Market Share.

No strategy for victory.

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1. Eurointelligence:

The wave has turned against Emmanuel Macron. He who came out of nowhere to be voted into office by an electorate that wanted change is facing the opposite side of voters’ discontent, and his party is now being shown the way out. Not all of this is due to Macron himself and his long speeches that fail to inspire or convince the electorate as they once did. France is experiencing a phenomenon similar to other countries in Europe, where far-right parties are doing well in elections, and even getting into power. They are no longer considered a threat. 

The latest IFOP poll for Le Journal du Dimanche suggests that there are three main blocs: Rassemblement National gets 35% against 26% for the left alliance. RN dominates across the board for all socio-professional categories, including company directors, employees, the unemployed, and even pensioners. Bardella’s party is leading strongly amongst the young, with 44% over 30% for the popular front of the left.

Where is the center? Macron’s alliance is only accorded 19% of the votes according to the IFOP poll. Of those who voted for Macron in 2022, only 61% have the intention to do so this time. His most loyal voters, the pensioners, seem to have abandoned him. Only 28% would vote for his alliance, Ensemble, while many pensioners now prefer to vote for Bardella’s Rassemblement National. Macron works like a voter repellent this time around. (Source: eurointelligence.com, ifop.com)

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2. French President Emmanuel Macron’s group and its allies won’t field candidates in about 60 electoral districts so as to clear the way for other parties with a better chance of barring the road to the far right and a new leftist alliance, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said. He pointed to Correze, in central France, where they would back a conservative Republicans opponent against both the candidate from Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and former President Francois Hollande, who is running on the New Popular Front ticket that includes the far-left France Unbowed. “There are some 60 places where we know that it’s not our candidates that are the best-placed to avoid the election of the extremes to power,” Attal said Monday in an interview on RTL radio. “Our candidates are useful against the extremes.” (Source: bloomberg.com)

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3. Iran has started up new cascades of advanced centrifuges and plans to install others in the coming weeks after facing criticism over its nuclear program, the United Nations’ atomic watchdog said Friday. The U.S. called the moves “nuclear escalations.” Spinning up new centrifuges further advances Iran’s nuclear program, which already enriches uranium at near-weapons-grade levels and boasts a stockpile enough for several nuclear bombs if it chose to pursue them. However, the acknowledgement from the International Atomic Energy Agency did not include any suggestion Iran planned to go to higher enrichment levels amid wider tensions between Tehran and the West as the Israel-Hamas war rages in the Gaza Strip. The IAEA said its inspectors verified Monday that Iran had begun feeding uranium into three cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. (Source: apnews.com)

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