Macron hits campaign trail in tight race with nationalist
DENAIN, France — French President Emmanuel Macron rushed out onto the campaign trail on Monday, hours after finishing on top in the first round of the presidential election, as polls continued to suggest that the runoff between him and Marine Le Pen would bring the far-right closer to the French presidency than ever before.
Predictions that Macron may edge out Le Pen on April 24 by as few as 4 to 6 percentage points have unnerved the president’s supporters, as well as countries throughout Europe. Le Pen has framed the vote as a “choice of civilization.”
Macron did minimal campaigning ahead of the first round, but on Monday he appeared ready to engage for an intense two weeks, wooing voters who picked other candidates or sat out in the first round, including going on the offensive in Le Pen territory.
The president’s first trip led him to Denain, a city in one of France’s poorest regions in the north, where 42% of voters supported Le Pen on Sunday, and only 15% chose Macron. More than a third abstained.
Macron spent over an hour talking to voters who had assembled in front of the local mayor’s office, answering questions about inflation, the rising cost of living and insufficient pensions, which have been amplified by the impact of the war in Ukraine.
Some of those who gathered to see the president outside the Denain mayor’s office played anti-Macron songs and at times the mood turned tense.
“I’m here to talk about all my pledges and to explain my reforms. But I’m also here to tell you, face to face, that you’re telling lies,” Macron told a voter who attacked his track record. “It’s false that I haven’t done anything for Denain.”
A few hundred yards away from where Macron was shaking hands, 54-year old Pascale Henry went about his day in front of the post office — and said he still plans to vote for Le Pen in two weeks.
“People here are in need of help,” he said. “Macron says a lot but he doesn’t do a lot.”
Macron has spent much of the past five years articulating his vision for how France and Europe more broadly need to address the social and economic concerns that drive voters to support nationalist figures. Political analysts, though, say Macron is also partly responsible for fracturing the anti-nationalist coalition, when he crushed France’s established center-right and center-left parties in 2017.
Many of the candidates he defeated in the first round on Sunday immediately called on their supporters to vote for Macron and prevent a Le Pen victory in the runoff.
Among those throwing their weight behind the incumbent were leftist candidates Fabien Roussel, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and — most critically — Jean-Luc Melenchon, the farleft politician who came in third on Sunday, narrowly behind Le Pen.
“You must not give a single vote to Madame Le Pen,” Melenchon said Sunday, repeating the sentence several times.
Macron also got the backing of center-right candidate Valerie Pecresse, whose voters have appeared particularly inclined to consider supporting Le Pen.
He faces a particularly steep climb with Melenchon voters, who include those on the left who have been disappointed with the president’s rightward shift on national security and his record on climate policies. And polls suggest about a third of Melenchon’s supporters may vote for Le Pen in the second round.
“Left-wing voters really have the key to this election in their hands — they’re the kingmakers,” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice.
By traveling to areas that are strongholds for the right, Macron risks further alienating voters on the left.
But the topics that dominated his trip on Monday — the impact of deindustrialization and high poverty — have been central for both for Le Pen and Melenchon.
Melenchon received 19% of the vote share Sunday in Hautsde-France, where Denain is located.