A new man is shaking up the presidential camp for the European elections, and it’s not the one you’re thinking of.
He is popular, friendly, well placed in the polls, and above all, he encroaches on Emmanuel Macron’s pro-Europe line. For the European elections, a new man is worrying the presidential camp: MEP Raphaël Glucksmann. The essayist, elected to the European Parliament in 2019 at the head of an alliance list between his party, Place publique, and the Socialist Party, has already announced his candidacy for the June 2024 ballot. Negotiations are still in progress with the socialists but the latter would be wrong to turn their backs on it, if the polls are to be believed.
Glucksmann “must be part of our No. 1 concern”, estimates a Renaissance strategist with Politico. The MEP “will be the Jadot of 2024”, even predicts a minister, who remembers the unexpected 13.4% of the ecologist in 2019. For this minister, Raphaël Glucksmann embodies “the reasonable pro-European left”. This is what threatens the presidential camp, which was quick to send all its adversaries into the same anti-Europe bloc. To defeat Glucksmann, we will have to find other arguments.
He appeals to the left fringe of Macron’s electorate
Especially since the MEP has clearly distanced himself from the Mélenchonist left in recent months. He who defended in 2019 a union list of the left refused the outstretched hand of LFI this year, pointing out in September on France Inter “fundamental differences on Europe’s defense, on the absolute support that we must give to the Ukrainian resistance, on the policy that we must pursue towards China.”
Enough to appeal to the left fringe of the Macronist electorate, for whom the vote on the immigration law in December left a bitter taste. Moreover, Raphaël Gluckmann did not fail to “thank” the majority deputies who had abstained during the vote. A gesture that looks like an outstretched hand.
A “pleasure vote”?
On the left, the MEP could also benefit from a bonus for the best placed in the polls: the December barometers credit his list with 9 to 10% of voting intentions, ahead of the ecologists and the rebels, neck and neck with the Republicans. Let us add that European elections are often favorable to outsiders: a Renaissance executive says he fears a “pleasure vote” for “serious and nice guys, like Raphaël Glucksmann on the left and François-Xavier Bellamy on the right”. A vote that would siphon off the Macronist electoral reservoir.
Thus, the Macronian strategy which consists of reducing an election to a match between the center and the extreme right could find its limits on June 9. For this European proportional election in a single round, voters accustomed to voting useful in the presidential election to eliminate the RN will be tempted, this time, to follow their hearts.
Glucksmann, star of social networks, will be able to count on a young electorate, tamed on Instagram during his major humanitarian campaigns such as that for the recognition of the Uyghur genocide in China. “I’m going to go there and bring a list that will be the surprise of this election,” he declared on December 15 on Sud Radio. He believes in it, and obviously, Macronie does too.