Shifting polls, endorsements favor Macron

Emmanuel Macron won his third endorsement in less than a week, giving the independent renewed momentum in polls that suggested he was again the favorite to become France’s next president as Republican Francois Fillon faced the prospect of an extended judicial investigation.

Christophe Caresche, a Socialist lawmaker, said in a Sunday newspaper article that he will abandon his party’s nominee to back Macron, joining former green party lawmaker Francois de Rugy and Francois Bayrou, a centrist politician who ran for president in the past three elections, in supporting the former economy minister.

In a race that has seen multiple front-runners since last summer, the 39-year-old Macron is vying with Fillon, a former prime minister, for the second slot in the May 7 runoff vote. The nationalist Marine Le Pen is favored to win the first round April 23, but not by a majority, is seen losing decisively in the final ballot.

Fresh surveys show endorsements are helping Macron recover from gaffes related to France’s colonial past and gay marriage that set back his campaign. Macron would get 25 percent support if the first round of voting were held now, compared with 27 percent for Le Pen and 19 percent for Fillon, an Odoxa Dentsu poll published Sunday showed.

“That’s a spectacular increase. It’s the first time that Macron is six points ahead of Fillon,” Odoxa pollster Gael Sliman said on France 2. “Is it sustainable? It remains to be seen. Many things can still happen,” he said.

Like Bayrou, Caresche said that Macron’s ability to win was crucial to his decision back the campaign. He also mentioned Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon’s choices on nuclear power and environmental issues.

“This wasn’t an easy decision, I owe everything to the Socialist Party starting with my political career,” Caresche said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche. “For a man of the left, Emmanuel Macron is the only way to effectively counter Marine Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election. The promises of Benoit Hamon are incompatible with a large union of French people against Le Pen. That’s a risk that personally I don’t want to take.”

Macron would defeat Le Pen by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent in the runoff ballot, compared with 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent for Fillon, according to the Odoxa poll.