Four weeks before France votes in the first round of its presidential election, the campaign thus far has hardly been distinguished by the depth or precision of candidates’ programs. In this regard, Jean-Luc Mélenchon knows that he has a definite advantage — and logically enough, he’s emphasizing that this is the real battleground.

On Saturday, he organized an exercise in “costing” his program, a three-hour broadcast that could have been much longer. Each of the 694 measures in his program was individually “costed,” using a macroeconomic model to try to measure the impact of these measures on the economy and wealth distribution.

The “show” was clearly intended to establish the program’s overall credibility. Several economists — members of the “parliament” set up by the Union Populaire backing Mélenchon’s candidacy — joined in the exercise, each in their own field. Decisively, the figures were calculated using the Banque de France modeling which Mélenchon considers “most unfavorable” to his agenda.