On the first day of the campaign between the two rounds, the finalists Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen moved, one to Hauts-de-France, the other to Yonne.
© REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Pool and REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
Emmanuel Macron said he was ready on Monday, the first day of the second round campaign, to “move” on his pension reform, a subject he discussed at length during a trip to northern France, while his rival Marine Le Pen warned of rising inflation. In Carvin, in Pas-de-Calais, Emmanuel Macron declared that he was ready to “open the door” to a postponement of the starting age to 64, rather than 65 as it appears in his program, ” if there is too much tension” and that can “build consensus”. “I’m ready to change the relationship with time and say that we don’t necessarily make a reform until 2030 if I feel too much anxiety among people. Because we can’t say on Sunday evening ‘I want gather’ and when we go to listen to people say ‘I’m not moving'”, he underlined.
Earlier, in Denain, one of the poorest towns in France, he was bombarded with arrests and questions on the subject. A woman told him: “I voted for you but I regret it, you don’t like pensioners very much”. Crowd baths under a spring sun, interviews on the chain, in particular on the bench of a bistro, meeting with workers: following a first-round campaign deemed too light, the president-candidate has put the turbo. “I will fight with all my strength and I will go and convince,” he told La Voix du Nord, beating his rival, a “demagogue who tells people what they want to hear at when they want to hear it”, and which is “dependent on Russia”, he accused.
Emmanuel Macron came first in the first round on Sunday with 27.85% of the vote, more than four points ahead of the RN candidate (23.15%). He has launched a call for a rally on Sunday evening . The candidate said he wanted to “convince, also listen”, to “clarify my program by showing that it is fair and social. I saw many young people who told me ‘I voted for Mr. Mélenchon’, j try to convince them,” he told Denain.
Macron, “100%” responsible for the crises”, according to Le Pen
With 21.95% of the vote, the rebellious leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon made, by far, the best score on the left with a young and popular electorate, very courted by the two qualified for the second round.
For her far-right rival, there is no question of leaving the field open to her opponent. She made a surprise trip to Yonne on Monday, pointing to the rise in inflation. After a meeting with a grain farmer, she called for “emergency measures” to be taken once morest worsening inflation. She recalled her proposal to lower VAT from 20 to 5.5% on energy products. Marine Le Pen accused her opponent of being “100%” responsible for the crises, such as that of the “yellow vests”, and of not anticipating that of inflation. “We are clearly at the end of the system,” she assured. “We really have to put everything back together”.
The RN candidate, who has smoothed her image while keeping a radical program on immigration, has made the defense of purchasing power the priority axis of her campaign.
See as well : Presidential poll: Macron dominates Le Pen by a short head
For the director of Ipsos, Brice Teinturier, “Emmanuel Macron leaves with a small advantage. But we are far from what we had in 2017. And there, very clearly, it is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, or rather his electorate, which largely holds the key to this second round”. According to our daily Ifop-Fiducial survey Emmanuel Macron would win on April 24 with 52.5% of the vote once morest 47.5% for Mrs. Le Pen.