Despite the apparent assurance and very favorable polls, still giving Emmanuel Macron nearly 30% of voting intentions in the first round, it’s a bit of a grimace soup internally at LREM. “We are too discreet. There is no collective narrative and many people think a little too much about the aftermath, as if it were already won, ”criticizes a member of the government in the Parisian columns. And if the tortoise Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in ambush to access a second round where he is credited with 40% of voting intentions by the last rolling Ifopprogresses, it is above all the hypothesis of a duel with Marine Le Pen which is feared by the macronie.
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“Let us not be fooled by Madame Le Pen, she is the heiress of the most radical party and has always held hate speech. She would have turned into a sympathetic breeder of cats? Lying ! “, lashed Bruno the Mayor in front of 300 sympathizers gathered in Louviers, in the Eure. “Don’t pretend that we are the elites and she the people! “, insists the Minister of the Economy, listing the tax cuts of the five-year term.
A Marine Le Pen made friendly against Eric Zemmour
It’s hard to know how much the “without him” campaign played, but one thing is certain: Marine Le Pen is progressing, to the point of making some parliamentarians fear the “Le Pen dynamic”. Especially since “for the first time, she has reservations in the first round”, recalls a close friend of the Head of State in Parisian. There isn’t much suspense over Eric Zemmour’s voter carry, and the Ciotti line supporters at LR could act as arbiters. Enough to fear polls approaching the margin of error, and an “industrial accident”.
However, at the start of the campaign, the division of the extreme right into two camps seemed to favor the incumbent president. “Objectively, she held up well. She turned the aggressiveness of Zemmour to her advantage, ”said a minister for Le Parisien. “She makes herself sympathetic and she plays it. And we got used to extremes, ”regrets Julien Denormandie, from the same trip to Eure as Bruno Le Maire.
While some also point to the absence of the Head of State, the presence of several ministers, mayors or parliamentarians not equal to that of the candidate himself in the meetings, a tenor of the majority vituperates: “We are next to the plate . According to him, LREM is “a bourgeois CSP + campaign by letting the popular electorate slip away” at Marine Le Pen. What push Gérald Darmanin, better placed to speak to voters tempted by a navy blue vote, to go hunting on the lands of the RN, with trips planned in Hauts-de-France and Perpignan. Thus obeying the candidate-president, who repeats in private “watch out for Le Pen”.