According to polls, Emmanuel Macron has consolidated his lead over Marine Le Pen as France’s presidential race enters its final week.
The two candidates will meet in a televised debate on Wednesday that could prove critical. In 2017, when they last met at this stage, Le Pen’s poor performance was seen as precipitating his loss in the second round.
But Le Pen insisted on Monday that this time she was better prepared. “I hope it will be a real confrontation of ideas and not the succession of invectives, fake news and excesses like the ones I have heard during the last week,” she said in Normandy.
Macron expressed his confidence in victory, saying on Sunday night that he believed he had “a winning project that deserves to be known, and the feeling that on the far-right side there is a program that deserves to be clarified.”
France: Macron manages to lead Le Pen with 100% of the vote counted
The leader of the National Group’s first-round campaign, which focused on cost-of-living issues, managed to reduce the initial gap between her and Macron, assuring her 23.1% of the vote against 27.8% of the current president.
But polls suggest that much more intense second-round scrutiny of issues such as economic policies, welfare, immigration, foreign relations and the environment may have slowed Le Pen’s momentum.
The president’s predicted lead now averages eight or nine points in the polls. Ipsos daily tracker predicts a 56% win vs. 44%.
The media have highlighted Le Pen’s recent call for a “strategic rapprochement” with Moscow after its war against Ukraine, her promise to remove existing wind turbines, and her promise to ban the Islamic headscarf in public places.
Various analysts have argued that one of the cornerstones of Le Pen’s program, a law on immigration, identity and citizenship that would establish a “national preference” for French citizens in terms of employment, welfare, housing and benefits, would violate the principle of equality enshrined in the country’s Constitution.
The law, which Le Pen has said she intends to pass by referendum, would exclude non-nationals and dual nationals from many public sector jobs and restrict access to benefits.
It would also cancel automatic citizenship rights for French-born children of non-nationals and make naturalization significantly more difficult.
Le Pen’s victory “would constitute a radical break with France’s identity,” Dominique Rousseau, emeritus professor of constitutional law, said on Monday, adding that it would also “violate European law, and put France on the same path as Hungary or Poland, and would lead to a progressive or indirect Frexit.
