Paris (AFP)

Already announced by the polls, the duel between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen for the 2022 presidential exasperates the opposition, which denounces a "damned couple" or a "wolf trap" with unpredictable consequences.

"It is necessary to loosen this jaw between Le Pen and Macron, which is like a trap with wolf and which is not good for the democratic debate", affirmed Monday François Baroin, freshly reinstated in the strategic authorities of the Republicans.

On Sunday already, the MEP EELV Yannick Jadot had accused the head of state "to organize the victory" of Marine Le Pen in the presidential election of 2022 by building "a cursed couple" with the head of the National Rally.

In question, an Ifop poll released Sunday crediting Emmanuel Macron 55% of the vote in the second round of the presidential election of 2022, against 45% in Marine Pen. In May 2017 the head of state won by 66.1% of the vote against 33.9% for his rival.

According to the same survey, the two candidates would be knee-to-elbow in the first round with 27 to 28% of the votes each, far ahead of the others. A previous Elabe poll published on Wednesday gave comparable figures (between 27 and 28%).

Polls, more than two years of the presidential election, are obviously to take a step back. Who would have imagined the rise of Emmanuel Macron just five years ago?

On the side of LREM, the spokeswoman Aurore Bergé ensures that "this duel, it is not us (LREM) who chose it". But "if we fail (...), the risk is that what we managed to push back in 2017 can happen in 2022," she said Thursday.

- "Oil on fire" -

But in opposition, these prognoses make cringe. Firstly because they leave all the opponents far behind: 11% for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Baroin, 7.5 to 9% for Yannick Jadot, 2.5 to 3% only for the First Secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure ...

Above all, it is the presumed tactics of the Head of State which is questioned: "That a poll announces for 2022 a second round Macron-Le Pen while Macron deploys for weeks a strategy in this direction is No wonder, "said LFI member Danièle Obono on twitter.

Like many on the left, Ms. Obono had already strongly denounced the river interview given by Emmanuel Macron to the very conservative weekly Current Values, a few weeks after a parliamentary debate on immigration much criticized on the left, but called "grace" by the founder Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen.

"The president threw oil on the fire", according to the boss of France rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

He "seeks basically to take the subjects of Marine Le Pen and sometimes potentially his proposals to try to build a duel," laments Yannick Jadot.

On the right too, we are worried. "Yes, there may be an alternative to Emmanuel Macron who is not Marine Le Pen.It is up to us to build it by gathering," said in early October the president of the region Ile-de-France Valerie Pecresse.

Monday François Baroin warned against the staging of "a centrist bloc and a bloc of extreme right" because "to accept it in a duality without saying anything, is to accept the principle of alternation one day " according to him.

Clearly, the Republican front that has worked to block Marine Le Pen may well crack if voters also reject the candidate opposite.

"The Republican front is in the lead," said Frédéric Dabi, deputy general director of Ifop, stressing that "the tightening is spectacular" with a "classic balance of power" of 45-55% in the second round .

"My fear is that the exasperation is rising, and that force, we will eventually elect Marine Le Pen," said the senator LR Hauts-de-Seine Roger Karoutchi Public Senate.

According to a recent poll, 65% of French people say they are "dissatisfied" with Emmanuel Macron's action in mid-term.

© 2019 AFP