Predictions that Macron could surpass Le Pen on April 24 by four to six percentage points have angered supporters of the president, as well as countries across Europe. Le Pen, who embarked on a campaign trip to a different part of France on Monday afternoon, described the vote as a “cultural choice”. Macron campaigned briefly before the first round, but on Monday appeared ready to run for two intense weeks, attracting voters who chose other candidates or stood out in the first round, including the attack on Le Pen’s territory. The president’s first trip took him to Denen, a city in one of France’s poorest regions in the north, where 42% of voters backed Le Pen on Sunday and only 15% voted for Macron. More than a third were away. Macron, who has sometimes been criticized as distant, showed his most approachable side, moving slowly through the crowd, pausing for selfies. He spent more than an hour talking to voters gathered in front of the local mayor’s office, answering questions about inflation, rising living costs and inadequate pensions – some of the key issues of this campaign, which have been reinforced by the impact of the war in Ukraine. Christiane Delbecq, 59, later said she had randomly selected a candidate in the first round – as of Monday morning, she was not even sure who she would vote for. But Macron’s visit to Denine seemed to win her over. “Everything he talked about made sense to me,” he said. “Lepen said many things, including Muslims, with which I disagree.” Other voters will find it harder to convince. Some of those who gathered to see the president outside Denine Mayor’s office sang songs against Macron, and at times the mood became tense. “I am here to talk about all my commitments and to explain my reforms. “But I’m also here to tell you, face to face, that you’re lying,” Macron told a voter who attacked his background. “It’s a lie that I did nothing for Denain.” Hundreds of meters away from where Macron was shaking hands, Pascale Henry, 54, spent the day in front of the post office – and said he still planned to vote for Le Pen in two weeks. “People here need help,” he said. “Macron says a lot, but he doesn’t do much.” Le Pen echoed that criticism Monday during a campaign in Sushi, a stronghold of the far right in central France. “Now that [Macron] he’s going to Denen to see the consequences of his five-year term… I hope he realizes that his policies have done enormous harm and that purchasing power is a top priority for millions of French people. “ Macron appeared fearless from Le Pen’s line of attack as he got even closer to her home on Monday afternoon, campaigning in her constituency in the city of Carvin. In his winning speech Sunday, Macron said he wanted to convince those who abstained or voted in favor of the far-right candidates “that our plan offers a much more solid answer to their fears than that of the far right.” His strategy seems to be to revitalize the “republican front” – a coalition of voters across the far-right political opposition. Macron has spent much of the last five years formulating his vision of how France and Europe need to address the wider social and economic concerns that lead voters to support nationalist figures. However, political analysts say Macron is also partly responsible for splitting the anti-nationalist coalition when he ousted France’s established center-right and center-left parties in 2017. Many of the candidates who won in the first round on Sunday immediately called on their supporters to vote for Macron and prevent Le Pen from winning in the second round. Among those who threw their weight behind the incumbent were left-wing candidates Fabien Roussel, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and – more critically – Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left politician who came in third on Sunday, just behind Le Pen. “You must not give a single vote to Mrs Le Pen,” Melanson said on Sunday, echoing the phrase several times. Macron also received the support of center-right candidate Valérie Pécresse, whose voters seemed particularly willing to consider supporting Le Pen. Although Macon appears to have more voter turnout than Le Pen, it remains highly uncertain how many people will turn to him on April 24. He faces a particularly sharp rise with Mélenchon voters, including those on the left who are frustrated by the president’s turn to the right on national security and his background in climate policy. And opinion polls suggest that about a third of Melanson’s supporters could vote for Le Pen in the second round. “Left-wing voters really have the key to this election in their hands – they are the kings,” said Vincent Martigny, a political scientist at the University of Nice. Traveling to areas that are strongholds of the right, Macron risks further alienating left-wing voters. But the issues that dominated his trip Monday – the impact of deindustrialisation and high poverty – were central to both Le Pen and Melanson. Mélenchon received 19% of the vote in the Hauts-de-France, where Denain is located, on Sunday. While Macron’s handling of the pandemic was largely approved by France, the far right and far left have criticized the introduction of the vaccination card. Macron appeared to be playing into the hands of his critics when he told a French newspaper in January that he wanted to “bag” anyone who was still unvaccinated. Responding to a voter who accused Macron of treating unvaccinated people as “subcontractors”, Macron defended the previous comments on Monday, saying: “I said it in a tender way.”
