A leading French daily has downplayed the ruling party and fueled intense speculation about next year’s presidential election, suggesting voters will not come to Emmanuel Macron’s aid if he finds himself in a rematch with the far right.
The votes from the left brought centrist Macron to power in 2017 in a run-off from right-wing leader Marine Le Pen, just as they helped Jacques Chirac in the 2002 election against Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie.
The Liberation newspaper report, based on reports from hundreds of readers, said many left-wing voters would no longer support Macron to prevent Le Pen from taking power.
“I’ve blocked (far right) in the past and this time it’s over,” Liberation’s shocking front page headline read on Saturday – a quote from one of the voters who told the newspaper that they could no longer put themselves to the vote not. for Macron, regardless of cost.
Polls predict that the 2022 election will amount to another duel between the two politicians who fought it on a globalist versus nationalist platform in 2017.
But this time, they are showing Le Pen much closer to the halls of power, with a poll by Harris Interactive, which was never published but leaked to the media last month, showing that National Rally leader 48 percent of the vote in take a run – down with the incumbent.
A poll by Ipsos-Steria in early February showed that her chances would be significantly strengthened by a massive stay away from left-wing voters in the event she faces Macron.
Following the socialist Francois Hollande’s one-time presidential term – which ended in 2017 so unpopular with him that he decided not to stand up again – the left is not currently planning to run, with its vote division between socialists, green and hard left France unbending.
– ‘Hurt and humiliate’ –
Some of Liberation’s readers accuse the president, who is campaigning as a centrist but is accused of supporting the right, as ‘president of the rich’ – a label that dates back to his decision early in his presidency to cut wealth taxes.
Others attacked his efforts to keep the French working longer before they were eligible for a full pension, as well as his suppression of protest marches against the government’s yellow vest “in 2018-2019 and the harsh rhetoric of his government on immigration and radical Islam.
“Left-wing voters feel hurt and humiliated. They feel compelled to vote for a candidate they did not respect,” Remi Lefebvre, a professor of political science at the University of Lille, told AFP.
Faced with the rise of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU National Rally (formerly National Front) over the past two decades, mainstream French parties have regularly entered into election agreements to obstruct the party’s office.
The pressure to join the “Republican front” against the far right culminated in 2002 when Jean-Marie Le Pen defeated left-wing Lionel Jospin for a place in the final against center-right candidate Chirac.
Le Pen’s breakthrough sent shock waves through France, prompting left-wing voters to swing massively behind Chirac, who won the run-up with a landslide victory.
But by 2017, the “everyone against Le Pen” strategy had already begun to unravel, with France’s hard-line left-wing leader Unbowed Jean-Luc Melenchon in particular refusing to endorse investment banker Macron against Marine Le Pen after he himself left the election for president has been struck. .
– ‘Recycling the program’ –
A former Dutch economy minister, Macron has given important cabinet posts to allies of former right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, such as Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and Prime Minister Jean Castex.
In recent weeks, his government has been accused of openly condemning right-wing voters, while Darmanin criticized Marine Le Pen in a debate over her “softness” over Islamists.
Higher Education Minister Frederique Vidal has warned of the spread of ‘Islamo-left’ in French universities, a term often used by the far right to demonize leftists defending Muslims.
“Whether it’s about social policy, civil liberties or political rhetoric, people have the impression, I think rightly, that Macron is reclaiming the program of the National Rally,” Eric Coquerel, an MP for France Unbowed, told AFP.
Coquerel voted for Macron in the run-up to the 2017 election, but said: “Honestly, if it happened again, I think I would have the same reaction as these voters (who say they will not support him again)” .
Gilles Finchelstein, director of the left-wing Jean Jaures thin bank, said left-wing voters are “fed up” of being asked for right-wing or center-right.
But if the election yields a different face of Macron-Le Pen, he will predict that some of the left-wing voters who say today that they will not vote are likely to vote for Macron.
cb / sjw / wai