In a week, France will have chosen to whom to entrust the keys of the Élysée for five years. In the meantime, outgoing President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen will put all their strength into battle, with a long-awaited climax, the debate which will oppose them on Wednesday.
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Barely a break for Easter Sunday, and the two candidates are back on the track on Monday, but in small strides, in order to prepare for Wednesday’s televised debate which could mark a turning point in the second round campaign.
The pressure is all the greater for the candidate of the National Rally that in 2017 she had sunk against Emmanuel Macron (La République en Marche, LREM). And there is no doubt that his opponent, even if he is credited with a slight advantage according to opinion polls, will not hold back his blows.
He would win Sunday in a range of 53 to 55.5% against 44.5 to 47% for Marine Le Pen, the president-candidate being in slight progress, but within the margin of error and, therefore, not at the safe from a misstep or a strong mobilization of the anti-Macron electorate.
This time Marine Le Pen believes she is better prepared for the debate and says she is “extremely serene”.
For the far-right candidate, who is trying to establish her credibility and smooth her image, “it’s an important moment because there are a lot of French people watching it”.
“I have been reading so many incongruities about my project for a few days, so many caricatures, even fake news, that it is extremely important that I can have a moment with all the French people who are interested (…) to be able to reassure everyone,” she said on Saturday.
During the between-two-rounds, she held two major press conferences on sovereign subjects, institutions and diplomacy, intervened a lot in the media and made a single rally, in Avignon (south) Thursday evening.
Faced with the support garnered by her adversary, from left and right, or from civil society, she maintains the theme of purchasing power rather than her first hobbyhorse, immigration, and tries to convince the fringe popular with the electorate.
Her lieutenants again worked on Sunday to demine a sensitive subject, the wearing of the veil, affirming that its ban in the public space wanted by the candidate was no longer her priority in the fight against Islamism.
They also stepped up to the plate in the face of new accusations against their candidate, denouncing “a stinky ball”.
Marine Le Pen and her relatives are accused by the European anti-fraud office of having embezzled around 600,000 euros of European public money during their mandates as MEPs, according to a new report submitted in March to French justice.
For Emmanuel Macron, Wednesday’s debate will be “a moment of clarification”. “I believe that I have a project that deserves to be known and I have the feeling that on the side of the far right there is a project that deserves to be clarified,” he said in an interview. broadcast on Sunday by the TF1 television channel.
On the form, “the challenge is to be persuasive and convincing without taking an overly professorial tone”, underlines his entourage.
Drawing lessons from 2017 when she arrived at the debate ill-prepared and tired, after having multiplied the trips, Marine Le Pen will limit herself for the beginning of the week to an incursion Monday morning in Normandy (north-west), on the theme “A the meeting of the French: mission to convince”. Before agreeing to a day and a half of retirement in the West to study his files.
She must hold her last big rally on Thursday in Arras, a city in Pas-de-Calais (north) where Emmanuel Macron came first in the first round with 29.48% of the vote, herself being followed in second place (24 03%) by Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France insoumise (22.86%).
Emmanuel Macron held a first inter-round rally on Saturday in Marseille (south) largely devoted to ecology and climate change, sending signals to left-wing voters whom he hopes to rally.
He will be on the airwaves of France Culture on Monday morning then guest of the program “C à vous” in the evening on the television channel France 5.
He could make a short trip to Ile-de-France on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning he will chair the Council of Ministers. For the after-debate, he should make a last trip to the region, concluded with a public rally on Friday.
“Go into contact, explain, share, sometimes the joys, the anger, the fears”, he summarized in his interview with TF1.