Mélenchon and Pécresse mobilize for the final sprint

Call to “overturn the table” for Valérie Pécresse, “effective vote” for Jean-Luc Mélenchon: several candidates, after Emmanuel Macron, galvanized their troops on Sunday, as the final sprint begins a week before the first round of the presidential election.

This is the last straight line in this extraordinary campaign hit hard by the Covid crisis and then the war in Ukraine. With a major challenge for the 12 contenders for the Élysée: to beat the recall of their supporters, to seek out the undecided and those tempted to abstain who could reach historic levels.

According to an Ipsos survey, it could climb on April 10 to 30%, the highest level for a first round of presidential elections under the Fifth Republic. Thus beating the 2002 record (28.4%) which had seen the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen qualify for the second round for the first time. It would first affect the left and the working classes.

Under such conditions, “of course” that Emmanuel Macron can lose, said the leader of the majority deputies Christophe Castaner on Sunday on RMC, “it would be a political fault”, an “arrogance”, that “to leave to think that an election is folded in advance”.

The last days of the campaign are electrified by a narrowing gap in the polls between Mr. Macron, candidate of the “at the same time” between left and right, and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen (RN), who put purchasing power at the heart of his campaign.

During a giant meeting on Saturday with more social overtones, Mr. Macron called for “general mobilization” against “extremism” and “great stunting”. A term aimed at Eric Zemmour and his conspiratorial theme of the “great replacement”, who described the attack as “lamentable”.

The Macron camp is also targeting Marine Le Pen and her solutions which “are not funded: she would therefore take back with one hand what she gives with the other”, said government spokesman Gabriel Attal in the JDD.

– “We will win” –

Faced with the announced 2017 remake, the best-placed left-wing candidate (around 15%) Jean-Luc Mélenchon hopes to get a ticket in the final.

To make this hoped-for “remontada” a reality, he gathered some 25,000 people despite the cold on the emblematic Place du Capitole in Toulouse, one of the strongest bastions of “yellow vests” during the 2018/19 crisis.

From the first minutes, the rebellious leader vilified Emmanuel Macron’s speech the day before: “he said that purchasing power has increased in a historic way, that’s wrong, the first quarter of 2022 is the record for decline in purchasing power for 10 years. And no doubt he has not been at the pump for a long time”.

“He who wanted to give himself airs of left (…), how could he believe that we do not see that he makes fun of the world?”, thundered Mr. Mélenchon.

– “Overturn the table” –

On the right, Valérie Pécresse, the candidate of the Republicans, neck and neck with the former far-right polemicist Éric Zemmour (around 10%), tried to remobilize an electorate very courted by her opponents, from the far right to candidate Macron.

“We have one week left to convince, to overturn the table”, affirmed the candidate LR, in front of 5,000 sympathizers in Paris who briefly whistled the name of Nicolas Sarkozy before the arrival of the candidate whom he still has not officially supported.

She denounced the “cynical scenario” of Emmanuel Macron who “once again wants a face-to-face with the extremes to make sure of winning in the second round”.

Presenting herself as the only legatee of the right against “forgers”, she repeated that the president-candidate “does not carry a right-wing policy”.

The interim president of the RN for his part pleaded on LCI for an “effective vote” by addressing the voters of Valérie Pécresse and Éric Zemmour so that Marine Le Pen can “have the strongest possible momentum from the 1st round to create the conditions for a very large gathering in the second round”.

Last meeting also in Paris for the socialist Anne Hidalgo, at the lowest in the polls, around 2%. “He doesn’t even calculate you,” she told left-wing voters tempted by Emmanuel Macron, inviting them to “return to their family of origin”.

In front of 2,400 supporters, she also warned against the “effective vote” touted by the rebellious leader: “How could a candidate who theorized the end of the left, then who in the local elections fought all the rest of the left, could now represent any hope for the left?” she asked.

Yannick Jadot, traveling to Nanterre, denounced “a five-year term of climate denial”. Nathalie Arthaud (LO) called on the “workers” at a meeting to mobilize because “there is money in the employers’ coffers”.

For his part, Philippe Poutou (NPA) took part in a demonstration against the extreme right in the capital.

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