“We have to block it out. The words are said in a tone of spite with a shrug. The few distributors of leaflets in the market place of Fécamp, on the Normandy coast, look very lonely on this sunny afternoon. Passers-by brush past them without seeing them. It is without much conviction that this socialist activist came to call to “block” Marine Le Pen. As he did in 2017. But he is the first to recognize that this between-two-rounds “has nothing to do with the excitement of the time”. And even less with that of 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen had created general amazement by passing to the second round. At the time, 800 people even marched in Fécamp. “We are far from all that today,” he said.
In this working-class city ruled by the right for a few years, Marine Le Pen came first in the first round with 31% of the vote. This is 3 points more than in 2017. Nothing to do with the bourgeois city of Étretat, 25 kilometers away, which, with its green mayor, voted for Emmanuel Macron at 38%. The only common point is the increase in abstentions, which rose by more than 7 points in Fécamp alone.
Mobilization at half mast
Four days before the second round, calls for general mobilization have failed to disturb the lethargy of the Easter holiday. The campaign may be entering its home stretch, indifference seems to have to continue to mark this between-two-rounds. As proof, the very low attendance at Emmanuel Macron’s assembly in Marseille, on the Pharo promontory, last Saturday, where he made a profession of faith in favor of ecology. Barely several “hundreds of people” for an assembly where we arrived “in dribs and drabs”, in the words of the BFM-TV reporter who was there.
Same thing for the few thousand demonstrators who marched in Paris, Lyon and Marseille “against the far right”. A mobilization without common measure with those of 2002 or 2017. But, for the former right-wing minister Yves Jégo, these weak mobilizations do not bode well. “The few people present in Marseille is in no way a sign of electoral failure,” he said on CNews.
Is it because the game seems to be made and all the polls predict a victory for Emmanuel Macron between 53 and 56%? Still, the same indifference seems to have gripped the 21% of voters who voted in the first round for La France insoumise (LFI), the radical left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The very people whom Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen have been courting, each in their own way, for a week. The first by proposing a vast ecological program for which his Prime Minister, he said, would be directly responsible. The second by recalling that she is the only candidate not to propose raising the retirement age to 65.
Never mind. Two out of three voters among those who voted for Mélenchon and who hold the key to the presidential election will choose next Sunday to abstain or vote blank. According to an Ipsos poll, barely 33% plan to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second round, compared to 16% for Marine Le Pen. An internal consultation carried out by LFI with its main supporters announces the same massive abstention.
It has been more than a year since nearly 80% of voters said they did not want a Macron-Le Pen clash in the second round. As a result, between the “anti-Macron dam” and the “anti-Le Pen dam”, an ever-increasing number of French people should choose to abstain. While, traditionally, voters have always been more numerous to mobilize in the second round, the trend was reversed in 2017. For the first time, abstention rose by three points in the second round. Pollsters expect the same on Sunday, but perhaps even more so. A sign of this indifference, several cities, from the Pyrenees to the Paris suburbs, lack assessors to man the polling stations.
The revenge debate?
Could the televised debate to be held on Wednesday evening remobilize voters? According to pollsters, never has a televised debate really changed the course of an election or profoundly changed voting intentions. At most, he can influence them at the margin. Will it be different for a debate that appears to be the revenge debate of 2017? Marine Le Pen had then completely lost ground against the candidate Macron, in particular on the delicate question of leaving the euro. A promise on which she has since returned. According to observers, Wednesday, a simple draw could appear as a victory for the candidate.
Unlike the 2017 debate, where she showed up at short notice, Marine Le Pen planned to suspend her public activities on Tuesday and Wednesday. She must retire to the west of France in order to prepare herself with her advisers. If Marine Le Pen must absolutely prove her competence and her mastery of the files, the pollsters agree that the president must above all be careful not to appear arrogant.
According to a recent IFOP poll, this new confrontation will take place when the image of the candidates has changed considerably since 2017. If Emmanuel Macron is considered more presidential and more able to defend the interests of France abroad , Marine Le Pen is deemed more capable of defending the country against terrorism, settling the question of pensions and improving purchasing power. If 45% consider her more “worrying” than the president, only 22% of French people believe that Macron is more aware of the daily life and concerns of the French, against 44% for Marine Le Pen. In terms of the ability to reform the country, the two candidates are practically equal. There are only four days left for the French to decide between them.