Paris. The centrist president Emmanuel Macron and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen resumed their campaign yesterday to mobilize their voters and convince the undecided three days before the second round of the presidential election, after a tense debate.
“Nothing is decided,” the president warned during a visit to Saint-Denis, a popular northern Paris suburb, though recent polls give him a 6-15 point lead over his far-right rival in Sunday’s vote. .
Le Pen went on the offensive for his part in his northern French stronghold, where he charged at his last rally against his “arrogant” rival, who “doesn’t love the French”, and cast the election as a referendum: “Macron or France?”
Both are also struggling to attract the voters of the leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was left at the gates of the ballot with almost 22% of the vote. A third will vote for Macron and 18% for Le Pen, but half have not yet said what they will do, according to an Ipsos/Sopra Steria poll.
In Saint-Denis, where Mélenchon won in the first round, the centrist sent a message to the inhabitants of the “popular neighborhoods”, which he defined as an “opportunity” for the country, and attacked the economic program of his rival . His campaign will close today in Figeac (centre).
The trip that the heiress of the National Front (FN) made yesterday to the north, the second poorest region of France in Europe, was not trivial either, because it helped her to resume her campaign axis: the fear of losing purchasing power.
Two opposing views of France were presented in Wednesday’s debate.
Debate
Almost 15.6 million viewers followed on Wednesday night the only face-to-face debate of the campaign that opposed, as in 2017, Macron and Le Pen, almost a million less than then, according to Mediamétrie figures.
The press estimated that the outgoing president dominated the debate, although his opponent “resisted the coup”, unlike five years ago when the latter faced criticism for his “aggressiveness” and “lack of preparation.”
For Cécile Alduy, a specialist in the discourse of the extreme right, there was “a president on the offensive and a candidate on the defensive”. “It’s the opposite of a normal situation with an outgoing president,” she added on France Inter radio.
“The danger of an election of Marine Le Pen is much stronger than in 2017”, when she obtained 33.9% of the vote, underlined historian Jean Garrigues, for whom the idea of a cordon sanitaire to isolate the extreme right goes beyond the parties.
Actors, athletes, intellectuals and unions called to prevent Le Pen from coming to power, although Macron considered that the “republican front no longer exists”.