Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who refused to qualify Hamas as terrorist, seems to be paying for his positions in public opinion. A warning signal for the Chief Rebel, while the image of the National Rally is normalizing.
In the 2027 presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon would obtain between 14 and 15% of voting intentions, according to a latest Ifop poll, very far from his score in the first round in 2022 where he obtained 22%. Today, the Insoumis pays for his positions and his latest controversies, his inability to apologize, his very personal relationship to the facts and the truth. On the evening of the explosion at the hospital in Gaza, he immediately accused Israel of war crimes, even though there was nothing to support this except Hamas propaganda. It doesn’t matter if the investigations then seem to clear the Hebrew state, he will not go back on his words.
2027 is still very far away, but this survey is part of a trend. Before the Hamas attack, an Ipsos survey revealed that more than half of French people considered La France insoumise dangerous for democracy, ahead of the National Rally.
Communicating vessels
The more the image of the Insoumis deteriorates, the more the National Rally seems to normalize. The one who embodies the anti-system and who is multiplying the provocations today is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, not Marine Le Pen who drapes herself in her new republican clothes. The one who is accused of lacking compassion for the victims of Hamas is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, not the president of the RN who poses as a shield for the Jewish community, despite a still troubled back room, a thousand miles from the projections anti-Semites of his father.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon recalls Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 1990s, notes pollster Jérôme Fourquet, when Marine Le Pen understood that one of the main obstacles to her demonization was the anti-Semitism of the National Front. The one who is accused of complacency with anti-Semitism is Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The more the first flies away, the more the second recedes.
A perfectly calculated strategy
To achieve his objective, the second round of the presidential election, Jean-Luc Mélenchon is banking on his base, and is addressing young people in the suburbs and Muslims. Even if it means essentializing them as if they all expected the same thing, even if it means forgetting the majority of French people, or worse, accepting being rejected by many of them. He still has abstainers to convince with his speech, he thinks; the question of a more unifying posture will arise later, if he reaches the second round. It is true that for the moment, no one on the left is dethroning the Insoumis and the absence of plan B can still obscure its excesses and serve as fuel. Now, if he reached the point of a duel against Marine Le Pen, the question is: who would the French turn to? It seems that the devil has changed sides.