The extreme right at loggerheads. Eric Zemmour deploys his energy to catch up with Marine Le Pen. 70 days before the first round of the presidential election, the Reconquest candidate is trying to take advantage of the internal disputes at the National Rally to nibble points in the polls and try to climb to the second round. For the moment, Marine Le Pen is credited with 13 to 21% of the voting intentions when Eric Zemmour oscillates between 10 and 16%, margins of error included.
Eric Zemmour’s strategy did not escape the National Rally. On BFMTV, Sunday January 30, the party’s acting president, Jordan Bardella, denounced “unfair methods” intended to attract RN executives for the rest of his presidential campaign. How does he do it? Explanations.
By specifically tackling Marine Le Pen
“Marine Le Pen does not interest me very much”, declared Eric Zemmour, on January 13, in the program “Face à BFM”, before mocking a “routine application” by Marine Le Pen, before comparing her to the emblematic figure of Lutte Ouvrière and six-time presidential candidate: “It’s a bit like our Arlette Laguiller of the national right, Marine Le Pen.”
In a short time, the Reconquest candidate succeeded in compelling Marine Le Pen, “to carry out a first-round campaign, she who had planned to do a second-round campaign”, analyzes the political scientist specializing in the far right, Jean-Yves Camus, interviewed by franceinfo. The RN candidate therefore finds herself having to face a candidate who belongs to a camp “not so far from his” and that “keeps saying of her that she embodies a centrist right” far from there “radical right” advocated by Eric Zemmour.
The tackles are linked, through the media, between the candidate of a populist nationalist right and the candidate of an identity right. But by force “to give each other names of birds”, “they risk making a possible transfer of votes from one to the other complicated in the event of the presence in the second round of one of the two”, anticipates Jean-Yves Camus.
By flirting with his supporters
At the house of “Eric Zemmour, they contacted everyone, they promise money, investitures in the legislative elections, these are unfair methods. I wonder if the Eric Zemmour operation is not there to prevent the election of Marine Le Pen”, denounced Jordan Bardella, Sunday, on BFMTV.
Eric Zemmour has indeed succeeded in attracting heavyweights from the RN. Among the newcomers, there are those who believe in his ability to reach the second round, like MEP Jérôme Rivière. He joined the campaign team as vice-president and spokesperson for Reconquête on 19 January. This former spokesperson for the RN candidate believes that “Marine Le Pen is not in a position to win the presidential election”. Others join Eric Zemmour for “ideas”, like the lawyer and MEP Gilbert Collard, who claimed to have nothing “against the National Rally or against Marine Le Pen”, January 22. These two executives were excluded from the RN by a group vote on January 25.
This series of departures towards Reconquest has thrown confusion into the Lepenist ranks. During a trip to Madrid on Saturday, MEP Nicolas Bay refused to say whether he would stay alongside Marine Le Pen until the first round of the presidential election. Immediate reframing of the candidate: “Those who want to leave (from the RN) leave, but they leave now”, replied Marine Le Pen indirectly.
“To have people today pretending to be here, when in reality their hearts or their minds are elsewhere, it’s unbearable. It’s a total lack of dignity and respect for the all of our militants.”
Marine Le Pentraveling to Madrid
Still, for Jean-Yves Camus, it’s not the rallies “spectacular and publicized” that must be probed, but rather “defections from the base”, these municipal councilors and local elected officials who go to Eric Zemmour. “They are the ones who are on the ground, closest to the citizens, who touch the voters and can have a real impact on the vote of their constituents”, he points out.
Taking advantage of family tensions
Among the newcomers to Reconquête are also people who have “a good dose of personal resentment vis-à-vis Marine Le Pen, who has greater ambitions than those possible within the RN or who play the next blow with the legislative elections”, recalls Jean-Yves Camus.
Could this be the case for Marion Maréchal? Although she still gives herself a month to think things over, Marine Le Pen’s niece has already told the Parisian and at Figaro that she would not support her aunt for this presidential election and that she was considering joining her rival. News that makes candidate Eric Zemmour smile: “It’s a beautiful week”, he reacted, at the tense microphone of BFM, Friday.
Something to recall the psychodramas that regularly shake the Le Pen family, which has dominated the far-right landscape in France since the 1980s. In particular those between the patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter Marine who succeeded him at the head of the National Front party in 2011 (which has since become the RN) and expelled him from it in 2015 after he again made controversial comments on the Holocaust.
Regarding the position of her niece, Marine Le Pen judged “violent” that she is thinking of leaving the RN, insisting on “the personal aspect” of their relationship and ensuring that they are “better placed” to win in April.
By assuming its position on the far right of the political spectrum
From his first campaign meeting, Eric Zemmour clearly displayed his radical positions, in particular vis-à-vis immigration and Islam. “Zero immigration will become a clear objective of our policy”, he promised. Regarding the role and power of the President of the Republic, particularly in the face of constitutional safeguards, the candidate wants the role played by the Constitutional Council to be less important than today. “In my conception of democracy, it is the people who decide and not the Constitutional Council”, he asserted during an exchange with the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, in the program “Elysée 2022” of France 2 in December. The latter then replied that he had “all the predispositions to become” dictator.
Assuming himself as the candidate “civilizational”, Eric Zemmour operates a “a real ideological divide both in content and in the way of saying it” compared to the discourse held by the RN, analyzes Jean-Yves Camus.
“There is a form of radicality in his identity-right discourse that Marine Le Pen no longer wants to support.”
Jean-Yves Camusat franceinfo
Opposite, the candidate of the RN is part of a strategy of demonization to convince more widely. “She also returned to the abolition of dual nationality [qui était une pierre d’achoppement de la doctrine nationale du RN]“, emphasizes the specialist.
But there is also a radicalism, in Eric Zemmour, that the candidate of the RN “can no longer sustain”, adds Jean-Yves Camus. Because the curve of the score of his party in the presidential election is rising: in 2012, the FN posted 17.9% in the first round, before a jump to 33.90% in the second round of 2017. Currently “the RN is credited with 44-45% of voting intentions if Marine Le Pen was in the second round” assures the political scientist. “Marine Le Pen notes that the demonization of the speech, it pays, unlike the type of speech held by his father”, he concludes. This is also the line held by Jordan Bardella, who accuses Eric Zemmour from “to recompose around him all the most radical, the most brutal chapels”.