Ballotage in France: Marine Le Pen tries to discredit the feeling that it has already lost to Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron could relax. Two days before the French presidential elections, the current tenant of the Elysee Palace continues to lead the polls. With polls placing him with 55% of the vote for next Sunday, the presidential debate left the image that his re-election is practically a fact. Even considering a margin of error, the potentially high abstention rate and other imponderable ones, make it come with a reasonably clear advantage over the far-right competitor Marine Le Pen.

Wednesday's television contest left a taste of defeat among the ranks of the aspirant of the National Group (RN). In the last few hours, Le Pen's allies have multiplied, on radio, television channels and social networks, to support their candidate. They try to discredit the feeling, reflected in several polls, that Emmanuel Macron won the debate, which ends up projecting it solidly for the ballot.

For the lieutenants of the far-right leader, while she was “solid” and “close to the French”, the outgoing president would have been, according to them, “lazy”, “casual” and “arrogant”. “The number one public insulter,” said Jordan Bardella, acting president of the National Group, calling for “not giving in to the merchants of fear.”

For his part, with the impetus given by the good performance on TV, the president seeks to confirm the image of continuity. For his last hours of the campaign, he chose to surround himself with inhabitants for a new walk and selfies, in Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the poorest and youngest departments in France. Dismantle the impression of a distant politician by a leader of closeness, mobilizing between rurality and working-class neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen holds on to her last hopes. “I think I have every chance of winning,” he says. He is confident that his struggle, without respite until Sunday, will awaken the commitment of his fellow citizens. With the same strategy: to question the behavior of the outgoing president and dismantling the fear of an ultra-right government. And the slogan: “If the people vote, the people win.”

The candidates have only a few hours left. The official campaign ends this Friday night. There is little room, according to analysts, to reverse the trend and snatch a victory from the current president of the Republic. Marine Le Pen is still at a disadvantage: Emmanuel Macron surpassed her by 1.6 million votes on April 10, the Republican party is weakened but still active, all polls show her defeated with a growing gap.

Emmanuel Macron, who after appearances on French television must end his campaign this Friday at Lot de Figeac, says he has a “message for all of France: there is no geography that belongs to any field”.

As if that were not enough, voters of the popular left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, seem to sabotage Le Pen's only chances. After all, they are under pressure to block the arrival of an aspirant who shares, in many respects, Putin's political thinking, who has openly expressed his admiration for an authoritarian model of society, whose program borders, at least in some respects, on unconstitutionality. Added to a certain contempt for immigrants.

The votes of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a close third in the first round, will be decisive. According to the polls, 39% of them would vote for Macron in the second round, 17% would vote for Le Pen and 44% want to abstain or are still undecided. On Thursday, Macron was in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. In the large Muslim community there, 61% voted for Mélenchon.

“People of France, get up! “, try to shake Le Pen. The message is intended primarily for abstentionists. In the final stretch, that is where their only reservations might lie. Some 13.6 million voters did not go to the polls, voted blank or null and, by now, half of them say they don't want to choose one of the finalists, according to the OpinionWay-KEA Partners barometer for the newspaper “Les Echos”.

But “contrary to popular belief, abstentionists are rather moderate people,” says Bruno Jeanbart, vice president of the survey institute. “The real survey”, responds a member of the national office of the RN, “we are going to see it at the polls”. The answer will come on Sunday.

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