Emmanuel Macron has cemented his lead over Marine Le Pen as France’s presidential election enters its final week, according to polls, suggesting closer scrutiny of the far-right challenger’s plans could change the dynamics of the race.
Six days after the runoff election that will decide who will occupy the Élysée Palace for the next five years, all 16 polls conducted since the April 10 first round vote have put the incumbent seven to 12 percentage points ahead brought.
Both candidates have settled on easy agendas ahead of a televised debate on Wednesday that could prove crucial to the campaign: in 2017, when they last faced each other at this point, Le Pen’s poor performance was widely credited as triggering their defeat in the second round watched.
Le Pen insisted on Monday she was better prepared this time. “I hope it’s a real confrontation of ideas and not the succession of abuse, fake news and excess that I’ve heard over the past week,” she said on the Normandy campaign trail.
Macron also expressed confidence, telling broadcaster TF1 on Sunday night that he believes he has “a successful project that deserves publicity – and a feeling that there is a program on the extreme right that deserves to be to be resolved”.
The Rassemblement National (National Rally) leader’s first-round campaign, which focused on cost-of-living issues, significantly narrowed the early gap between her and Macron, securing her 23.1% of the vote to his 27.8%.
With a long attempt to detoxify her party and soften her own image finally bearing fruit, analysts say Le Pen has also been shielded from her far-right first-round rival, rogue xenophobic TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who has garnered media attention distracted.
But polls suggest that far more intense second-round scrutiny of her economic, social, immigration, foreign and environmental policies — combined with renewed and more focused attacks from Macron’s team — may have slowed her momentum.
Some opinion polls just before the first round showed Macron winning a runoff against Le Pen by just three points, within error. The president’s projected lead now averages eight or nine points across all polls, while Ipsos’ daily tracker is forecasting a 56% to 44% win.
Media outlets have highlighted Le Pen’s recent calls for a “strategic rapprochement” with Moscow following its war in Ukraine, her pledge to remove existing wind turbines and ban new ones, and her proposal to ban the Islamic headscarf in public places.
Her team downplayed the headscarf proposal on Monday, saying it was “not their priority” in the fight against extremism, and also hit back at the “suspicious” timing of embezzlement allegations against her by EU anti-fraud office Olaf.
Several analyzes have argued that one of the cornerstones of the far-right leader’s manifesto — an “immigration, identity and citizenship” law that would establish a “national preference” for French nationals for jobs, benefits, housing and welfare — violates the law principle of equality would be enshrined in the French constitution.
The law — which Le Pen says it wants to pass by referendum — would bar foreigners and dual nationals from many public sector jobs and limit access to welfare benefits.
It would also remove automatic citizenship rights for children of foreigners born in France and make naturalization significantly more difficult.
Le Pen’s draft law “would represent a radical break with France’s identity,” Dominique Rousseau, professor emeritus of constitutional law, said Monday, adding that it would also “break with European law, putting France on the same path as Hungary.” or Poland, and lead to a progressive or indirect Frexit”.
Economists have been similarly scathing about the far-right leader’s “incoherent” economic plans, including lowering the retirement age to 60, which Jean Tirole, the French winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, warned this weekend would cost 68 billion euros (56 billion pounds) more than estimated and “permanently impoverish the country”.
Lawyers, NGOs and teachers have also criticized Le Pen’s plans:
Grant police a “presumption of self-defense” and the right to make anonymous complaints.
Radically increase the number of prison sentences imposed.
Denying healthcare to undocumented migrants.
“Restoring the neutrality” of an education system based on “traditional values”.
Analysts say the harder second-round spotlight is making it harder for Le Pen to maintain the affable image it’s relied on to sell a platform that Le Monde described as “soft on the surface — but fundamentally far right.” Has.
“The French are taking a closer look at their program and they don’t seem to like what they’re seeing,” said Mujtaba Rahman, European director of consultancy Eurasia Group.
Increasing clarity about what an eventual Le Pen presidency might look like in practice is unlikely to change the minds of many staunch Le Pen supporters, pollsters say, but it may persuade enough hesitant voters – particularly on the left – to favor Macron to vote right-wing candidate out.
With the election likely to be won by whichever candidate can reach beyond his or her camp to convince voters that the other option would be far worse, both candidates are trying to attract some of the 7.7 million voters who support Jean- Luc from the extreme left supported Mélenchon in the first round.
Polls suggest that about 33% of far-left voters — mostly moderate voters who backed Mélenchon because he was the only left-wing candidate with a chance of reaching the second round — will back Macron.
Several polls, meanwhile, have shown that not all voters who supported Zemmour will vote for Le Pen.