Buoyed by record polls, Jordan Bardella, head of the RN list for the Europeans, chose May 1, a favorite date for Lepénists, to present his first 34 running mates during a meeting Wednesday afternoon in Perpignan. Will they all sit in the Strasbourg hemicycle? At the National Rally, all hopes are allowed, as voting intentions do not seem to face any ceiling: almost a third of those questioned by Ipsos intend to vote on June 9 for the flame party, 15 points ahead of the Macronist list, according to a study published Monday.
The Lepenists intend to start the countdown to an announced victory
In the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales, whose town hall was delighted by the figure of RN Louis Aliot four years ago, the Lepénists intend to launch the countdown to an announced victory, presented as the stepping stone of a Marine Le Pen’s fourth candidacy for the Élysée in three years.
On stage, the boss of the group in the National Assembly will speak before the one who succeeded her at the head of the party a year and a half ago. On the program: “purchasing power, security, immigration”, lists a faithful, “but also a call to come together and vote usefully”. In the viewfinder: the Zemmourists led by Marion Maréchal, still credited with 5 to 6% voting intentions.
Malika Sorel, propelled to number two on the list
In front of the 2,000 to 3,000 people expected, the two RN leaders must above all present the first 35 candidates on the list – Marine Le Pen will symbolically occupy the 80th and penultimate place -, after having taken several war prizes in recent weeks, sometimes at price of controversies.
Malika Sorel, an essayist formerly close to François Fillon propelled to number two on the list, notably hit the headlines by admitting to having made offers of service to Emmanuel Macron at the start of the year. The number three of the team, Fabrice Leggeri, was the subject of a complaint filed by two NGOs who accused him of having facilitated illegal pushbacks of migrant boats at sea when he was boss of the European border guard agency Frontex. As for the presence on the list of Mahorais Saidali Boina Hamissi, announced by Marine Le Pen from Mamoudzou, it finally had to be denied after several racist and conspiratorial publications published on social networks were spotted by Release.
“All that changes nothing,” says a close friend of Jordan Bardella, who now dreams of gathering twice as many votes as Valérie Hayer, the head of the Macronist list… even Raphaël Glucksmann, the PS candidate that many Lepénist strategists imagine climbing to second place on the podium.
Unbeatable, Bardella? The one to whom Marine Le Pen promised Matignon in the event of victory in the presidential election has in any case authorized himself to skip all the televised debates until then, to the great displeasure of the other heads of the lists. Last week, during what was presented as a “press conference”, he allowed himself to snub journalists’ questions.
The “oiled wrestler strategy”
The “strategy of the oiled wrestler” – or “dodging”, his opponents rail – nevertheless has its limits. On Thursday, Jordan Bardella will give the answer to Valérie Hayer on BFMTV – “an important meeting”, believes one of his close friends – before a confrontation of all the heads of the list, including him, on Sunday on RTL.
The Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, also finally accepted his proposal for a debate launched several weeks ago. “The President of the Republic forced the hand of the majority leader”, believes a member of the RN boss’s close guard, who detects “the commitment of the personal responsibility of the head of government”. In Macronie, we see it above all as an opportunity to try to “flush out” the “emptiness” of the RN candidate. “Bardella adds the fact of having nothing to say and the physical attitude of someone who has already won,” annoys a former minister.
Is an accident still possible? “The problem now is that if we do less than 30%, it will almost be seen as a poor performance,” worries someone close to the president of the RN, still burned by the 2021 regional elections, when the party had defied the polls by failing to win any region, burdened by a strong abstention.
After Perpignan, by June 9, the far-right party intends to invest its strongholds to mobilize its electorate, with meetings planned in Moselle, in Var and in Marine Le Pen’s stronghold, Hénin-Beaumont (Pas). -de-Calais).