He had proclaimed himself “the antisystem candidate” and dreamed of being the next President of the Republic. But this Sunday, April 10, Eric Zemmour did not achieve his goal. Despite an upward start to the campaign in terms of voting intentions, the far-right polemicist ends at the fourth place, totaling 7.2% votes, well behind the leading duo made up of Marine Le Pen (23.2%) and outgoing President Emmanuel Macron (28%), according to an Ipsos-Sopra Steria estimate for France Télévisions, Radio France, France24/RFI/MCD, Public Sénat/LCP Assemblée Nationale and Le Parisien-Today in France.
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Surrounded by his supporters who came in large numbers from the Mutualité side, in Paris, on Sunday evening, Eric Zemmour thanked his supporters for the “trust” and their “strength”. He gave clear voting instructions for the second round. “I have a lot of disagreements with Marine Le Pen, but she is facing a man who brought in two million immigrants, who did not talk about immigration and identity during his campaign. I won’t get the wrong opponent.”
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“I made mistakes, I accept them all”, also recognized Eric Zemmour. The Reconquest candidate! misses, on Sunday, the double bet he had set himself: to qualify for the second round and to position himself as the great craftsman of “the union of the rights” against Marine Le Pen (RN) and Valérie Pécresse (LR).
His story with the presidential election begins with a tour of France to sign his latest book and above all to take the pulse of the country. Multiplying the crowds, Eric Zemmour first decides to maintain the suspense around his candidacy. Not yet declared, he experienced his first disappointments in October 2021. In London where he was boycotted by the local political authorities, but also in Marseilles, on November 27, where he gave a middle finger to a passer-by who had provoked him. Slippages that are already costing him dearly in public opinion. He finally formalized his Elysian ambition on November 30 in a video posted on YouTube, addressing “to French people who feel like foreigners in their own country”.
This long strategic wait around his declaration, then the staging of his formalization, does not change anything. In December 2021, only 21% of French people believe that he has “the makings of a president”, according to an Ipsos Sopria-Steria study and the polls are not taking off. The candidate who wants to display his difference with “professional politicians” announces the creation of Reconquête!, his movement which finances a large part of his campaign, thanks in particular to the support of more than 100,000 members.
His campaign has a clear objective: to appear as the candidate who unites the rights. It is for him to poach as many executives as possible from the RN and LR, and to weaken them politically by criticizing on television sets. “the reflexes of a left-wing woman” by Marine Le Pen and “Macronist connections” by Valerie Pécresse.
But to convince and hope to claim this leadership, Eric Zemmour must prove that he is capable of gathering. Until then timorous, even ill at ease during his speeches, the former editorialist manages to assert himself during the Villepinte meeting (Seine-Saint-Denis), his first big show where he brings together more than 12 000 people.
“After this meeting and the incredible fervor that emanated from it, we all said to ourselves that no one could stop us from now on until the second round.”
A relative of Eric Zemmourat franceinfo
However, the show of force is marred by incidents. The meeting was marred by violence by members of the ultra-right against activists from SOS racism, which shocked public opinion. Leading political figures such as the sovereignist Philippe de Villiers hesitated, at the time, to join him.
Despite the excesses and new slippages during tense trips, as in Calais or Dijon, the months of January and February are those of the rise of the candidate in the polls. In mid-February, some barometers even propel it to third or even second place. “Even if they never let anything show through, we felt at the beginning of February that at the National Rally, but especially at Valérie Pécresse, they were starting to freak out”remembers a zemmourist support.
At the same time, the first defections in favor of Eric Zemmour occur. At LR, Guillaume Peltier, then vice-president of the party, positions himself first. Then follow in the ranks of the RN, the MEP Jérôme Rivière, the deputies Gilbert Collard and Nicolas Bay or even Marion Maréchal, the niece of Marine Le Pen.
“When we welcome a young woman as brilliant, intelligent and full of convictions as Marion, we are obviously happy”
Eric ZemmourIn “Sunday in politics” on France 3, March 13, 2022
But these weighty political rallies did not produce the desired effect. At the end of February, the war in Ukraine broke out and pushed the presidential election into the background. The fight against immigration and security, Eric Zemmour’s two favorite themes, meet with less echo in the campaign.
The candidate’s obsession with the theory of “great replacement” that he tried to trivialize finds its limits and his proposal to create “a ministry of remigration” does not print. “Unlike Marine Le Pen who bet everything on purchasing power in her low noise campaign, conducted in many medium-sized towns all over France, Eric Zemmour remained on the monothematic of the fight against immigration and it showed in the polls,” confirms Mathieu Gallard, director of studies at the Ipsos Institute.
Another pitfall in Eric Zemmour’s campaign: his ambiguities around Vladimir Putin’s policy. If Marine Le Pen, who then decides to be very discreet on the subject despite her alleged links with the Russian president, Eric Zemmour persists and signs. On the RTL set, he refuses to recognize that Vladimir Putin is a dictator and prefers to call him a “authoritarian democrat”.
The Trocadero meeting organized in the last weeks of the campaign in front of nearly 50,000 sympathizers and its calls for “vital vote for France” won’t change anything. Just like his justifications on the “Macron, killer!” launched by the crowd in this same rally against the outgoing president.
It remains to be seen, now, what will be the political future of Eric Zemmour. “I will continue to defend France and our ideas, and I am certain that soon we will prevail. I take each of your voices as the cry of a people who do not want to die”he launched to his militants on Sunday evening.
Could he get closer to the National Rally with, in sight, an unprecedented political alliance with the National Rally during the legislative elections in June? Nothing is less sure. Eric Zemmour, who has already announced that he would be a candidate for deputy, in the event of defeat in the presidential election could target a constituency in the south of France or in the Paris region.