Elizabeth left school at 16 and worked as a shoemaker, in factories and as a housekeeper, but her 800-euro pension barely covers bills and food. “I live on credit, by overdraft in the middle of the month,” he said. “I make a weak stew and it lasts me three days. “But Lepen will cut taxes and put money in our pockets.” Agrees with Lepen’s anti-immigrant stance. He feels that “Europeans” are becoming more numerous in the multinational northern Marseille and is concerned about crime. “I have been stolen twice, once for a necklace, once for a cigarette,” he said. Society is tense and divided, she feels, but Lepen will “calm things down”. After a decade of trying to detoxify the image of the far-right, anti-immigrant party she took over from her father, Lepen reached her highest rating and popularity this week. Polls suggest he not only reached the second-round final against center-left President Emanuel Macron on April 24, but closes the gap significantly. An Ifop poll worried Macron’s camp, showing that it reached 47% versus 53%, the lowest margin so far and much closer than when it defeated it by 66% in 2017. Political opponents continue to denounce Le Pen’s National Coalition Party as racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, but opinion polls show that while society has once dismissed it as the “devil” of democracy, public perceptions of it are shaky. In her third presidential candidacy, Le Pen, 53, became the second most popular political figure in France, behind former Macron Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, in Elabe’s latest monthly poll. Marin Lepen has focused her campaign on the cost of living and feelings of social inequality. Photo: Alain ROBERT / SIPA / Rex / Shutterstock Le Pen’s focus on the cost of living – and rising energy prices likely to be exacerbated by the war in Ukraine – has allowed her to dismiss her previous relationship with Vladimir Putin, whom she visited in 2017. “It is dangerous”, the interior said Minister Gérald Darmanin last week. “He could win this presidential election.” On a walk in western France, Macron warned that people do not “see far” from the reality of her radical program and “find it more beautiful”. The presidential campaign was the most extreme right in modern French history. In addition to Lepen, another far-right candidate has emerged: former television expert Eric Zemour, who has been convicted of inciting racial hatred. Using more inflammatory language than Le Pen, he has established the discredited conspiracy theory of the “great replacement” – in which he claims that the local French population could be replaced by newcomers, making France a predominantly Muslim country on the brink of civil war. public discussion. Among them, Le Pen and Zemour get about 30% of the votes in the first round polls. The traditional right-wing Les Républicains and their rival candidate, Valérie Pécresse, have stepped up their immigration rhetoric as they compete with Zemmour. Instead of hurting Le Pen, Zemour strengthened her. “Something very surprising happened during this campaign. “Eric Zemmour’s radicalism has tarnished the image of Marine Le Pen,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political scientist at the University of Sciences-Po in Paris. “She is less radical for many voters, she looks less aggressive than Eric Zemour, she has more respect.” Election campaign posters for Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour in Montaigu, western France. Photo: Loïc Venance / AFP / Getty Images The hardline policies of Le Pen’s manifesto have not changed and overlap with those of Zemour. He has promised a referendum on immigration and a revision of the constitution to secure “France for the French” – where indigenous French will take precedence over non-French for welfare benefits, housing, jobs and health care. The Muslim headscarf, which he calls “the uniform of totalitarian ideology,” would be banned in the streets and in all public places. Le Pen’s main issues – concerns about insecurity and crime, the feeling of decline and social inequality, and its connection to immigration and the perceived threat of Islam – have become more prominent in public debate in recent years. “The ideas we have always fought for have become the view of the majority,” said Jordan Bardella, 26, the party’s rising star and current caretaker leader, as he met voters in Marseille. In line to see him, a retired school psychologist from the French Riviera said: “My sister is a doctor, my brother-in-law is an architect, we are not the type of family who voted for Lepen, but these days it is easier to be open for this”. Jordan Bardella takes a selfie with Le Pen’s supporters at a March meeting in Kogolin, southern France. Photo: Alain ROBERT / SIPA / REX / Shutterstock Raphaël Llorca, communications consultant at the thinktank Fondation Jean Jaurès and author of a book about Le Pen and Zemmour, The New Masks of the Far Right, said the tone of Le Pen’s campaign was deliberately different this year. In previous campaigns, she was very populist, presenting “the people against the elite” in a very aggressive and aggressive way. “Her political strategy was to harness all the different types of anger,” he said. “Now, her view is that division and conflict will not work. Her political reading of Macronism is that Emmanuel Macron is a president who has divided people – there have been [anti-government] yellow vest protests, demonstrations for Covid’s health pass. He calls him the “president of chaos” and says he can “calm things down”. It is very different. It seeks to demobilize voters who usually come to stop it. “It wants to stun the reflexes of society against the far right, to neutralize its critics.” Opinion polls suggest Le Pen’s presidential victory is still unlikely, but for the first time, some analysts see it as an external possibility. Uncertainties remain over the abstention rate and whether left-wing voters will turn out again in large numbers to vote for Macron in order to keep him out. To soften her image, Le Pen often refers to her love for Bengal cats and her recent diploma to become a breeder. “Has it transformed into a gentle cat breeding? “Lies!” Macron Economy Minister Bruno Lemerre said at a recent rally, adding that Le Pen had always promoted “a hate speech”.
