Yet political analyst Julien Hoez doesn’t buy the change in appearance. We see pictures of her “on Instagram, holding cats and kittens and cute animals and that sort of thing before going into the Assemblée Nationale to talk about how migrants are stealing the jobs of ‘real, French people’… It’s a strategy that works, people like cute animals,” Hoez said.
The French president didn’t announce his campaign “for a series of reasons,” said Hoez. “One of which was the Ukraine war… And the other being the wish to ensure that the French Covid-19 situation was in order so that people wouldn’t avoid voting.” He added that municipal elections in 2021 were low because people didn’t want to get infected.
Hoez believes that the polls at this stage of the campaign are exaggerated. But with Le Pen this close to victory, it is clear that France has become more comfortable with the far-right.