Six days before the first round, the gap is narrowing in the polls and the boss of the walking deputies, Christophe Castaner, like the former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, are sounding the alarm: Marine Le Pen can win the presidential election, they say. . All the surveys of the polling institutes point in the same direction. In the latest issue of the Ipsos-Sopra Steria barometer for franceinfo and Le Parisien-Today in France, Marine Le Pen reached 21% in the first round, against 26% for Emmanuel Macron. She gained 5 points in two weeks and the Head of State lost as many. When it comes to sounding, what matters is the dynamics. If we extend the curves, the far-right candidate will lead the first round on Sunday. As for the second round, it is only six points behind, 47% against 53%, instead of 20.
How to explain such a progression? First, the excesses, the brutality of Eric Zemmour allowed Marine Le Pen to paint herself as a more peaceful, more frequent candidate. Its program has not changed: abolition of jus soli, establishment of a sort of social apartheid, “national preference”, depriving foreigners of social benefits, jobs and housing, denunciation of the European treaties – which is equivalent to leaving the EU – and a whole arsenal of other unconstitutional and anti-republican measures. But Marine Le Pen hid all that by staging her love of cats and only talking about rising fuel prices…
And then his opponents focused their arrows on the head of state and the “all against Macron” gave birth to a “nobody against Le Pen”.
Finally, there is the Russian miracle. There too, Eric Zemmour served as a lightning rod. The polemicist tumbled in the polls, while Marine Le Pen, largely also poutinophile, passed between the drops. Its program advocates a privileged alliance with Putin’s Russia, it is still financially linked to a Russian bank close to the Kremlin, but it has carried out a camouflage operation by only talking about purchasing power.
What can cause her to lose? She remains the outsider of course, but for the first time, she will have voice reserves with the expected support of Eric Zemmour. The concern is that this helping hand could also undermine its “normalization” strategy. Remember that she denounced the “Nazis” surrounding, according to her, Eric Zemmour and “Nazis”, as reinforcements, it’s a bit of a task. This could perhaps help resuscitate the Republican front, which has been undermined by part of the right, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Remember that in 2002, as in 2017, and until the regional elections last year, the Republican front always prevented the far right from gaining power. So far.