According to the results of the poll, Emmanuel Macron and Marie Le Pen were strengthened as the frontrunners of the list of favorites of French voters.
But the gap between the candidates has narrowed significantly, as a poll conducted by the company “Ellab” showed that the outgoing president received 26 percent of voting intentions, while his rival Le Pen gained two points from last week, and became second with 25 percent.
Can Marine Le Pen achieve victory in the second round of the elections?
According to a statement by political analyst and professor of political science, Olivier Roken, to Sky News Arabia, several factors contributed to the popularity of the National Rally candidate during these elections.
He considers that the strategy adopted by Le Pen in getting closer to the voters was successful, especially at the level of improving her personal image.
“She opened her private life files to the public, took pictures with her cats and published pictures of her in different parts of the country. She also managed to draw the attention of the French to a person she did not care about in the 2017 election campaign,” said Rocken. “In this way, voters forgot the radical nature of some of her proposals.” .
Purchasing power and lapses of zemmour
And he adds, “Le Pen also expanded the ideology of the National Rally Party during the presidential campaign, to include social and economic issues, especially purchasing power and salaries, to the point that she presents proposals that were among the programs of left-wing candidates during past years.”
In a poll conducted by Ipsos Sopra-Steria two days before the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen is seen as the most credible candidate in terms of purchasing power. Le Pen pledges a “purchasing power shock” to “return” a total of 200 euros a month to French families. This was done by reducing the value-added tax on gasoline, gas and electricity, which are considered “basic commodities”, from 20 percent to 5.5 percent.
Thus, according to the political analyst, “she won the confidence of the popular class, such as the workers and part of the employees who, if they did not abstain from voting, would vote for the candidates of the left-wing parties.”
In another part, the political science professor explains that the far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour, was unintentionally beneficial to Marine Le Pen.
“Undoubtedly, Zemmour made her appear less radical than she did in the 2017 campaign, without needing to modify the content of the National Rally platform,” Rocken said. Provocatively dressed as “Trump” in several of his speeches.
Le Pen’s winning conditions
Given the “fuzziness of the ideological parameters at this stage and the fragmentation of the political system of the French parties,” the political analyst says that “it is difficult to understand the behavior of voters and determine the extent to which Le Pen can win or fail in this democratic event.”
On the other hand, he does not rule out the possibility of her winning the 2022 presidential elections, “provided that there is no significant and punitive reluctance to vote, especially by the popular class represented by workers and voters aged between 25 and 30 years,” according to Rocken.
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