Presidential D-2: last hours of an extraordinary campaign

Online media for Emmanuel Macron, land for Marine Le Pen, Valérie Pécresse, Yannick Jadot: the candidates are taking advantage of the last hours of the official first-round campaign on Friday to call back voters, hoping to convince undecided and potential abstainers.

After a last salvo of meetings Thursday evening, the campaign ends Friday at midnight in mainland France.

Public meetings, distribution of leaflets and digital propaganda of the candidates will be prohibited. No interview, poll or estimate of results may be published before the results on Sunday at 8:00 p.m.

Thursday afternoon, 69% of the 47.9 million electoral envelopes had been distributed to voters’ mailboxes, according to the Ministry of the Interior.

In Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique, in Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon and in French Polynesia where the ballot is brought forward to Saturday, the campaign ended locally Thursday at midnight.

– Gap narrowed –

It is the end of an extraordinary first round campaign for the Fifth Republic: frozen by the Covid-19 crisis, and swallowed up by the war in Ukraine.

By fueling soaring energy and food prices, the conflict has further underlined the urgency of providing answers to the French on their purchasing power, their primary concern.

In this context, the voting intentions measured by the pollsters draw a scenario identical to that of 2017, with Emmanuel Macron and the RN candidate Marine Le Pen qualified for the second round, and Mr. Macron victorious in the end.

But is it guaranteed? In the event of a second round Macron / Le Pen, the “republican front” to block the way to the far-right candidate could crack while the five-year term has seen the birth of a current of “anti-macronism” in public opinion.

Ms. Le Pen, who has worked to smooth her image even if her project remains “radical” on the migratory and institutional levels, climbs by 2 points in one week, to 22%.

While voting intentions for Mr. Macron, who campaigned at a minimum, have declined by the same amount, to 26%, according to the latest OpinionWay-Kéa Partners barometer published on Thursday.

And the gap narrows in the second round: Emmanuel Macron would win against Marine Le Pen by 53-47%, against 55-45% a week ago.

At a meeting in Perpignan on Thursday evening, Mrs. Le Pen judged that “the alternative is simple: it will be either dilution in a great global magma via a European Union which is the prelude to it, or the affirmation of the Nation” as ” most protective space for our own”. She exclusively attacked Emmanuel Macron, “boxer stunned” by crises.

The president-candidate maintains for his part in Le Parisien Friday that the “fundamentals” of the candidate RN “have not changed: it is a racist program, which aims to divide society and of great brutality”. “Marine Le Pen has a false social program, because she does not finance it,” he adds.

Third in the voting intentions at around 16%, the candidate La France insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon hopes to play the spoilsports, brandishing the need for a “useful vote” which would allow the left to hoist in the second round.

The level of abstention, which could reach or even exceed the record of 28.4% in 2002 (22.2% in 2017), will be one of the keys to explaining the election results.

– Media, toll, aperitif –

To be visible until the last minute in the media, Emmanuel Macron gives an interview on RTL early in the morning and another at 7:00 p.m. on the online media Brut, popular with young people.

Morning broadcast for Marine Le Pen also on Franceinfo from Perpignan, then she will go to meditate in front of the Wall of the French disappeared in Algeria.

On the right, Valérie Pécresse, elbow-to-elbow around 9% with the far-right candidate Eric Zemmour, will be in Cairanne (Vaucluse) to discuss with winegrowers, while Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Debout la France, 2 %) makes a “toll operation” on that of Saint-Arnoult (Yvelines) and goes to Mont Valérien.

Ecologist Yannick Jadot (5%) visits Lyon “the largest public biomass boiler room in France”.

Still on the left, the communist Fabien Roussel (5%) held an “end-of-campaign Apéroussel” in Paris, while the NPA candidate Philippe Poutou and the Lutte Ouvrière candidate Nathalie Arthaud (1% each) held their last meetings in Grenoble. for the first and Rouen for the second.

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