Melanson’s strong showing in Sunday’s first round, when he won 22 percent of the vote, put him and his constituents in the position of kings as incumbent President Emanuel Macron battles Le Pen in the final days of the campaign. Macron, in particular, needs as many of Melanson’s supporters as possible to support him to win on April 24. Melanson’s message of rejection for Le Pen seems to favor the president. But Melanson did not push his supporters to vote for Macron, and his party is going to consult with members on whether to do so. The president is facing a struggle to win over far-left supporters who are far less willing to help him than he did in 2017, when he won against Le Pen, and prevent them from abstaining. In 2017, Macron won the support of about 50 percent of Melanson’s base in the second round, surveys showed. “I voted for Macron five years ago and for five years I regretted it bitterly,” said Marion Bouet-Arbier, 29, who attended a makeshift street party Sunday night outside Melanson’s headquarters in Paris. after her favorite candidate gained strong support in cities from Strasbourg to Lille and Marseille. A sports teacher in Aubervilliers, a poorer suburb of Paris, Boué-Arbieu said she was tempted to cast a blank ballot and was critical of Macron’s social history, saying a growing number of people were asking for help and meals at a community center. where offered voluntarily. Supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon at a rally in Lille. He said they should not give “one vote” to far-right candidate Marin Le Pen in the second round © Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty Images “There is no way I can vote for Marin Le Pen, but will Macron make things worse for poorer families? “I do not know what I will do,” said Bouet-Arbier. As Macron kicked off his second-round campaign on Monday with a visit to northern France, he made a deliberate attempt to emphasize his social manifesto, but the two politicians are diametrically opposed to many policies. The left wants to push back the retirement age, leave NATO and pull France out of nuclear power. Macron, a former banker who came to power with a pro-European business platform, is so strongly opposed by some of Melanson’s supporters – who see him as favoring the rich – that about a third tend to abstain from the second round, with another third is considering voting for Le Pen, polls show. Despite Melanson’s message not to support Le Pen, some of the leading working class voters share views that coincide with hers on issues such as the cost of living and a more protective vision for France. Le Pen has also been urging that she could nominate leftists in her government if elected. Without the support of a fairly deep pool of Melanson voters, including some who voted regularly in the first round as they saw him rise in the polls, Macron will find himself in uncomfortable ground for the second round. Polls put him at around 52%, compared to Le Pen’s 48%.

				You see a snapshot of an interactive graphic.  This is most likely due to the fact that you are offline or that JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

“Macron hardly has more votes to go when it comes to the right,” said Dominique Reinier, a political scientist at Sciences Po University, noting the unexpectedly low support for center-right Les Républicains – Macron’s other key run-off. comrades. Ultimately, a deep attachment to Europe and the euro among many French voters, including Melanson, could help Macron, but only, Rainier said. “Mélenchon has to get a lot of voters, otherwise I’m not sure how he will do it.” Melanson’s strong showing with Le Pen underscores a political upheaval that has reduced France’s long-standing governing parties – the Socialists and the Les Républicains – to political obscurity. Until Macron, they had given to every president since the 1950s. On Sunday, each scored less than 5 percent. Emanuel Macron with construction workers on a campaign visit to northern France on Monday. Macron strongly opposes some of Melanson’s supporters who see him as favoring the rich © Lewis Joly / AFP / Getty Images In the long run, this means a possible redrawing of party lines on the left, especially if the 70-year-old Melanson sets aside as expected after his third campaign for the Elysium. Another victim of this wider upheaval was the red line that once separated the far right from other parties. Macron can not count on parties and voters who will work together so steadily to prevent his rise to a so-called “republican front,” as has happened in the past. The ballot box that Macron could use was “no longer in one party or the other, neither on the right nor on the left, they have disappeared,” Finance Minister Bruno Lemerre told RTL radio on Monday. Instead, he appealed to the “soul of the French.”

As the second round of the campaign begins, Macron supporters are also trying to take advantage of Melanson’s appeal to young, environmentally conscious voters, highlighting Le Pen’s manifesto – whose central measure is to remove their wind turbines – and stressing their own tend to pursue climate-friendly goals. Macron has already indicated that he is ready to make adjustments to his controversial plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, saying there was no “doctrine” about age on its own and that he was ready to relax the pace with which the reform will take effect. The president told BFM TV on Monday night that if there was “too much tension” growth could stop in 2027, when the retirement age would have reached 64. He did not rule out proposing a referendum on the retirement plan. Many are not yet convinced. Guillaume Gooden, a 39-year-old teacher who voted for Melanson, said Macron and Le Pen were so bad at each other on environmental issues. “I have no desire to go out again to help Macron,” Godin said. “It will be another five years lost either way. Additional references by Leila Abboud and Victor Mallet