The environmental cause is mobilizing public opinion, there is talk of a “climate generation” among young people and yet the Green candidate, Yannick Jadot, is struggling.
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Sacred paradox. The climate emergency is one of the main concerns of the French, behind purchasing power and the war in Ukraine; alarmist reports from the Giec follow one another, almost everyone claims to be green, and at the end of a campaign that never took off, Yannick Jadot is estimated at 6% of voting intentions in the latest Ipsos-Sopra survey Steria for franceinfo and Le Parisien-Today in France. It is half less than six months ago, the day after his victory in the primary of the Greens.
If Yannick Jadot is so low, it is primarily precisely because the Greens no longer have a monopoly on ecology. She is everywhere. In any case, his competitors on the left and Emmanuel Macron also claim it. But these difficulties are also linked to the candidate Jadot himself: he led a sluggish campaign. Yannick Jadot wanted to be serious, he put on a tie to go on TV, he started talking about royal subjects. But he struggled to generate enthusiasm. He appeared a little bland, without much charisma. A bit like in 2017 by the way: at the time, he had plummeted in the polls before retiring in favor of Benoît Hamon. And as the defenders of biodiversity say, “we do not change the stripes of the zebra”.
Yannick Jadot was not served by the Greens themselves. The candidate was weighed down by their endless divisions. Ecofeminist Sandrine Rousseau had won 49% in the internal vote, on a much more radical line, and she never stopped “playing personal” and making her difference heard, until she was fired from her post as door- word.
It’s even the worst. By political culture, ecologists are resistant to any form of personalization of power and to the Elysian incarnation. They have never obtained more than the 5.2% of the votes of Noël Mamère twenty years ago. It is not excluded that Yannick Jadot does a little better. Unless it was wrung out in the last few days by the so-called “useful vote” phenomenon, perhaps for the benefit of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Although there is now a chasm between them since the start of the war in Ukraine: Yannick Jadot continues to castigate the long complicity of the rebellious leader with Vladimir Putin. And it is perhaps in the direction of the Macron vote that he could lose feathers at the end of the course, as the head of state is now threatened by the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who could well lead to first round lead on Sunday night.