[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
It’s that remaining président de la République offers him the chance to drastically shorten the period in which he must be regarded as a mere presidential candidate. The first round of voting will take place on April 10. For a leader who doesn’t elicit much enthusiasm from the public—his approval rating stands at just 39 percent—it’s best to confine the campaign to a few short weeks.
But despite the lack of enthusiasm for five more years of Macron, he remains a favorite to win. First, his rivals aren’t trending higher. Center-right candidate Valerie Pécresse has yet to catch fire, and far-right rivals Marine Le Pen and the incendiary Eric Zemmour are fighting for many of the same anti-establishment voters. The left—the Parti Socialiste, the Greens, and the La France Insoumise party—pose no credible challenge at all. Composites of recent polls show that Macron earns the first-round support of about one-quarter of voters while Le Pen, Pécresse, and Zemmour fluctuate at around 15 percent.
Macron has also profited in recent weeks from the opportunity to raise his international profile, thanks mainly to the retirement of the formidable former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her replacement, Olaf Scholz, presents himself mainly as a reluctant statesman playing defense between the competing pressures over Ukraine applied by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and U.S. President…
Source : time
