Marine Le Pen leads the polls for the next French presidential election and is now in a position to win the second round of voting.
In the race to replace President Emmanuel Macron, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term in the 2027 elections, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing populist National Rally (RN) in the national assembly, tops all candidates for first round ballot intention, an Ifop survey for the Valleurs Actuells magazine found.
The poll, which surveyed 1,081 voters, found that the RN boss would top the field at 36 per cent, compared to the Mayor of Le Havre Édouard Philippe and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, both of whom came in at 22 per cent. Meanwhile, the leader of the leftist La France Insoumise (LFI) Jean-Luc Mélenchon trails behind at around 14 per cent.
As for the second round, which occurs when no candidate secures over 50 per cent of the vote and which has historically favoured centrist establishment parties, Le Pen was projected by a margin of 51 to 49 per cent to slightly edge out Gabriel Attal, who was installed last month by President Macron as the country’s youngest-ever and first openly gay prime minister in an apparent attempt to line up a successor to his neo-liberal government.
In a potential matchup with the Mayor of Le Havre Édouard Philippe, who previously served as Macron’s prime minister until 2020, Le Pen would draw dead even, with both candidates sitting at 50 per cent.
