Presidential poll: Zemmour, second, overtakes Le Pen, Macron weakens


Jérôme Fourquet and François Kraus, political scientists from Ifop, analyze for Paris Match the new week of our daily Ifop-Fiducial survey for Paris Match-LCI-Sud-Radio.

Launched three months to the day before the first round, the Rolling Ifop-Fiducial for Paris Match, LCI and Sud Radio scrutinizes the presidential election in real time. Here are the key takeaways.

After a double crossing of curves, Éric Zemmour manages for the first time to climb into position to reach the second round

After having outstripped Valérie Pécresse at the start of the week (Tuesday February 15), Éric Zemmour finished this Friday by also managing to double as well, on the wire. With 16.5% of voting intentions (+0.5 points in one day), the Reconquest candidate thus symbolically manages to climb into a position to reach the second round by overtaking for the first time the MP for Pas- de-Calais (16%, -0.5 point) in an Ifop survey, a performance he had never achieved, even this fall when he was familiar with the front door of the second round. Thanks to a skilful staging of rallyings coming mainly from the Lepenist ranks, but also under the effect of rather controlled meetings and television appointments, the ex-journalist recorded, with an increase of 1.5 points in one week and by 4.5 points in one month, the strongest electoral momentum since the start of the year.

On video: Bruno Jeudy’s analysis

If Éric Zemmour’s lead this Friday over his direct competitors remains symbolic and statistically narrow (with an interval of 1.5 points, we are within the margins of error), the dynamics of the Reconquest candidate for a few weeks constitute alone a remarkable fact. And contrary to certain received ideas, this dynamic seems to be, for the time being, more a phenomenon of communicating vessels with the Lepenist electorate – from which it captures 29% of the former voters of 2017 (+ 4 points in one week) – than to a demobilization of the right-wing electorate.

Valérie Pécresse does not unscrew despite her lackluster meeting

After the “black week”, which had seen the candidate both dropped by right-wing personalities (Éric Woerth, Natacha Bouchart) and strongly criticized by members of her party (Rachida Dati, Nicolas Sarkozy), the president of the region Ile-de-France seems to be resisting the wave of criticism rather well that surrounded its big meeting at the Zenith in Paris on February 13, the subject of controversy both in substance and in form.

With a potential voting intention which still stands at 15% (stable) this Friday, strictly the same level as that which she has displayed every Friday for the past two weeks, the Republican candidate is for the time being far to “unscrew”, in particular because it still captures a majority of former Fillon voters (53%, +7 points in one week). Now relegated to fourth place in this race in the second round, she nevertheless comes out symbolically weakened from this sequence, which no longer allows her to claim to be the “useful vote” of the rights against Emmanuel Macron. And in the long term, the risk of finding itself trapped in a “pincer” between a radical right and a moderate center – as the Bellamy list had been in the last European elections – is all the higher because it does not will appear more in a qualifying situation in the second round.

Developments that still do not alter the comfortable lead of the outgoing president

The President of the Republic, who has still not declared himself, still largely dominates the voting intentions in the first round with 25% of voting intentions. Admittedly, it lost a point between Thursday 17 and Friday 18 February, perhaps due to an attenuation of the benefits it had drawn until then from the loosening of health constraints and the Ukrainian crisis. In any case, it is too early to see the impact of the announcement of the withdrawal of French troops from Mali, especially since foreign affairs are rarely a determining factor in the choice of voters in an electoral campaign.

On the left, the campaign of Jean-Luc Mélenchon seems embarrassed by the presence of the communist candidate

With 10.5% of voting intentions, Jean-Luc Mélenchon still dominates the “second wagon”, without however managing to trigger the dynamics he had experienced in 2017, at the expense of Benoît Hamon. Admittedly, it is not very far from the score it had at the same time (11.5% in mid-February 2017), but it is undeniably suffering from competition from Fabien Roussel, who ends the week at 4% voting intentions, a record level for the Communist Party candidate in an Ifop survey. The candidate supported by La France Insoumise nevertheless remains without real competition on the left. Yannick Jadot finished above 5% for the first time since the beginning of February, but the endless electoral torpor of the two moderate left candidates (Anne Hidalgo and Christiane Taubira) – both encysted around 2 to 2, 5% for more than a week – can only reinforce Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s “useful vote” position on the left.

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