Jacques Serais 2:02 p.m., December 16, 2021

During a long interview, broadcast on TF1 Wednesday evening, the President of the Republic returned to these five years spent at the Elysee.

An evening that gathered 3.8 million viewers on average, according to data from Médiamétrie, a relatively low audience score for a presidential interview.

The interview with Emmanuel Macron, broadcast Wednesday on TF1, gathered only 3.8 million viewers.

If this remains an honorable score, it is below the average for this Wednesday night box.

TF1 was still the leader against other channels, but we can not say that the French responded overwhelmingly to follow this interview.

An audience score below previous speeches

If we put these figures in perspective and compare the debate between Éric Zemmour and Bruno Le Maire last week, 2.8 million viewers were seated in front of their televisions, i.e. a little less than one million viewers compared to Wednesday evening.

If we look a little further back, in January 2012, three months before the presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy, then president, had also lent himself to this exercise.

An interview broadcast on eight channels, but on the only antenna of TF1, the audience peaked at more than 9.2 million viewers, two and a half times more than the figures last night.

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Basically, no big announcements, but a certainty: Emmanuel Macron really gives the feeling that he is a president in the presidential campaign.

If he doesn't say so, hints are made.

Sufficiently clear implications as when he gives this answer: "If your question is' are you planning? Do you have ambition for the country, for the French and the French beyond? next April? '

Obviously, obviously, "slips the President of the Republic.

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- What to remember from the interview with Emmanuel Macron

"Obviously", a term that is not used by chance by Emmanuel Macron, because it is his strategy today, to trivialize his candidacy, to make it natural in the eyes of the French.

In the meantime, this allows him to play on two tables, that of head of state and that of unofficial candidate for his succession.

Moreover, Emmanuel Macron does not hesitate to throw a few pikes at his rivals: Valérie Pécresse on officials, Éric Zemmour on immigration.

Even if he does not say it, Emmanuel Macron is now well and truly in the arena and launched into the battle of 2022.