For months, Pres. Macron looked to be a shoo-in to become France's first president in 20 years to win a 2nd term. But things have blurred in the campaign's closing stages.
A man walks past presidential campaign posters of french president Emmanuel Macron and centrist candidate for reelection and french far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in Anglet, southwestern France, Wednesday, April 8, 2022. France's first round of the presidential election takes place on April 10, with a presidential runoff on April 24 if no candidate wins outright.
“People are scared — with everything that's going up, with prices for fuel going up," she said Friday as campaigning concluded for act one of the two-part French election drama, held against the backdrop of Russia's war in Ukraine. In courting voters, Macron has economic successes to point to: The French economy is rebounding faster than expected from the battering of COVID-19, with a 2021 growth rate of 7%, the highest since 1969. Unemployment is down to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sparking Europe’s worst security crisis since World War II, Macron also got a polling bump, with people rallying around the wartime leader.
She's done that partly by diluting some of her rhetoric and fieriness. She also had outside help: A presidential run by Eric Zemmour, an even more extreme far-right rabble-rouser with repeated convictions for hate speech, has had the knock-on benefit for Le Pen of making her look almost mainstream by comparison.