- Debate begins at 1900 GMT
- Macron and Le Pen in a close race to win the election
- France votes on Sunday
PARIS, April 20 – French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are set to face each other on Wednesday night in a debate that could be crucial in Sunday’s presidential election.
For Le Pen, who is trailing Macron in voter polls, it’s a chance to show she has the stature to become president and convince voters they shouldn’t be afraid to see the far right in power .
“Fear is the only argument that the current president must try to stay in power at all costs,” she said in a campaign clip, accusing Macron of doom and gloom over what a far-right presidency would mean for France.
For Macron, perhaps the biggest challenge in maintaining his growing lead in opinion polls is not sounding arrogant – something many voters have criticized him for – while poking at the holes he sees in Le Pen’s political plans.
Such debates tend to be widely watched, and memorable catchphrases of the past are still cited decades later.
“I’m curious to see what happens,” said voter Joseph Lombard in Paris. “It’s always a boxing match.”
But sources on both sides said they wanted a quiet debate – so much so that a source close to Macron, aware of the debate’s preparations, said it could get “dull”.
“The president needs to show he’s solid… without sounding arrogant,” the source said. “He’s going to be very serious, and she’s also got to show she’s solid on this.”
A source close to Le Pen said she wanted “a quiet debate, project versus project”.
Different this time?
If the two-and-a-half hour debate does play out like this, it will be very different from the 2017 encounter, when Le Pen’s presidential candidacy unraveled as she muddled her notes and lost her footing.
The prime-time debate at the time cemented Macron’s status as the clear frontrunner.
But Macron is no longer the disruptor of foreign policy and now has a track record for Le Pen to attack. She has since turned to mainstream voters and worked hard to soften her image.
A woman walks past official campaign posters of French presidential candidate Marine le Pen, leader of the far-right French party National Rally (Rassemblement National), and French President Emmanuel Macron, candidate for his re-election, displayed on an official billboard in Paris, France , April 19, 2022. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
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“The French now see her as a possible president, unlike in 2017. It is now up to us to prove that she would be a bad president,” said another source close to Macron.
Financial markets are more optimistic about the election than they were five years ago, and odds offered by Britain’s political bookies on Wednesday pointed to a 90 percent chance of a Macron victory. Continue reading
Still, Emmanuel Cau, head of European equity strategy at Barclays, cautioned against complacency among investors.
“A late shift cannot be ruled out given the high number of undecided voters,” he wrote in a statement.
Rival platforms
The election presents voters with two contrasting visions of France: Macron offers a pro-European, liberal platform, while Le Pen’s nationalist manifesto is rooted in deep Euroscepticism.
With more than half of voters voting for far-right or far-left candidates in the first ballot, Macron’s lead in opinion polls is narrower than it was five years ago. A voter poll on Tuesday predicted he would win with 56.5% of the vote.
Moreover, Le Pen can only do better than in the 2017 debate, which she herself described as a failure, while such a KO feat could be difficult for Macron to repeat.
But Macron is not without a fortune for this debate.
With far-right expert Eric Zemmour now out of the game, Le Pen lost a rival that made her look less radical by comparison, and that has hit her in opinion polls.
Unemployment is at a 13-year low and the French economy has outperformed other major European countries – even as inflation suffers.
And while she’s largely managed to brush it aside so far, Le Pen’s past admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin is working against her.
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny brought the issue back to the fore, urging French voters to back Macron over Le Pen’s ties to Moscow. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told BFM TV that he did not want to lose the relationship he had built with Macron.
Reporting by Michel Rose and Elizabeth Pineau; Additional reporting by Lucien Libert and Julien Ponthus; writing by Ingrid Melander; Edited by Richard Lough and Alex Richardson