France election: Le Pen a real danger to Macron, say analysts as far-right rival holds last rally
French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen held her last big campaign rally on Thursday as she tries to unseat centrist President Emmanuel Macron in the upcoming election, taking place in two rounds on 10 and 24 April.
Recent opinion polls suggest the gap between the current president and his closest rival has continued to narrow — a sign that her focus on issues such as consumers' buying power, the top concern for voters, maybe working.
"If the purchasing power issue is strangling you today it's because previous politicians have impoverished you, have made public accounts collapse and have even put our children into debt for a long time," Le Pen told an estimated crowd of 4,000 supporters in the southern city of Perpignan.
"If Emmanuel Macron had enriched the country, excuse me but we wouldn't be talking about purchasing power," she said.
Le Pen's programme contains measures designed to soften the blow of rising prices, like slashing taxes on energy bills from 20% to 5.5%, and she promises to put €150-200 per month back in people's pockets.
The presidential hopeful urged people not to stay at home on Sunday but to "take back control" and "go and vote", a response to concerns that the first round vote could bring a record abstention rate.
"Never has the perspective of a real change been so close, but that depends on you," the "Rassemblement National" ("National Rally") candidate said.
Macron has lost five or six percentage points in recent weeks and several surveys put him only just ahead of his rival, typically on 26-27% of the vote compared to Le Pen's 23-24%.
Unlike in 2017, when Macron trounced Le Pen by 66% to 34% in the run-off, an IPSOS poll earlier this week gave the president only a six-point second-round
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