The main difficulty for Valérie Pécresse, LR candidate designated for the presidential election, will be to deal with “two poles which, within the Republicans, each pull on their own, explains communicator Arnaud Benedetti, editor-in-chief of The political and parliamentary review and associate professor at the Sorbonne, on franceinfo. Saturday, December 11, the candidate organizes a working meeting with the party executives, even if she will soon, according to him “submit to this rite of major meetings”, to really start his campaign.
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franceinfo: Since her victory at the congress and her appointment, has Valérie Pécresse really succeeded in rallying within her party?
Arnaud Benedetti: Let’s say that the terms of the rally today for Republicans are simpler than in 2017, because, first of all, the story that has finally pitted the five Republicans primary candidates in recent weeks is not the same as that of their predecessors. I believe this is a point that is extremely important today. For Valérie Pécresse, the bottom line is the equation that has remained the same for Republicans since the 2017 defeat: both succeeding in bringing back to her right the voters who would be tempted by political offers more right-handed like those of Eric Zemmour or Marine Le Pen, while not losing those who, today, are attached to the center right. The idea is also to recover a part of this electorate who could be today likely to join or who would have already joined Emmanuel Macron.
The LR mayor of Saint-Étienne, Gaël Perdriau, said on franceinfo that if Valérie Pécresse did not clarify his position on Eric Ciotti’s ideas, he would not vote for her. Can this gathering also create division?
This is the difficulty of this equation, with, finally today, two poles which, within the Republicans, each pull on their own. The reality is that a presidential campaign, François Mitterrand recalled in his time, that is won by gathering his own camp. It remains to be seen today where the cursor is. Is it more to the right or more to the center? Obviously, if we see a certain number of opinion studies, if we closely follow what happened during the internal competition on the occasion of this congress, the cursor is rather to the right. So we can imagine that Valérie Pécresse will nevertheless initially try to send signals to this electorate, to these segments of opinion. This is what she did at the start of the week, going first to her unhappy challenger Eric Ciotti. At the same time, we see her going to Xavier Bertrand or to Michel Barnier, so that the electorate who would not be the most to the right is found in his political offer.
This meeting was to be a meeting, before being transformed into a meeting with party officials. Shouldn’t we now be opening up beyond just LR members?
Yes, but in terms of communication, it is a question of sending a signal that, ultimately, Valérie Pécresse and her campaign team would be more responsible than those who, today, in a period of active circulation of the virus, are and hold face-to-face meetings with large crowds. At the same time, it’s true that in a presidential campaign, you have to go beyond your circle of supporters or your natural catchment area at some point. It is necessary to split the armor and indeed, to try to embody a France which goes beyond the only sympathizers and the only partisans. So, Valérie Pécresse will have to go to the field. She has planned many field meetings with the French before the holidays. But she will also have to submit to this rite of major meetings because they mark the history of an electoral campaign and give a dynamic which is very important. In 1995, the first meeting of Jacques Chirac Porte de Versailles, when the curves crossed with Édouard Balladur, had played a very important role in the dynamics in favor of Jacques Chirac.