DENAIN, France — French President Emmanuel Macron stormed onto the campaign trail on Monday, hours after finishing first in the first round of the presidential election, as polls continued to suggest the runoff between him and Marine Le Pen was drawing the far right closer would bring to the French Presidency than ever before.
Predictions that Macron could oust Le Pen by just four to six percentage points on April 24 have unsettled supporters of the president and countries across Europe. Le Pen, who left for a campaign trip to another part of France on Monday afternoon, has described the vote as a “civilization election”.
Macron conducted minimal campaigning ahead of the first round, but on Monday he appeared ready to engage for two intense weeks, courting voters who voted for other candidates or suspended the first round, including the Le Pen-area offensive .
The president’s first trip took him to Denain, a city in one of France’s poorest regions in northern France, where on Sunday 42 percent of voters backed Le Pen and just 15 percent voted for Macron. More than a third abstained.
Macron, who is sometimes criticized for being aloof, showed himself at his most approachable, slowly moving through the crowd and stopping for selfies. He spent over an hour speaking to voters gathered outside the local mayor’s office, answering questions about inflation, the rising cost of living and inadequate pensions — some of the defining issues of this campaign, compounded by the impact of the war in Ukraine.
Christiane Delbecq, 59, said afterwards she randomly picked a first-round candidate – on Monday morning she wasn’t even sure which one she voted for. But Macron’s visit to Denain seemed to have won her over.
“What he said made sense to me,” she said. “Le Pen said many things, including about Muslims, that I disagree with.”
Other voters will be harder to convince. Anti-Macron songs were played by some of those who had gathered to see the president outside the Denain mayor’s office, and at times the mood grew tense.
“I’m here to talk about all my commitments and to explain my reforms. But I’m also here to tell you face to face that you’re lying,” Macron told a voter who attacked his track record. “It’s wrong that I didn’t do anything for Denain.”
A few hundred yards from where Macron shook hands, 54-year-old Pascale Henry went about her day outside the post office – and said he still plans to vote for Le Pen in two weeks’ time. “People here need help,” he says. “Macron says a lot, but he doesn’t do much.”
Le Pen repeated these criticisms on Monday during a campaign trip to Soucy, a far-right stronghold in central France. “Now that [Macron] goes to Denain to see the consequences of his five-year tenure… I hope he realizes that his policies have done enormous damage and that spending power is a top priority for millions of French people.”
Macron seemed undeterred by Le Pen’s line of attack as he moved even closer to her home territory and campaigned in her constituency in the city of Carvin on Monday night.
In his victory speech on Sunday, Macron said he wanted to convince those who abstained or voted for extreme candidates “that our project offers a much more solid answer to their fears than that of the far right.” His strategy seems aimed at reviving the “Republican Front” – a coalition of voters across the political spectrum who oppose the far right.
Macron has spent much of the past five years articulating his vision of how France, and Europe more generally, must address the social and economic concerns that are driving voters to support nationalist figures. Political analysts say, however, that Macron is also partly responsible for breaking up the anti-nationalist coalition when he crushed France’s established centre-right and centre-left parties in 2017.
Many of the candidates he lost in the first round on Sunday immediately called on their supporters to vote for Macron and prevent Le Pen from winning the runoff.
Among those who rallied behind the incumbent were left-wing candidates Fabien Roussel, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and – most critically – Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left politician who finished third, just behind Le Pen, on Sunday.
“You must not give Madame Le Pen a single vote,” Mélenchon said on Sunday, repeating the phrase several times.
Macron also garnered support from center-right candidate Valérie Pécresse, whose voters appeared particularly inclined to consider backing Le Pen.
Although Macon appears to have a larger potential constituency pool than Le Pen, it remains highly uncertain how many people will switch to him on April 24.
He faces a particularly steep rise among Mélenchon voters, who include those on the left disappointed by the president’s shift to the right on national security and his track record on climate change. And polls suggest that about a third of Mélenchon supporters could vote for Le Pen in the second round.
“Left voters really hold the key to this election in their hands – they are the kingmakers,” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice.
By traveling to areas that are strongholds of the right, Macron risks further confusing voters on the left. But the issues that dominated his trip on Monday – the impact of deindustrialization and high levels of poverty – were central to both Le Pen and Mélenchon.
Mélenchon received 19 percent of the vote in Hauts-de-France, where Denain is based, on Sunday.
While Macron’s handling of the pandemic has met with broad approval in France, his introduction of a vaccination card has drawn criticism from the far right and far left. Macron seemed to be playing into the hands of his critics when he told a French newspaper in January that he wanted to “upset” anyone who wasn’t yet vaccinated.
In response to a voter who accused Macron of treating unvaccinated people as “sub-citizens,” Macron on Monday defended those earlier comments, claiming, “I said it in a loving way.”