Valérie Pécresse intends to stop the film of political recomposition launched by Emmanuel Macron in 2017. If the traditional right has resisted the onslaught of “at the same time” better than the socialists, the Les Républicains party knows that to survive, it would be better that its candidate reaches the second round in 2022. To do this, Valérie Pécresse must convince a sufficiently broad electoral space by pushing back the two walls which threaten her, one on the far right and the other in the center. But the noose seems to be tightening.
Since her appointment, her teams have insisted that she is “ at the barycenter of the various rights and that she can speak both to voters tempted by the far-right candidate Éric Zemmour and to those who left in 2017 with Emmanuel Macron.
But the operation is difficult. And by dint of giving pledges to each other, the result is mixed. After two months of campaigning, the polls are slipping. On his right, he is criticized for being too macron-compatible, and on his left, for having “extremely right-winged” his speech.
Recent defections demonstrate this. LR’s former number two, Guillaume Peltier, left for Zemmour because she was too centrist. And this week the Sarkozyist Eric Woerth joined the Macron camp accusing LR of being ” obsessed with radical Islamism “. Two proofs of the porosity that exists at the outer borders of Pécressie.
Minimize and discredit the extremes
Faced with this situation, the support of the candidate LR minimizes. Peltier and Woerth gone, “ it’s a point everywhere, ball in the center “, ironically the deputy Éric Pauget. Above all, they are betting that these departures will not take voters with them. ” Woerth is a techno, my activists don’t know him “, assures a president of a support committee in Ile-de-France.
Secondly, the Pécresse camp no longer holds back its blows against the two far-right candidates. Marine Le Pen is portrayed as a reckless spendthrift when the French state has already gone into a lot of debt during the Covid crisis. And Eric Zemmour is described as “ a phenomenon of fair “Which would be dangerous at the head of the state, according to Vincent Jeanbrun, speaker of the candidate. The Pécresse team has also drafted and circulated a document on ” Nazi sympathies of the former polemicist. Once in the voting booth, voters will choose someone capable of governing, they reassure themselves.
The challenge of recovering the fillonists
With regard to the voters who have gone to Emmanuel Macron, the right intends to seek them out by demonstrating that Valérie Pécresse will make the reforms that the head of state has not made, such as that of pensions.
For example, according to opinion polls, candidate LR only attracts the favor of 50% of voters who voted for François Fillon in 2017. By talking to them about the debt and behavior of the president, we will recover the others “. This is what ensures, in any case, a close friend of Valérie Pécresse.