Presidential debate in France: Marine Le Pen's last chance to break Emmanuel Macron's favoritism

Tonight's debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen on French television is the last big opportunity for the far-right candidate to try to reverse the trend in recent days polls of an increase in the lead in favor of the French president.

The two candidates who will play for the Elysée in the second round of next Sunday's presidential elections will face each other for at least two and a half hours in a debate that has already become a classic in France, and which to some extent is a repeat of the one that the two already starred in 2017.

Then the winner of the night was Macron, who was also the undisputed favorite for the second round, and the one who ended up sweeping the polls with 66.10% of the votes, compared to 33.9% for Le Pen.

Things have changed substantially since then and the best example is that at the end of the first round on the 10th, some poll preluded a victory for the president-in-office but by only two points.

Since then, polls have been pointing to an increase in the difference between the two opponents. For example, the Demoscopic Institute Opinion Way gave Macron this Tuesday 56% of voting intention, two percentage points more than last Friday. On the contrary, Le Pen also lost two points at that time to 44%.

The debate is organized by the two major television channels, the private one TF1 (the one with the highest audience) and the public one France 2, although other media also broadcast it live.

Two journalists from these networks - Gilles Bouleau and Léa Salamé - will be responsible for moderating the debate, ensuring that there is equality in speaking times and setting the pace and passage from one issue to another, but without intervening directly in the content to avoid any controversy about their role.

Each candidate has appointed a counselor who will supervise that the performance conforms to the rules previously set, for example so that potentially harmful images of one candidate lost in his notes or scratching his nose while the other is speaking do not appear on the screen.

A few hours after this cardinal moment in the campaign, Senate President Gérard Larcher, member of the conservative party Los Republicanos (LR), explains in an interview in the newspaper Le Parisien on Wednesday that he will vote for Macron because “Marine Le Pen poses a danger to the country”, although he points out that such support does not mean that give your approval for the program of the former.

The mayor of Perpignan, Louis Alliot, who is one of the main supporters of Le Pen (and his former partner), has repeated on Europe 1 the message that his candidate is open to alliances and that in the event of victory in the new majority there will be “people of all stripes”, including that of the other leader's Reconquista party far-right, Éric Zemmour.

(with information from EFE)

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