The once promising French president now appears to be struggling to win over the public as his ratings remain stuck in negative territory.
Of those questioned, 55 per cent thought Mr Macron was a “bad president” in the latest poll published yesterday and conducted by established survey organisation Odoxa for centrist French weekly magazine L’Express and radio station France Inter.
But 45 per cent of respondents expressed satisfaction with the 39-year-old head of state, telling pollsters he was a “good president”, up one percentage point from October.
Despite the slight uptick in his Odoxa approval rating, the poll confirms a shocking decline for a president who basked in a landslide victory little more than six months ago.
Mr Macron’s conservative prime minister, Edouard Philippe, is also failing to win over the French.
The poll of 1,009 French adults shows the premier’s popularity rating is both stagnant and negative: 53 per cent think he is a “bad prime minister”, while less than half – 46 per cent – think the opposite. One per cent of respondents refrained from answering.
Additionally, 63 per cent of those interviewed, interviewed between November 22-23, said they were “shocked” by Mr Macron’s decision to keep his former spokesperson Christophe Castaner in his government despite his new role as the leader of the president’s centrist Republic on the Move (REM) party.
Mr Macron announced last week following a slight cabinet reshuffle that, alongside his new role as REM chief, Mr Castaner had been put in charge of the government’s relations with parliament.
The poll also showed French people have an overall negative view of France’s main opposition leaders.
Fifty-five per cent of those polled said they held an unfavourable opinion of far-right leader and Front National party chief Marine Le Pen; while 45 per cent said they held an unfavourable opinion of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the head of the hard-left France Unbowed party.