely changed the outcome of a presidential election.