The breakthrough in the polls of the social democratic candidate Raphaël Glucksmann, with a new peak of 13% of voting intentions reached on Wednesday (March 20), might make Renaissance fear a transfer of its voters towards the center left.
A new survey Harris Interactive pour Challengespublished on Wednesday, shows 13% voting intentions for Mr. Glucksmann – a score which has continued to increase for several months, while the list was still credited with 9% in December.
This rise in power – which nevertheless remains well behind the National Rally (RN), at 31% – does not fail to worry the Renaissance list which is stagnating at 18.5%, more than four points below its 2019 score.
Indeed, the transfer of votes from former Macronists to the social democratic list is becoming more and more obvious – partly to sanction the government, whose policy is today considered too right-wing.
“Due to the accentuated right-wing of the second five-year term, [Renaissance] loses on its left: 20% of voters who voted for Emmanuel Macron in the first round of the 2022 presidential election should vote for a left-wing list – mainly for the one led by Raphaël Glucksmann”specifies Gilles Finchelstein, secretary general of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, in a study note published last week.
And to add: “From an original catch-all central party, Renaissance has become a classic bourgeois and elderly center-right party”.
Mr. Glucksmann put at the heart of his campaign a more federalist and ambitious Europe in the fight once morest global warming. He calls for, among other things, a new joint loan, and advocates significant financial and military support for Ukraine.
Recover left-wing voters
The transfer of votes worries Renaissance enough for it to wish to adapt its speech to the attention of pro-European liberal voters, tempted to join the socialist list.
After the appointment of a government in January judged by many to be a pledge given to the right, Valérie Hayer, head of the Renaissance list, was tasked with going poaching on left-wing lands.
« With Raphaël Glucksmann, 90% of us vote the same way in the European Parliament. He should be with us, and he knows it.”affirmed the MEP on February 29 in the columns of Figaro.
An assertion widely rejected by the first concerned, who accuses the majority of having opposed social progress in Brussels, such as the directive on platform workers, for which France – unlike 25 member states – abstained .
Since then, she has taken the opposite approach of associating the Socialist Party – Public Place list with La France insoumise (LFI), without the polls perceiving any change in dynamics for the moment.
At the same time, Emmanuel Macron winks at left-wing voters by proposing some major social advances: such is the constitutionalization of abortion on March 5, a world first.
Furthermore, in a video seen by theAFP Last week, the head of state said he was in favor of including the notion of consent in the criminal definition of rape. An regarding-face when we know that France opposed it in February in Brussels.
“What exploitation of the cause of women a few weeks before the European elections”deplores French MEP Nathalie Colin-Oesterlé (PPE) to Euractiv.
“Emmanuel Macron realized that he had made a mistake and that he was going to be attacked during the European campaign. It’s manipulation and his left-wing allies will certainly remind him.”she added.
“Emmanuel Macron’s government is not one bit pro-European”said Tuesday (March 19) Aurore Lalucq, MEP and co-president of Place publique, at Point.
[Édité par Anna Martino]