France has the second round between Macron and Le Pen on Sunday. See how the conflict goes | Globalism
3 min readIn 2017, Emmanuel Macron won the second round of elections in France with 66% of the vote. Her rival that year, Marine Le Pen, conceded defeat shortly after the polls were announced, and before the official result was known, she said she would rebuild her party and continue the subsequent controversies.
Emmanuel Macron on his last day of campaigning, April 22, 2022 – Photo: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP
This is what it has done in recent years, and Macron and Le Pen face Sunday (24) again at the polls in a second round to determine who will be the president of France.
Marine Le Pen on the campaign trail, April 22, 2022 – Photo: Denis Charlet/AFP
Polls on Friday (22), the last day the law allows disclosure, suggested Macron should win again, but by a smaller margin. Here are some predictions:
- Emmanuel Macron (in March): 55.5%
- Marine Le Pen (national meeting): 44.5%
- Emmanuel Macron (in March): 55%
- Marine Le Pen (national meeting): 45%
- Emmanuel Macron (in March): 57%
- Marine Le Pen (national meeting): 43%
However, Macron’s victory should not be treated as a certainty: in the last elections, in 2017, opinion polls missed the results by nine percentage points.
If he wins again, Macron will rule a divided country, as only a large portion of his electorate vote for him due to lack of choice, according to a BVA poll, noting that 66% want him to lose his parliamentary majority in the legislature. Elections in June.
Candidates cannot campaign on the eve of the vote. On Friday, the two sought undecided voters.
Le Pen held an event in northern France. There, she stated that if her opponent won, “The French He will be sentenced to life imprisonment“—Macron has a plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65.
She also said her opponent showed “unlimited arrogance” in their only debate, which took place on Wednesday (20).
“Everyone has understood that Emmanuel Macron does not like France, especially those who do not agree with his policies,” he said.
Macron went to the southwest of the country, defending the anti-Covid-19 policy adopted by his government.
The president said that Le Pen was able to “convincingly advance” during the campaign, by projecting a less radical image on traditional far-right issues, such as immigration, and by presenting herself as the defender of the popular classes, as opposed to the “president of the plutocrats”.
Left voters must decide the dispute
Third place in the first round, leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, received nearly 22% of the vote. His voters were lured by the candidates of the second round.
Jean-Luc Melenchon visits the Book Biennale in Paris on April 22, 2022 – Photo: Bertrand Guay / AFP
Melenchon’s party, France Insubmissa, has campaigned to find out how its supporters will vote in the second round. Blank or Blank Voting garnered 37.65% support. A third supported Macron, and the rest defended their abstention. Le Pen’s vote has not been considered.
During his five years in office, Macron failed French leftists, and his disapproval of him is noteworthy in that part – he was elected on the promise to “overcome” the left-right divide.
Among other cases, the left is criticizing Macron, a former banker and ex-economy minister, for cutting housing allowances and lowering taxes on the rich.
However, Macron can boast that he has saved, at least temporarily, businesses and jobs hit by the Covid-19 crisis and reduced unemployment.
In the outskirts of Paris, the historical communist “red belt”, the bitterness of left-wing voters can be seen. Many residents are unsure whether to vote for Macron, as they did en masse in 2017.
For more than a decade, Le Pen has watered down his speech to overshadow what his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Group, had built with anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric.
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