"I will be the surprise of the second round, I have been the surprise all my life, in the regionals, in the primary of the right ... I am tenacious, determined", said candidate LR on Monday evening on CNews, adding: "the one who wins is the one who believes in it until the end".

Problem: the polls place it in 4th or 5th position, around 11%.

Valérie Pécresse had yet climbed to 17 or 18% in January.

She then seemed capable of beating Emmanuel Macron in the second round.

At LR, we want to believe it: "everything is decided in the next three weeks", assures the president of the party Christian Jacob, who recalls that at the regional level "the polls in the 15 days preceding the elections gave the FN overvalued between 5 and 15 points".

We also underline, in the Pécresse camp, an OpinionWay poll for CNews crediting it on Monday with 13% (+2 points over one week).

But reversing the trend would suppose that it permanently distances Eric Zemmour, who is losing momentum, and catches up with Marine Le Pen, who has suffered little from the events in Ukraine.

Valérie Pécresse, Republican (LR) candidate for the presidential election, in Paris, March 22, 2022 STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN POOL / AFP

"She is in the most difficult position because she has at least three opponents to manage, with different stakes", estimates Emilien Houard-Vial, doctoral student in political science and teacher at Sciences-Po.

Faced with Emmanuel Macron, who presented Thursday a project whose several measures seem inspired by LR, Valérie Pécresse curries "a bad plagiarism", and a program "in total denial on questions of authority".

But between retirement at 65, the relief of inheritance tax and the counterpart of activity for the RSA, "there is no very strong marker that makes the electorate want to go and vote Pécresse rather than Macron," said Houard-Vial.

"Clumsiness"

And if Eric Zemmour "falls, Marine Le Pen will necessarily take advantage of it", he adds, convinced that "the challenge for Valérie Pécresse is less to reach the second round than to make an honorable score".

The campaign of candidate LR, who is still awaiting the hypothetical support of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, had however started well after her victory in the primary, under the sign of the rally.

Valérie Pécresse, candidate for the Republicans (LR) in the presidential election, in Paris, March 21, 2022 Thomas SAMSON AFP

But "we had a lot of trouble recovering from the first meeting at the Zenith. There was a before and an after" this failed Parisian meeting, sighs support, according to whom "it crystallized a certain number of blunders. What 'he is reproached for it is systematically the form'.

Each time the social networks have made a sounding board, like this weekend when she put forward several names for an ideal government: "monumental bullshit", sighs a member of the organization chart, who "first believed in a fake news".

To regain control, Valérie Pécresse is multiplying this week on television.

She will be with Cyril Hanouna on C8 on Wednesday and on France2 on Thursday for "Elysée 2022".

"She has a card to play, because she is excellent in this type of show, in front of people", provides support.

But "the problem is that we have no debate" with the outgoing president, he adds.

To circumvent this difficulty, the candidate challenges Emmanuel Macron through meetings and the media, deploring that he offers "nothing on the rise of Islamism, the drop in debt, major state reforms, half as many lower taxes than me..."

After a "big sovereign sequence" on Thursday, marked by the presentation of a draft constitutional law on order, the candidate will be traveling to Bordeaux on Friday for a new meeting, before going to the Bouches-du-Rhône on Saturday. and Sunday in a village in Vaucluse.

The occasion, according to his entourage, of a "dialogue in a sharp format with the movements of Emmanuel Macron where questions like interlocutors are sorted".

© 2022 AFP