Presidential 2022: Eric Zemmour losing speed – LCI

The time for euphoria is long gone. After having been the man that all the TV shows were tearing up, and the one who was going to be able to challenge Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential election according to many polls, Eric Zemmour is no longer in a state of grace. The difficulties accumulate for the putative candidate, who should soon confirm or deny his presence in the ballot next spring.

On November 19 and 20, Eric Zemmour is in London to meet French expatriates. While he was to meet several hundred within the prestigious Royal Institution, the latter canceled the reservation of the room in which the exchange was to take place. He will be content with the Ibis hotel in the Ilec conference center. And the mayor of London Sadiq Khan, questioned Thursday by an elected Green on the coming of the polemicist, replied that “anyone wishing to divide our communities and incite hatred (…) was not welcome”.

In Geneva too, where he plans to visit on November 24 and 25, Eric Zemmour is persona non grata. The mayor of the Swiss city, Frédérique Perlier, will not make any communal room available to the polemicist, so as not to surrender “accomplice in the propagation of his hate messages”. More than 1,500 people have also signed an online petition against his coming. Already in recent weeks, the polemicist had had to face hostile reactions during his trips to Biarritz or Brittany. Far from the images of triumph broadcast in mid-September in Nice, where Eric Zemmour had been welcomed like a rock star to present his book.

Eric Zemmour also loses points in the polls. According to an OpinionWay PresiTrack study for The echoes, CNews and Classic Radio, published this Thursday, November 18, the journalist is credited with 12% of the voting intentions (-1 point) regardless of the Republican candidate, and is even ahead of one point by Xavier Bertrand. Above all, Marine Le Pen widens the gap: the candidate of the National Rally is credited from 19 to 21% (+ 1%). While other polls, such as a Harris Interactive survey for Challenges published this November 17, continue to give Eric Zemmour in front of Marine Le Pen, the gap between the two competitors is reduced, and the latter no longer loses points unlike her opponent on the far right.

This decline in power, as well as the polemicist’s polemical outings, are pushing some of his supporters or sympathizers to take a step back. Thus, commenting on the controversial arrival of Eric Zemmour in front of the Bataclan on the evening of the sixth anniversary of the attacks, the mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard considered that “Of course not” it was not up to a presidential candidate. “It ends up scary, the words he says”, he added on RMC. Even Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom he had nevertheless dubbed a few weeks earlier, judged that he had “burned his cards without realizing it” and was “not up to the occasion”.

Several of his supporters are worried about the organization of the campaign, which they consider weak or even non-existent; and Sarah Knafo’s influence with the future candidate makes people cringe. “We have reached the limit of the exercise” of the campaign which does not say its name, according to Jean-Frédéric Poisson, who is to take the head of the nomination committee of the future party of candidate Zemmour. He would like the polemicist to declare himself “as soon as possible” to get “clarifications in the organization and in the words”.