“It is not too late”, assures the candidate, who is capping around 2% in voting intentions, and has never managed to get her campaign off the ground, in a very fragmented political landscape on the left, where only the 'Rebellious Jean-Luc Mélenchon managed to pull out of the game and climbed to third place, around 15%.

"Together, we can refute these partial and biased polls and their zealous commentators", affirms the mayor of Paris, who has always said that she would play "the match until the end".

In a "warm" atmosphere, she invites her supporters "not to let go of anything", under the eyes of the former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, the mayor of Lille Martine Aubry, the First Secretary of the PS Olivier Faure, or even the ex-First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadelis.

In front of 2,400 people, according to the organizers, her biggest meeting since the start of the campaign, Anne Hidalgo assures her: "For six months, we have been told that it has already been decided. Well no! Nothing has ever been decided. until the vote has taken place".

This is also what Patrice Bruckert, a retiree from Dijon, thinks, who "did 300 terminals to be there".

"I don't expect her to be in the second round, but I think she will do better than 2%, she will approach 10%".

After Emmanuel Macron's meeting the day before, Anne Hidalgo is particularly aimed at those seduced in 2017 by the candidate-president. "Macron is on the right!".

He even practices "the overtaking of the right by the right", she proclaims.

And she continues: "Who promises to raise the retirement age to 65? Who wants to force RSA recipients to work for a salary below the minimum wage? Who wants to direct towards learning from the age of 12 our children? Who says to the teachers: if you want to earn more, you have to get to work as if they were twiddling their thumbs?

"Fighting spirit"

To each question, the room answers "it's him" in chorus, shouting "Hidalgo president" and "all together, socialists".

"If you have left-wing ideas, if you are concerned about social issues, justice, solidarity, ecology, you must know it, Emmanuel Macron does not even calculate you!", She continues.

"Join your family of origin, the left of reality and reason, which recognizes its errors".

Benjamin, a 37-year-old assistant architect, admits it: he had voted for Macron in 2017, in the first round.

"But I'm very disappointed, he's not social at all," he concedes.

From now on for this "non-insert sympathizer" it is "Anne Hidalgo who brings hope".

The candidate also warns about "the consequences" of a vote in favor of Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was holding a meeting at the same time in Toulouse: "In the immediate future, you will vote for a candidate who refuses to help the Ukrainians" against the Russians, she believes.

And “how could a candidate who theorized the end of the left, then who in the local elections fought all the rest of the left, could now represent any hope for the left?”, she asks.

But the mayor of Paris wants to be lucid: "I do not pay myself with words, I know that times are hard for the left. The difficulties of the moment, I am the first to experience them", she admits.

Some socialists have lined up behind Emmanuel Macron, such as the mayor of Dijon François Rebsamen, who initiated the creation of a new political party from the left called "Progressive Federation" to weigh in a future majority, if Emmanuel Macron is re-elected.

"I don't understand why the media have been so hard on her," said Yannick, a 64-year-old Parisian socialist activist.

"She has the niaque, she has everything to win", she assures, hoping that these last days of campaign "will bear fruit".

© 2022 AFP