The government is banking that anger at the strikers for making life miserable will tip the scales of public opinion in its favor. So far that is not happening.

Public support for the strike runs at 62 percent in a poll published Tuesday by Harris Interactive, a number that increased since the beginning of the protests.

With some 615,000 in the streets across France on Tuesday, according to the government, it was the biggest demonstration since the first nationwide protest on Dec. 5.

The continuing strength of the mobilization was not good news for the government of President Emmanuel Macron. And precedent doesn’t favor the government either — in 1995, reforms were withdrawn after three weeks of publicly supported strikes.

Yet for now, no end is in sight. Most unions have brushed aside pleas for a Christmas “truce,” and the government signaled on Tuesday that it had no intention of backing down.

“On this project my determination is total,” Prime Minister Édouard Philippe told the French Parliament on Tuesday. “I say it calmly: It is total.”

With the ratio of active workers to retirees at only 1.7 to 1, compared to 4 to 1 in 1960, the current system is simply unaffordable, the government says.