France’s Emmanuel Macron must decide how to fight next year’s election

IN FEBRUARY 2016, just 14 months before the most recent French presidential election, not a single opinion poll of potential candidates bothered to test the name Emmanuel Macron. Weak party allegiances, anti-establishment distrust, a bold campaign—and a generous dose of luck—carried the electoral novice from nowhere to the presidency in record time. As France now turns its mind to the presidential contest in 2022, all polls and predictions therefore deserve caution. Yet the contours of the next campaign are beginning to emerge, and they present a peculiar challenge to Mr Macron as he thinks ahead to his re-election bid.Two new polls suggest that 2022 will bring a repeat of the run-off between the centrist Mr Macron and the nationalist Marine Le Pen. But each also points to a far tighter race than in 2017, when Mr Macron beat Ms Le Pen squarely by 66% to 34%. One poll reduces the sitting president’s margin to 12 points. The other gives him an even narrower victory of 52% to 48%. The French, prone to malaise even in good times, give little credit to their president and are feeling anxious: about a possible third lockdown, the spread of , the reliability (and now the availability) of vaccines, the well-being of the young, and the livelihoods of all those furloughed chefs and waiters who sustain the French .