“I told my sisters that I’m hesitating,” he said as he left his apartment in a low-income housing estate on the outskirts of Vire. “I’m 87% sure it will be Macron good, it’s him or this man,” she continued, pointing to a campaign pamphlet from the far-left veteran. Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Comtesse acknowledged that the two candidates are diametrically opposed. Macron is a liberal who embraces globalization and wants a second term raise the retirement age in France at the age of 65. Mélenchon is an ardent socialist who speaks of guaranteed jobs for the long-term unemployed and of reinstate a wealth tax.
Vire, a city of about 11,000 people, is the kind of place Macron could hope to win comfortably. Historically, the centre-right or the Conservatives have won about half of the votes here.
Yet Macron’s 2017 dynamitation of a postwar political landscape dominated by the two major center-right and center-left parties created a vacuum that populists can fill, analysts say.
The last week has been tough for Macron. His comfortable lead in the polls has eroded as far-right rival Marine Le Pen and Mélenchon have gained ground.raising the possibility of a strong anti-Macron vote in the second round.
A poll this week by Harris Interactive showed Le Pen – who has softened her rhetoric and is cashing in on the average voter’s daily complaints, not least about her purchasing power – within three points of Macron in the second round.
Still, pro-Melenchon activists such as retired professor Olivier Gaussens, 66, sense that voter indecision could allow their third-place candidate to spring an upset in Sunday’s first round.
On a door-to-door tour with other activists, they spoke to about 30 people. All were undecided, willing to change their minds or thinking of abstaining. Many were angry at Macron’s plans to push back the retirement age by three years.
“We hope to take advantage of some of the indecision on issues like retirement, the minimum wage and wage increases,” Gaussens said.
An Elabe poll over the weekend indicated that more than one in four voters were unclear about their vote.
Discontent
The mayor of Vire, Marc Andreu Sabater, is loyal to Macron. As he said, he is the candidate best placed to guide France through the current turmoil, but he admitted that the president has not done enough to convince some on issues such as the cost of living.
“There are many people hesitating between expressing their anger at not being able to refuel the car or pay the electricity bill or, given the context, maintain continuity so as not to tear everything down,” he said.
Surveys show that nearly half of voters intend to shy away from the center and vote for a far-right or hard-left candidatewhile the struggle between liberal globalists and the forces of nationalism that brought Donald Trump to the White House and won Brexit in the UK continues to play out in France.
Marie-Therese Hennebel, 67, a retired nuclear factory worker who lives in the same apartment block as Comtesse, said she admires Le Pen’s folksy charm and direct way of speaking.
“When (Le Pen) speaks, she is fair and tells the truth,” she said, lamenting her low pension and rising food costs. “Things are too expensive now. You don’t have anything left for 20 euros.”
Inflation in France exceeded 5% in March. In a region where economic activity is centered around manufacturing, agriculture, metals and automobiles, Vire residents worry that the cost of living will continue to rise if the war in Ukraine continues.
The remnants of the anti-government movement of the “yellow vests“, which rocked Macron’s leadership during 2018-2019, come together again in Vire, revealing a persistent underlying discontent in rural France.
The group – a mix of leftists, far-right sympathizers and fed up with France’s democratic system – met at a roundabout for the first time in months in late March and discussed the need to remove Macron.
Some are willing to vote for Le Pen in the second round in order to remove Macron from power, even if they bet on Mélenchon in the first round.
“Five years of Macron, after five years of quasi-socialism, after five years of (conservative Nicolas) Sarkozy, enough is enough,” said Jean-Marie Thomine, who joined the “yellow vests” movement in 2018. .
Source: Ambito
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