Hard
part just about to start for France’s Macron
Independent
candidate is surging but faces formidable challenges on his left and
right.
By PIERRE
BRIANÇON 2/13/17, 4:31 AM CET Updated 2/13/17, 8:07 AM CET
PARIS — Everything
looks rosy for Emmanuel Macron. He’s leapfrogged the scandal-hit
François Fillon into second place in the presidential polls; attacks
by his rivals haven’t dampened his supporters’ enthusiasm; and
Marine Le Pen has identified him as her main adversary.
But there’s still
a long way to go until the first round of the presidential election
on April 23. And the 39-year-old former economy minister who wants to
do away with the old political system is about to realize that the
very same system can still throw up serious obstacles.
The independent
centrist who wants to overcome the old right vs. left divide, which
he says is irrelevant and hides the real separation between
“progressives” and “conservatives,” faces two dangers, one
from each side.
The first, on the
right, is if Fillon’s rapid fall in the polls, following claims
that he used public funds to pay his family for allegedly fake jobs,
comes to a halt.
The second, on the
left, is if Socialist Party candidate Benoît Hamon manages to
electrify the party’s hardcore support with his leftist utopian
platform based on less work and a universal basic income.
The polls show
Macron winning about 20 percent of the vote in the first round of the
election, some six points behind far-right leader Le Pen. They
predict he would trounce Le Pen in the second round runoff two weeks
later, with 63 percent of the vote. But those same surveys make clear
the race is far from over.
“Now
we will see whether he can make specific proposals without
disappointing either his right or his left flank” —
Jérôme Fourquet, director at pollster IFOP
Within two weeks,
Fillon’s support has dropped from 24 percent to around 18 percent,
according to most polls. But it won’t get much lower, a member of
the Fillon campaign said, because “there’s a core of conservative
voters who will never go elsewhere and just want the [conservative
Républicans party] candidate to win after five years of [François]
Hollande.”
And if polls say 70
percent of the French electorate believe Fillon should drop out of
the race, “it also shows you that 30 percent don’t agree with
that. Here’s the core we must work on,” said the optimistic
Fillon staffer.
As for Hamon, his
support surged after he won the Socialist primary by resoundingly
defeating former Prime Minister Manuel Valls. Before the primary,
Hamon was on 7 percent of the vote. He’s now on 15 percent, down
from a short-lived high of 17 percent. Post-primary momentum, and a
platform that overlaps with that of perennial far-left candidate
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, explain much of that success.
On his left flank,
Macron may have to contend with a block of about 25 percent of voters
(adding up Hamon and Mélenchon’s support) who won’t stray far
from the Socialist Party, no matter how disappointed they have been
with Hollande.
That leaves Macron
with a limited pool of voters he can tap into to ensure his presence
in the election’s runoff.
Meat on the bones
When Macron unveils
his detailed policy platform at the end of the month, he may have to
“end ambiguity to his own detriment,” said Jérôme Fourquet,
director at IFOP, one of France’s main pollsters.
“He has been very
good at uniting very diverse segments of the electorate behind him,
but so far with general ideas and abstract speeches. Now we will see
whether he can make specific proposals without disappointing either
his right or his left flank.” At this stage, said Fourquet, the
former economy minister has managed to do what no one has done
before: be a credible candidate from outside the traditional parties.
Contrary to his
rivals’ allegations, Fourquet said, Macron’s voters are not only
the young and the well-to-do, and he polls well among the
middle-classes and older voters. Where Macron struggles is with
blue-collar workers, with only 9 percent saying they are prepared to
support him, and lower-level clerical workers, where he polls at
around 17 percent.
The real difference
between Macron supporters and others, said Fourquet, is their level
of education: Only 17 percent of French voters without a high school
degree are ready to back him, whereas 39 percent of those with at
least two years of college want him as president. He is far ahead of
other presidential contenders in the latter category.
His supporters are
also the most likely to change their mind before the election. Only
50 percent say they are certain to vote for him. That contrasts with
80 percent of Le Pen supporters who say they are sure they will back
her.
“Voter behavior in
France remains marked by the historical right-left divide,” said
Bruno Cautres, a political scientist at the CEVIPOF research center.
The more specific
Macron’s proposals are, the higher the risk that he may turn off
some of his voters. So far, he has been careful to walk the line
between left and right.
He has said, for
example, that he will keep the 35-hour work week, a Socialist sacred
cow, although he wants to adjust the law to the point where it will
no longer mean much. In a similar vein, he has also said he would
keep the wealth tax of Socialist lore — although he would limit its
tax base to real-estate holdings only.
What could help
Macron is his new status as the only sure choice to defeat Le Pen in
the runoff.
“We know about the
risk that he could look too aggressive on reforms to some and too shy
to others,” a Macron aide confided without indicating how his boss
would try to solve the riddle, and agreeing with Fourquet that there
has been “ambiguity” in his public pronouncements so far.
What could help
Macron is his new status as the only sure choice to defeat Le Pen in
the runoff.
“In that, he has
succeeded at something everyone failed at before, helped by the other
guys’ rather bad campaigns,” Fourquet said. “But he would have
a much tougher second round if he was facing either a mainstream
conservative or a Socialist candidate.”
It seems unlikely
that Le Pen won’t make it to the runoff, however, so for now Macron
can focus his efforts on beating his mainstream rivals in the first
round.
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