On Monday, presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen launched their campaigns for the April 24 second round of presidential elections, to which they will try to gain the votes of the supporters of the candidates who lost the April 10 first round of elections.
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Macron announced that he will explain his proposals at the northern and eastern cities, which have suffered an industrial decline over the last 20 years and where the ultra-right politician Le Pen was the most voted candidate on Sunday.
In Denain city, for example, he was questioned about the rise in the prices of basic goods due to the Ukrainian conflict and his proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65 years old.
"I want to convince all French citizens of our government policies," Macron said, stressing that he will modify the current pension model and establish exceptions in the delay of the retirement age for jobs that require physical effort.
Le Pen said will focus her campaign on small cities and rural areas, where she claimed that citizens feel “abandoned” by the Macron administration. The far-right candidate announced she will give a press conference on "Democracy and the Exercise of Power" on Tuesday.
Voting intention polls showed that Macron is likely to win the second round by a difference of between two and eight percentage points, a much narrower margin than the one he got in the 2017 runoff, when he beat Le Pen by a 32.2 percent vote difference.
"We must go out to seek victory. Nothing is decided yet," Macron's spokesperson Gabriel Attal acknowledged, stressing that the first round evidenced the growing of the far-right electorate to about 32 percent.