- The debate starts at 19:00 GMT
- Macron and Le Pen in a tough race to win the election
- France voted on Sunday
PARIS, April 20 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron and far-right contender Marine Le Pen will face off on Wednesday night in their only debate ahead of Sunday’s presidential election.
For Le Pen, who lags behind Macron in polls, the long-awaited confrontation is a chance to convince voters that she has the status of president and they should not be afraid to see the far right in power.
For Macron, perhaps the biggest challenge in maintaining his growing lead in opinion polls will be not to sound arrogant – something many voters have criticized him for – while drilling the holes he sees in Le Pen’s political plans.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
I’m registering
Arriving at the TV station, Le Pen said she was “calm”, while Macron said he was “focused, ready for a debate that will allow each of us to explain our ideas about France”.
The election presents voters with two opposing visions of France: Macron offers a pro-European, liberal platform, while Le Pen’s nationalist manifesto is based on deep Euroscepticism.
About 14% of voters are waiting for the debate to decide who to vote for, and 12% say it will be crucial to whether they vote at all, a poll by OpinionWay-Kea Partners told Les Echos.
“I have a great desire to see what happens,” said voter Joseph Lombard in Paris. – It’s always a boxing match.
However, sources on both sides said they wanted a calm debate – so much so that a source close to Macron, familiar with the preparations for the debate, said it could be “boring”.
“The president needs to show that he is solid … without sounding arrogant,” the source said. “He will be very serious and she must also show that she is firm in nature.”
A source close to Le Pen said he wanted a “calm debate, project against project”.
DIFFERENT THIS TIME?
If the two-and-a-half-hour debate develops in this way, it will be very different from the 2017 meeting, when Le Pen’s presidential challenge fell apart as she messed up her notes and lost ground.
The debate in prime time on this occasion confirmed Macron’s status as a clear favorite.
A woman walks past official campaign posters of French presidential candidates Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National), and French President Emmanuel Macron, his re-election candidate, on an official billboard in Paris, France, 19 April 2022 REUTERS / Gonzalo Fuentes
Read more
But Macron is no longer a destroyer of foreign policy and already has a dossier that Le Pen can attack. Meanwhile, she is targeting mass voters and working hard to soften her image.
“He is no longer the same opponent. He has now spent five years in power, which was not the last time,” Le Pen said.
A source close to Macron said: “The French now see her as a possible president, unlike in 2017. It is up to us to prove that she would be a bad president.”
Financial markets are more inclined to the election than five years ago, and the odds offered by British political bookmakers on Wednesday showed a 90% chance of Macron winning. Read more
However, Emmanuel Cow, head of the European equity strategy at Barclays, warned against complacency among investors.
“The late shift cannot be ruled out given the large number of undecided voters,” he wrote in a note.
CLOSER COMPETITION
With more than half of the electorate voting for far-right or far-left candidates in the first round, Macron’s lead in opinion polls is much lower than five years ago, when he defeated Le Pen by 66.1 percent. Voter polls on Wednesday predicted he would win 55.5-56.5% this time.
In addition, Le Pen can only do better than in the debate in 2017, which she called a failure, while for Macron it may be difficult to repeat such a knockout performance.
But Macron is not without assets for this debate.
With far-right expert Eric Zemmour out of the game, Le Pen lost an opponent who made her look less radical than she was, and that struck her in opinion polls.
Unemployment is at its lowest level in 13 years and the French economy is outpacing other major European countries – even if inflation bites.
And while she has largely managed to push him aside, Le Pen is admired that Russian President Vladimir Putin is working against her.
Bringing the issue back to the forefront, Kremlin critic in prison Alexei Navalny called on French voters to support Macron over Le Pen’s ties to Moscow. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, told BFM TV that he would not want to lose the link he built with Macron.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
I’m registering
Report by Michelle Rose, Elizabeth Pino, Tasilo Hummel; Additional reports by Lucien Libert and Julien Pontus; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Edited by Richard Loaf and Alex Richardson
Our standards: Thomson Reuters’ principles of trust.
Add Comment