Presidential 2022: why does Eric Zemmour tax Marine Le Pen as a “leftist woman”?

Marine Le Pen, a woman of the left? At least that’s what Eric Zemmour thinks. The polemicist made it his last argument to discredit his main opponent in view of the first round of the presidential election, if he were to declare himself a candidate too. “Poor Marine Le Pen, I pity her. I pity her for having to speak like Marlène Schiappa, like the left, to speak like feminists. But you know, I was the first to say it and diagnose it: it was is a woman of the left, all her reflexes are of the left. She is out of step with her electorate “, he said on Tuesday, during a trip to Biarritz, alluding to the candidate’s attacks on her misogyny.

While the two sovereignists are often compared and positioned on the extreme right of the political spectrum, thus qualifying the candidate of the National Rally, the journalist wishes to stand out and claim the monopoly of ideas on security and immigration issues. , its main business. Also, while in recent weeks those close to Marine Le Pen have repeated that Eric Zemmour was not their opponent and that their points of agreement could allow them to unite before the first round of the presidential election, the journalist wishes recall that the deputy RN has a program less liberal than him economically speaking, and less conservative on the questions of society.

It was also Marine Le Pen herself who insisted on these differences last week, accusing Eric Zemmour in particular of not wanting to be interested in the issue of purchasing power. On LCI, saying not to see any “capital gain” in the polemicist’s approach, she criticized him in economic and social matters for “old liberal measures”, of “old remedies which have proven to be ineffective”, such as retirement at age 64 when it supports retirement from age 60 after 40 years of contributions.

On Sunday, during the LCI / RTL / Le Figaro Grand Jury, Eric Zemmour replied: “Marine Le Pen has locked her voters, who are for the most part voters of the popular classes – workers, unemployed, employees – in a political ghetto (…) therefore the vote for Marine Le Pen is useless since she cannot win the presidential election, since it does not have an alliance with a part of the bourgeoisie “.

By declaring that Marine Le Pen is on the left, and therefore by positioning himself on the right, Eric Zemmour wants to consolidate part of his electorate, more bourgeois and better off than that of the RN candidate. According to an Ifop Fiducial survey for TF1 and LCI published on October 20, artisans and traders (25%) constitute the majority of Eric Zemmour’s voters (followed by retirees at 18% and executives and higher intellectual professions, employees and workers at 15%). In addition, the wealthy categories and the upper middle classes would be 18% on Eric Zemmour. Unlike the poor (12%) and modest (15%) categories, therefore rather acquired by Marine Le Pen, who achieves scores of 29 and 24% with them.

Marine Le Pen has been repeating for years that the traditional right-left political divide has been overcome, preferring the one that opposes globalists and nationalists. The entourage of the candidate estimated Tuesday with LCI that the fight of Eric Zemmour on this plan is “rear guard”. He thinks that the simultaneous attacks by the far left and Eric Zemmour against Marine Le Pen show that, on the contrary, his position is “rather central”. Faced with these assaults, the RN candidate is however forced to heal her popular base and to abandon for the time being the idea of ​​going to grab a few votes in the Republican or Fillonist electorate, the proclaimed preserve of Eric Zemmour.