French President Emmanuel Macron’s job approval rating continues to fall and has hit a six-year low, an Ipsos poll for La Tribune Dimanche newspaper showed.
Falling by two points from November, Macron’s popularity has fallen to almost the lowest 20 per cent since December 2018, when France was rocked by “Gilet Jaunes” protests (yellow waistcoats protests), the poll released on Sunday showed.
Overall, the French president’s approval rating has fallen 12 points since he called early legislative elections in June that led to a deeply divided National Assembly and a political stalemate over this year’s budget.
Macron’s new prime minister François Bayrou, appointed to the post in December after the previous administration was ousted in a vote of no confidence in parliament, starts work with an approval rating also at 20 per cent, Ipsos stated. This is the lowest among all six of Macron’s prime ministers since he became president in 2017.
Bayrou is due to outline his policy priorities in a speech to the lower house of the National Assembly on Tuesday as he struggles to get enough support to push through a new budget. Meanwhile, the fate of Macron’s unpopular 2023 pension reform is at the centre of talks with opposition parties.
The poll showed that National Rally leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, who are the favourites to succeed Macron when his second mandate expires in 2027, have 34 percent and 33 percent of French support respectively. Both figures rose by two points over the past week.
