Can Le Pen win the French Election?

Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron pose for pictures before their 2017 Presidential debate (photo FEFERBERG/AFP via Getty Images)

There is always oddly little coverage of French (or German) elections in the UK compared to US Presidential races. But this year’s contest is finally getting some attention due to polls showing a tightening of a potential second round race between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. A Harris poll on Monday had Macron ahead by a mere 3%. And then yesterday a YouGov poll had the lead down to 2%. (We have had one poll with Le Pen 1% ahead from a less well known pollster). Other polls during the week have had a slightly more comfortable 6-8% lead Macron.

It seems very likely that in tomorrow’s first round Macron and Le Pen will emerge as the two candidates to compete in the second round on 24th April. There is an outside chance that the most popular of the far left candidates, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, will nab the second spot, but it’s very much an outside chance. If that happens then I’ll need to write another post…

A Macron / Le Pen run off would be a repeat of the 2017 second round. Then Macron won comfortably by 66% to 34%. This was, though, a significantly better result for Le Pen than the 18% her father and previous party head, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had managed in 2002, when he ended up in a run-off against Jacques Chirac. Back then there was a strong “Republican Front” unity movement against Le Pen, with left-wing voters famously holding their noses into the polling booths (and posters going up around Paris proclaiming “vote for the crook, not the fascist”).

Already by 2017 this unity was crumbling with substantial minorities of left-wing and centre-right voters choosing Marine Le Pen over Macron. And this trend seems to have strengthened in the years since.