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Benjamin Morel: "Can Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen join forces?"

2021-10-19T14:22:33.248Z


FIGAROVOX / TRIBUNE - During Éric Zemmour's visit to Béziers, Robert Ménard implored Marine Le Pen and the polemicist to unite their candidacies. While one has a strong dynamic for him and the other a structure and significant reserves of voices, marriage seems unlikely, believes ...


Benjamin Morel is a lecturer in public law at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas.

FIGAROVOX.

- Robert Ménard received on Saturday October 16, Éric Zemmour, at the town hall of Béziers.

He declared: "

I had not imagined the reception that France would reserve for you, I was wrong

".

The polemicist, not yet a candidate, is he establishing himself as the candidate of the "national camp"?

Benjamin MOREL.

-

Not yet.

There is undeniably a dynamic in favor of Eric Zemmour.

This embodies a political narrative that speaks to a large part of public opinion.

He develops a discourse on France and not on the political game or on a current.

Finally, he has consistency for him, which brings him back a right-wing electorate disoriented by the developments of Marine Le Pen and the comings and goings of LR candidates from the extreme center to the right of the right.

Eric Zemmour's perhaps too liberal speech has for the moment put off the popular classes, not to mention a floating electorate coming from the left.

As long as this electorate is resistant to a Zemmour vote, Marine Le Pen will retain an advantage.

Benjamin Morel

From an electoral point of view, however, the Zemmour candidacy embraces much less broad. For now, its electorate rests on two pillars. The first is made up of the more conservative branch of the rather elderly and educated Fillonist electorate. The second is a more anti-system electorate, disappointed by the discourse considered too moderate by Marine Le Pen. The latter is far from being out of the game. Indeed, the perhaps too liberal speech of Eric Zemmour for the moment repels the popular classes, not to mention a floating electorate coming from the left. As long as this electorate is resistant to a Zemmour vote, Marine Le Pen will retain an advantage.

This is all the more the case as the current surveys are made based on the part of the electorate most certain to vote, and on an assumption at the time of a participation of about 50% .

This excludes a large part of this electorate who, in all probability, will come to vote on D-Day. If we expect a 30% abstention at the 50% link, it is entire battalions of Marine Le Pen who can still get out of abstention.

For the moment, we therefore have a candidate who has a strong dynamic for him and the other who has the structure (the party) and reserves of votes.

Read also Presidential 2022: Marine Le Pen judges Eric Zemmour's program "marked by ultraliberalism"

Yannick Jadot called Eric Zemmour "a

small salon collaborator who takes himself for a great resistance member

".

Doesn't

this kind of

ad hominem

attack run the

risk of annoying the French and making Eric Zemmour's vote a vote of rejection of the entire political class?

This type of attack targets Eric Zemmour, but it is first thought to serve the leadership of Yannick Jadot on the left.

Éric Zemmour and Yannick Jadot hardly share any potential voter.

When you attack a candidate whose voters you have little chance of convincing, your goal is usually to give the impression that there is nothing between you and him.

That the choice is binary and that the other candidates are testimony.

You can solidify its electorate, but no matter what, you also solidify yours.

When you are a low audible candidate this has another advantage as well.

This allows you to catch the light.

For LR and the RN, to attack Zemmour is to get angry with some of their voters who like him and especially to make him exist a little more.

Benjamin Morel

Mediatically, we saw Zemmour for a moment.

For the other candidates, it is necessary either to undergo, or to try to use this dynamic.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon was able to do it very intelligently with the debate he proposed to your colleagues at BFM.

When Yannick Jadot attacks Zemmour, we are talking about Yannick Jadot.

In the end, these are, by far, these few allusions to the almost-candidate that will have made the most talk in his speech.

In a very congested field on the left, this allows it to exist and to give, in a fleeting way, the feeling of a moment of campaign based on a game for two.

It is obviously much more difficult for LR and the RN who share the same electoral space and cannot use this type of tactic.

For them, to attack Zemmour is to get angry with some of their voters who like him and especially to make him exist a little more.

But the more there are, the less well they are ...

To read also "The left is incapable of putting on the agenda the themes on which it is in the majority"

Can we imagine that Marine Le Pen retires in favor of Eric Zemmour, if he is better placed in the polls in February?

And vice versa?

Robert and Emmanuelle Ménard are dreaming aloud, also because they know that there are legislative elections in June. Beyond everyone's calculations, the month of February is a long way off. The Zemmour campaign still has to overcome many obstacles. The 500 signatures are not just a formality. Jean-Marie Le Pen almost did not have them in 2002. A campaign is expensive. It takes at least 15 million euros to play winning (say between 10 and 21 million). Marine Le Pen is therefore in no hurry to bring Eric Zemmour the money and the structure that would allow him to really campaign, when it is precisely the logistical difficulties of the polemicist that could save his. As long as there is no bleeding from the popular electorate towards Eric Zemmour,Marine Le Pen has no interest in withdrawing.

If tomorrow part of the popular electorate judges that it cannot win, then it could, despite its lack of enthusiasm, find itself instead in the Zemmour candidacy.

Benjamin Morel

The risk for Marine Le Pen is the triggering of a useful voting effect. If tomorrow part of the popular electorate judges that it cannot win, then it could, despite its lack of enthusiasm, find itself instead in the Zemmour candidacy. The thing is all the more likely if it finds itself relegated to third position structurally and continues in the polls. Hence the desire of Eric Zemmour to discredit her and assert that the only useful candidacy is him. Hence Marine Le Pen's desire to show that Eric Zemmour's candidacy is for the moment very amateur, and that the only useful vote is her.

If Eric Zemmour manages to trigger a useful voting effect before the popular electorate for the moment abstaining from entering the dance, he can take the ascendancy strongly.

If Marine le Pen manages to wake up his abstaining voters and take the lead, Eric Zemmour can fall back, and his own electorate succumb to the useful vote effect, by choosing Le Pen.

Either way, so maybe there would be withdrawal.

If the electoral situation freezes on the other hand…, the most probable is the blockage.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-10-19

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