The Verian Group poll of 1,000 people and published in the conservative daily Le Figaro found Macron’s approval rating at a staggering 11 percent, equaling the lowest ever recorded by the group. The previous record was held by Francois Hollande, Macron’s immediate predecessor and former boss, who hit 11% in late 2016, just before he announced he would not seek a second term, US website Politico reported.
According to Berrian’s measurements, Macron and Hollande now share the title of France’s most unpopular president since the early 1970s, when the polling agency and its predecessors began conducting this monthly survey in the newspaper Le Figaro.
Other pollsters have reached similar conclusions about Macron’s slump over his unpopular decision to raise the retirement age and months of political deadlock caused by his decision to dissolve parliament following the victory of far-right parties in the 2024 European elections.
An Ipsos poll released earlier this month showed Macron’s approval rating at 19%, higher than Hollande’s 13% approval rating in 2014, the lowest in the company’s history. Also, an Odoxa poll released on Tuesday found that only 20% of respondents considered Macron a “good president”, with the 47-year-old also only slightly ahead of his predecessor.
“Macron is always obsessed with polls. You’d have to be blind or deaf not to realize he’s hated,” a former presidential aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told POLITICO.
The aide said the president “doesn’t have a good understanding of how the reforms he believes are necessary could affect the current state of the country.”
The recent outrage against France’s head of state appears to be a historical anomaly, at least in recent times. Approval ratings surveys show that the first three presidents elected in France’s Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, have consistently enjoyed high approval ratings.
Macron’s numbers are particularly bad, but Europeans’ pessimism about his leadership appears to be growing. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating is just below 20 percent, according to the POLITICO poll aggregator, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently hit a low of 25 percent, according to an RTL/NTV Forsa Institute poll released Tuesday.
MNA