France goes to the polls today to begin the winnowing of candidates for President, with President Emmanuel Macron holding a small lead over far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen. Twelve candidates are running for the office, with a runoff of the top two candidates on April 24 to determine the winner. From the Washington Post:
"The latest polling averages, of surveys conducted before this weekend, showed 26 percent of voters intend to choose Macron in the first round, 23 percent Le Pen and 17 percent Mélenchon, according to NSPPolls, a platform that compiles French election polls. All other candidates polled in the single digits.
Barring a major polling error, Macron should be able to make it into the second round. But he is expected to face a bigger challenge than when he trounced Le Pen by more than 30 percentage points in the 2017 presidential runoff. Polls predict he would now only win by a small margin of 4 to 6 percentage points — a sign of dissatisfaction with his presidency and concern about the rising cost of living."
Le Pen has long been a fixture in right-wing politics in France, inheriting the mantle from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the "National Front" party which engaged in anti-Semitism and immigrant bashing during most of its history. In recent years, she's exemplified far-right Euroskeptic, Russia-leaning parties that have grown in Europe, like Hungary's Fidesz Party led by Putin pal Viktor Orbán. Le Pen has courted Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin in recent elections, but has distanced herself somewhat from him after Russia's invasion of Ukraine clearly as a matter of political expediency.
(photo: Campaign posters showing Macron and Le Pen. Gonzalo Fuentes / Reuters)
