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. 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.
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. 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.
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