At his only major campaign rally, the French leader showed his own victory in 2017 and the UK vote in favor of Brexit last year as examples of unexpected political results. “The risk of extremists today is even greater than it was a few months ago, a few years ago,” he told supporters gathered at an amphitheater in La Défense just outside Paris on Saturday. Do not believe the commentators or the polls who say that it is impossible, unthinkable, that they say that “the elections have already been won and everything will go well”. Look at us, look at you, five years ago. People said it was impossible. “Look at Brexit and so many elections where the result seemed unlikely, but it actually happened.” Polls suggest Macron will top the ballot box next weekend, ahead of far-right candidate Marin Le Pen. She is then expected to win against her in the second and final round two weeks later as she did five years ago, but this time polls predict a much smaller margin of victory. According to the latest Ipsos poll released on Saturday, Macron will receive 26 percent of the vote in the first round, followed by Le Pen with 21 percent and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melanson with 15.5 percent. In the second round, Macron would beat Lepen 53% to 47. In 2017, Macron campaigned as a candidate “neither right nor left”. He never held an elected office and was greeted with a breath of fresh air. It overthrew the two main political movements that have presided over the last six decades: the Golists, now represented by the conservative Les Républicains, and the Socialists. This time, however, he is considered part of the establishment after five years in the palace of the Elysium. Macron polls erupted in the first weeks of the war in Ukraine because he was considered a leader in a time of conflict. However, this bounce has quickly faded, and his prominent role in international efforts to impose sanctions on Russia and persuade Vladimir Putin to withdraw his forces has limited his time in the domestic campaign. Some voters of the left and Greens who supported him last time also say that they do not like what they perceive as his right-wing economic policies and his reputation for arrogance. In his speech Saturday, Macron highlighted his achievements – including reducing unemployment to its lowest level in more than a decade – and promised to aim for full employment over the next five years. He also tried to prove his credentials in the fight against climate change, arguing that with nuclear energy, investments in renewable energy sources and energy saving measures, France “would become the first major nation to move away from fossil fuels”. Macron stressed his commitment to Europe and the EU – as opposed to Le Pen and Melanson – and said that a Europe of shared defense, environmentalism and regulated capitalism was a major counterweight to the “dipole” of US and Chinese superpowers and ” major disorder “of geopolitics. “The world of peace that we thought was eternal, the world of continuous progress that we thought was unstoppable, all of this seems to be collapsing before our eyes,” he said. “What we are experiencing is a kind of great upheaval,” Macron said, referring to the problems of the natural world and the environment, capitalism and the rise of inequality, religious extremism and conspiracy theories, and “geopolitical upheaval with the return of wars.” and dreams of empire, and the specter, perhaps, of global armed conflict. “
