The French President’s popularity rating fell by four points in March, with only 37 percent of French residents surveyed holding a favourable opinion of their leader. According to an Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche, 60 percent are now dissatisfied with President Macron.
The devastating poll results were announced as parts of France enter another lockdown and the country continues to struggle with its vaccine rollout.
Earlier this year, Mr Macron stunned health officials by rejecting experts’ calls to lock the country down, vowing to do whatever it took to keep the eurozone’s second largest economy as open as possible.
However, France has since been ravaged by a third wave of infections, with the variant first detected in Britain now accounting for 75 percent of cases.
French newspapers lambasted the embattled president for his bungling pandemic response and blamed him squarely for the fiasco.
The widespread condemnation comes just weeks after the president claimed, without evidence, the AstraZeneca vaccine “doesn’t work the way we were expecting it to”.
Authorities later backtracked and French Health Minister Olivier Véran said: “Anybody aged 50 or over who is affected by comorbidities can get the AstraZeneca vaccine, including those between 65 and 74.”
The ongoing row couldn’t come for a worse time for Mr Macron, who hopes to secure a second term in the French presidential election next year.
Current projections have him neck and neck with far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen – who he convincingly beat in 2017.
READ MORE: Brexit Latest: Furious EU chief lashes out at UK in trade deal row
“Because it is what will make it possible to present to the French the necessary unity around a political project.”
Later she reaffirmed her comments and tweeted how she will “bring together the French”.
Ms Le Pen tweeted: “I will bring together the French.
“There is patriotism on the right as well as on the left.
“The situation we are experiencing now cannot continue: I want to create a government of national unity.”
She continued her attack on Mr Macron and accused the President of bringing together the “worst of the right and worst of the left”.
The Ifop survey was conducted from March 11 to March 18 among 1911 people aged 18 or over who were interviewed online using the quota method.
