The last poll, conducted before the election bans, revealed that there was only 1 point difference between Macron, who has always been determined to win the elections by a clear distance, and Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate, turned all calculations up to date.
As the countdown begins for Sunday’s elections, 48.7 million French voters will go to the polls to elect a president who will rule the country for five years. In the first round of elections to be held on Sunday, 12 candidates from the extreme right and the extreme left will compete.
President Emmanuel Macron, who is a candidate again, ranks first in all the polls with the vote support varying between 23-30 percent. The leader of the National Integration movement, Marine Le Pen, who lost votes with the candidacy of far-right journalist and writer Eric Zemmour, ranked second with rates ranging from 23 to 27 percent until the last moment. Jean Luc Melenchon, the candidate of the radical leftist party Unyielding France movement, which closely followed Le Pen, placed third with a vote rate of around 15-16 percent.
LE PEN ON MACRON’S NECK
But the latest poll for BFM TV on Friday evening revealed that Le Pen was just one point behind, catching Macron. According to the latest poll by the Elabe research company, Macron gets 26 percent and Le Pen 25 percent in the first round.
The other candidate who increased his votes, Jean Luc Melenchon, the candidate of the radical left Indomitable France movement, is in third place with 17.5 percent. Of the other nine candidates, centre-right Valeri Pecresse, far-right Eric Zemmour got less than 10 percent, and all other candidates below 5 percent.
According to the latest poll, Marine Le Pen closes the gap in the second round as well. Emmanuel Macron seems to win the second round with 51 percent of the vote, while Le Pen gets 49 percent of the vote.
In previous polls, it was observed that Macron, who increased his votes with the Ukraine war, lost votes continuously for the last two weeks. In the previous poll conducted by the BVA firm for RTL radio, Macron was again in first place in the first round with 26 percent. Marine Le Pen was second with 23 percent and Melenchon was third with 17.5. According to the poll, Macron was again seen as the winner of the elections with 53 percent in the second round.
SURPRISE WARNING IN THE BOX
However, political observers warn that “there is a great uncertainty”, pointing out that the polls show that 40 percent of the voters will not go to the polls and one third of the voters who say they will go to the polls still cannot decide who to vote 48 hours before the elections. Political observers warn that in this environment of uncertainty, the trend of voters may not be fully reflected in the polls and surprises may emerge from the ballot box.
STRATEGIC ERROR FROM MACRON
Encouraged by the rise of the Ukrainian war reflected in the polls, Emmanuel Macron, who refused to argue with the other 11 candidates in the first round, prepared for the elections by holding only one rally. Macron, who changed his tactics at the last minute, could not prevent the rise of Le Pen due to the fact that his votes fell in the last week and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen increased his votes more than ever before.
The claim that hundreds of thousands of euros were paid from the state coffers to the McKinsey consulting firm, which has not paid taxes for 10 years in France, led to the decrease of the votes of Macron, who seemed to be the favorite.
President Macron, who increased his vote support by 8 points to 33 percent due to the fear of war in the first days, lost a significant part of this support due to the developments after the prolongation of the war. The image of “European leader meeting with both Zelenski and Putin”, which earned Macron points in the first days, was followed by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s “Stop talking to Putin. Would you talk to Hitler?” He turned the tide of Ukraine by criticizing his words.
Macron had to make a statement on an election tour last Wednesday, saying, “I am speaking to Putin at Zelenski’s request. Besides, I am not the one receiving funding from Russia.”
Macron, who was protested for 2 years with the Yellow Vests uprising and could not get rid of the “candidate of the rich” label, announced that he would “raise the retirement age from 62 to 65”, which created the risk that the left votes would go to Le Pen in the second round.
THE WAR OF UKRAINE HITS THE EXTREME RIGHT
The tragic images after Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the refugees fleeing the heavy bombardment and taking refuge in neighboring countries and the war in the middle of Europe changed the French public’s tendencies about immigrants and security. In particular, right and far-right candidates, who based their campaigns on these two issues, had to correct their rhetoric about Russia and immigrants.
Among the two candidates competing in the extreme right lane, Marine Le Pen took a more moderate line in her discourse about Russia and immigrants, while having difficulty in changing her heavy rhetoric, especially about Muslim immigrants.
Marine Le Pen had a hard time as his staff and even his nephew, Marion Marechal Le Pen, left the party to join his far-right rival Eric Zemmour. Eric Zemmour, whose campaign completely extinguished after the Ukraine war, also lost a very high percentage of votes in the polls, falling from 19 percent to 8 percent.
Marine Le Pen has recently focused on “rising energy prices, the purchasing power of the people and low wages in the face of inflation” rather than the Ukraine war, unlike Macron. As the pressure of the war and the energy crisis on prices increased, Marine Le Pen put “purchasing power” at the center of her campaign and started to reap the fruits of this strategy in the long run.
Increasing social and economic crises gradually reduced the fear of French voters to vote for the far right. On the other hand, following a strategy that moves his party to the center increased Marine Le Pen’s votes. Even though Le Pen shared the far-right vote with Eric Zemmour, he remained Macron’s strongest opponent, ahead of Zemmour by nearly 15 points.
Now Marine Le Pen wants to get a rematch for the election she lost 5 years ago, after a disappointing televised debate with Macron.
Moreover, the polls showing that Le Pen’s votes rose up to 48 percent in the second round, cause concern even in Macron’s team. Names close to Macron also say that the risk of the far right winning this time is higher than in the 2017 elections. His advisers warn Macron that there may be unexpected results such as the Brexit vote and the election of Trump.
SWORDS ARE DRAWN FOR THE PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
Although it is clear in the polls that the race will be between 3 candidates, the other 9 candidates have not yet followed a strategy such as withdrawing from candidacy. All candidates have already started to take positions for the parliamentary elections to be held one month after the presidential race. The French Constitution allows a president to be elected twice. Marine Le Pen and Jean Luc Melenchon announced that if they lose this time, they will not run for the next election. In summary, political parties, which will first try to have a say in the Parliament through parliamentary elections, have already started to make calculations of taking a strong place in the political scene, which will be completely empty in 2027.