Center-right presidential candidates are struggling to get across their message amid a wave of protests in France.
PARIS — France’s center-right presidential candidates are bracing for more doom and gloom ahead of another tense day of protests Saturday, as polls suggest the combined effect of massive marches and the connected violence is fueling their rivals on both ends of the political spectrum.
Five polls, including one commissioned by POLITICO, conducted in the aftermath of the unrest in France on Oct. 17 — when hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets while violence and looting broke out across the country — have all shown the same thing: The potential successors from President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition would be eliminated in the first round.
Both Marine Le Pen on the far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left have been able to capitalize on the movement: the former “by presenting herself as a candidate who guarantees law and order,” and the latter acting as a “hero and herald of protest,” said Gaël Sliman, the head of French polling firm Odoxa.
They are facing a divided field of mainstream candidates on the center and center-right, including two former prime ministers under Macron in Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe, and Bruno Retailleau, a former interior minister. These candidates have struggled to settle on a common message in response to the crisis — let alone agree on who the best candidate would be to avoid their nightmare scenario of a runoff between Mélenchon and Le Pen.
‘Out of ideas’
Three officials supporting centrist and conservative candidates told POLITICO that they were concerned the events of the past few weeks would cause lasting damage to their campaigns.
“It’s definitely going to kill us,” said one campaign official who, like others in this story, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “We cannot be the solution anymore, only the problem.”
A Philippe supporter went as far as suggesting his champion was ill-equipped for the moment. “It’s exactly what he doesn’t need,” the supporter said last week, drawing parallels between the protests and the 2018–2019 Yellow Vest movement under Philippe’s premiership. “He doesn’t know how to do this. He’s not empathetic, and he’s not pretending to be.”
“Honestly, I don’t know how we’re going to get through this. Things are tough, and we’re out of ideas,” a centrist MP said.
The protests have taken place two Saturdays in a row and are expected to continue in the weeks to come. High school students are demanding better learning conditions while the wider public are protesting the cost-of-living crisis. The movement has been marred by scenes of vandalism and looting, especially on Oct. 17, when Macron’s government appeared to have underestimated both the scale of the protests and the potential for violent unrest.
In the following days, the government and center-right candidates focused on attacking Mélenchon and his party, France Unbowed, for fanning the flames that led to dramatic scenes of violence and looting. The strategy may have further dented his image among voters who already oppose him, polls suggest. But it did little to weaken his particularly young voter base.
“There is a kind of synergy between the social movement and France Unbowed,” a party strategist said. “This leads participants to see Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s impending victory as a logical conclusion.”
Le Pen, meanwhile, pushed her “protective vision” while her deputy Jordan Bardella said a far-right victory was “the only solution to allow the return of order and return of authority.”
As things stand, Le Pen is leading the race by a double-digit margin, while Mélenchon appears best placed to take second place and qualify for a runoff.
‘Muddled and hazardous’
Centrists and conservatives have been hindered by their persisting inability to agree on a single candidacy to take Macron’s mantle.
Attal, the candidate for Macron’s Renaissance party, made a surprise pitch for a “large primary of democrats” Wednesday, in a bid to narrow down the field of candidates against the far left and the far right.
Such a primary could see him face Philippe and Retailleau as well as David Lisnard, the mayor of Cannes running as an outsider on a conservative, small-state platform.
But Attal’s proposal was swiftly dismissed by rival campaigns. Laurent Marcangeli, who leads Philippe’s Horizons party in the National Assembly, called it “muddled and hazardous” Wednesday evening. “Without Philippe, there’s no primary,” a Retailleau backer said.
Despite these rebuffs, Attal on Thursday kept pushing for a contest to avoid the “cataclysm” of a Le Pen-Mélenchon runoff. “Our country wouldn’t recover from this,” he told public broadcaster France 5.