“It’s a minute until midnight,” Waltz wrote in a column supporting Macron in Le Journal du Dimanche a week before the first round of voting next Sunday. “Marin Le Pen could be elected president of the republic.” Macron told his supporters at a rally on Saturday not to sit back and believe the polls that show he will beat Le Pen, albeit by a much smaller margin than his 32-point victory five years ago. “The risk of extremism today is even greater than it was a few months ago, a few years ago,” he said. Last week, a shaky election campaign overshadowed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was fueled by far-right hopes – and fears in the center – that France could become the next Western democracy to fall under the rule of a populist leader. who is skeptical of NATO and the EU, protective of the economy and in favor of strict controls on non-European immigrants. Le Pen is not there yet – the latest poll by Harris Interactive shows that Macron would still beat her by 51.5% against 48.5 in the second round. But he has almost secured his place in the second round against Macron on April 24 – and his lead has dropped sharply within the margin of error. Even if Le Pen loses, she is likely to have the best performance for her far-right party since Jean-Marie Le Pen’s father founded the National Front — now the National Rally — in 1972. “The risk of Lepen winning is significantly higher than in 2017.. . “I do not understand why people are not afraid anymore,” said Anne-Laure Delatte, a professor of economics at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), who supports the far-right candidate Jean-Luc Melanson, who is currently in third place. the polls. “What shocks me is that many in France seem to be unaware of the dangers.” Several reasons underline Lepen’s recent rise. Political commentators say it has campaigned well, generally undermining its ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and focusing more on the cost of living than on immigration or cultural warfare, as well as the price of fuel and other products. increased sharply as a result of the war in Ukraine. Éric Zemmour, the television warrior who emerged as a far-right opponent last year, inadvertently helped Le Pen’s long-term mission to detoxify her movement, as his relentless focus on Islam’s supposed horror and “uncontrollable” made her seem uncontrollable. . David Dubois, professor of digital marketing at Insead, said the analysis of social media reports suggested that the French sentiment for Le Pen was more favorable than for Zemour and similar to that for Macron – in March it was 38 percent negative reports and 31 percent positive. while Macron had 37 percent negative and 32 percent positive. “She was able to change her brand image,” Dubois said. “It has really made an effort to change its discourse from immigration to rising prices and how to increase the purchasing power of the French.” Macron, on the other hand, lost most of the boost in opinion polls he enjoyed after Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine on February 24. He is also considered a candidate of the establishment after five years in power, while in 2017 he was a revolutionary who avoided the old parties. The combination of Lepen’s new acceptance and Macron’s widespread dislike of an incumbent president portrayed by opponents as the “president of the rich” increases the chances of the “Republican front”, the traditional stronghold against the far right, failing in the second round. in these elections. Like in 2002, when center-right Jacques Chirac defeated Jean-Marie Le Pen, and in 2017, when Macron defeated Marin Le Pen, voters are supposed to reject the extremist by choosing the conventional “Republican” candidate as the lesser of two evils. Pollsters say it is at least likely that the front will not save Macron this time. Some right-wing voters no longer see Lepen as an extremist, while left-wing voters may be reluctant to vote for Macron when his second term plans to raise the retirement age and limit aid to the poorest. Assuming Macron and Le Pen qualify in the second round, almost half of Melanson’s supporters on the far left told pollsters that they would abstain, while some of both Conservative and Valerie Pecres voters said they would choose Le Pen.

“The Republican front was already showing cracks in 2017 and it looks even weaker this time around,” said Harris Interactive pollster Pierre-Hadrien Bartoli. “In order for Le Pen to win, both must happen – the left must not vote for Macron and a negligible share of the traditional right must come to it. “Le Pen’s victory is not the most likely scenario – Macron remains – but it is not impossible.” With his lead declining, Macron is expected to cross his house seeking to mobilize his base after a silent campaign. But if Le Pen wins, it would be a political earthquake for France and Europe. A report by the left-wing Jean Jaurès Foundation said that although Le Pen’s communication style was “much smoother”, its program was “just as radical” as before, especially on immigration and culture. It wants to make major changes to the constitution that would allow for much stricter border controls and establish a so-called “national preference” that would allow its government to favor the French over immigrants, even those who are legal in France. Le Pen also wants to ban Muslim women from wearing the veil in public. Le Pen has abandoned its unpopular plans to leave the euro and the EU, but its manifesto shows that it would challenge the EU from within, such as re-imposing border controls and defending the supremacy of French law. “It will not be easy for her to be elected, but she can get a much better score than in 2017 and that is already a problem,” said Dominique Reynié, a political analyst at the Anglo-American Press Association in Paris. “We are still in the international populist wave.”