France at Turning Point as Poll Shows Nationalist Candidate Taking the Lead in Presidential Face-Off
Nationalist and populist movements are making great strides across Europe — even in France, where the once-thought-powerless right-wing National Rally party is surging in the polls.
While the next presidential election in France is still three years away, a new poll shows National Rally’s Marine Le Pen is leading and could win the 2027 race.
What makes the survey interesting is that it marks the first time any such poll has found the populist party candidate in the lead, according to Europe’s Remix.
The poll conducted by the Institut Français d’Opinion Publique found Le Pen favored over sitting Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in a second round of voting, 51 percent to 49 percent.
At 34, Attal is the youngest man and the first openly gay politician to be prime minister. He is a member of French President Emmanuel Macron’s left-wing Renaissance Party and previously was the minister of national education and youth.
The survey by IFOP — a public polling and market research firm based in Paris — also found Le Pen would tie, at 50 percent each, Horizons Party leader Édouard Philippe, the current mayor of Le Havre and himself a former prime minister.
In addition, the National Rally leader was far ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-wing La France Insoumise party with 64 percent.
In the last election in 2022, Le Pen garnered about 42 percent of the vote against Macron.
That was quite a rise in her party’s popularity with voters considering that her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, won only about 18 percent of the vote in 2002. And even that number was looked upon with shock by the leftist establishment in France at the time.
“The respectability that the National Rally has gained in the Assembly, associated with a deteriorating security and economic situation, contributes to scoring substantial points among the retired electorate, which however still remains one of Le Pen’s weak points,” analyst Jérôme Fourquet said, according to Valeurs.
Le Pen’s growing popularity among French voters is just one example of Europe’s slow turn away from extreme leftism.
France, Germany and other countries are experiencing populist upheavals that are beginning to turn the tide against left-wing governments.
Farmers, truckers, and others have been clogging the streets in demonstrations against the radical climate change policies their governments are enacting.
Just last month, angry farmers blockaded roadways in Paris to protest destructive climate regulations that threaten to destroy their livelihoods.
INCREDIBLE SCENES 🚜🇫🇷
Thousands of farmers arriving on the motorway to BLOCKADE the city of Paris in protest of the green agenda.
All of Europe is saying NO to Climate Communism. pic.twitter.com/hhWKb3QsX0
— PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) January 29, 2024
Similar protests have shut down Berlin.
These kinds of demonstrations have been going on for more than a year, and it is a story that few American news outlets seem interested in covering.
So, yes, it is far too early to be predicting winners in French elections that are still three years off. But the fact that Marine Le Pen is leading in any poll at all for the first time is another sign that populism is growing by leaps and bounds and leftism is on the retreat in Europe.
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