President Emmanuel Macron had dinner with writer François Sureau following the ceremony to award the Légion d'honneur to lawyer Jean-Michel Darrois on Friday, April 12. The mood on the first floor of the Elysée Palace was one of informal conversation, with people talking about anything and everything. Like Macron's lead candidate for the European elections, Valérie Hayer, who's struggling to make progress.
But the French president didn't look worried. As election day approaches, on June 9, he believed the gap would close with Jordan Bardella, lead candidate for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party. Then a shadow crossed Macron's face. Sureau, who has distanced himself from Macron since the immigration bill, mentioned to the president the great campaign he had seen Raphaël Glucksmann, candidate for the moderate left, leading. "He lacks managerial experience," replied the president, in a hurry to move on to another subject. Macron had instructed his camp to follow a simple strategy vis-à-vis the son of philosopher André Glucksmann: "Ignore him."
One month on, it's impossible to ignore him. Week after week, Glucksmann has gained points in the polls, coming dangerously close to Hayer. In the ranks of the Parti Socialiste, people are beginning to dream of the intersecting lines that would lift him to second place, right behind Bardella. The president's traditional tactic of setting up a duel between progressives and nationalists, as he did in 2019, is being thwarted by Glucksmann. Voters have been letting off steam for a "pleasure vote," said an Elysée Palace spokesperson, where the craze for the left-wing candidate has been compared to the hype generated by Yannick Jadot, the Green candidate, in 2019. "Glucksmann ended up at 13%," said Macron's Renaissance campaign team.
Panic
But on the ground, executives and activists from the presidential camp are worried. Former Macron voters in the first round of the 2022 presidential election politely refuse their leaflets, extolling their choice of Glusckmann. "Raphaël Glucksmann is taking votes away from us because we've made our discourse more right-wing, and that's disappointing to our center-left voters," said Renaissance MP Caroline Janvier.
A wind of panic has been sweeping through the president's camp. Macron's record, and in particular his pension reform and immigration bill, has taken on the appearance of a burden. The fear of a deadly Europe that Macron brandished during his lengthy speech at the Sorbonne on April 25, alluding to the peril embodied by the far right, is no longer enough to awaken his pro-European electoral base. "We can't see why voters would come back to Renaissance when, a fortiori on Ukraine and Europe, the Glucksmann line suits them," said the deputy director general of IPSOS polling institute, Brice Teinturier.
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