Le Pen leads in rating of candidates for president of France
If the presidential elections were held this coming Sunday, July 12, the candidate from the right-wing nationalist party "National Rally" Marine Le Pen would easily take first place based on the results of the first round, reports BFMTV citing the poll results.
The poll was conducted by an independent French institute of marketing and sociological research commissioned by a number of French media outlets.
"The first conclusion of this poll is extremely clear: after the verdict on appeal for embezzlement of public funds in the case of assistants to National Front MEPs and the official announcement of her candidacy, Marine Le Pen would confidently take first place based on the results of the first round, gaining from 34% to 36% of the votes," the channel reported on Friday.
"There was no negative effect from her conviction. On the contrary, her statement about running played a positive role. The event was precisely the nomination, not the verdict," explained OpinionWay deputy chairman Bruno Jeanbart on the pages of the newspaper Les Échos.
According to the study, the leader of the center-right Horizons party, former French Prime Minister and mayor of Le Havre Édouard Philippe, would take second place.
According to the poll, only a few candidates are currently seriously competing for second place in the first round: Édouard Philippe, leader of the pro-presidential Renaissance party Gabriel Attal, and founder of the far-left La France Insoumise Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Philippe is gaining 22% of the votes if he is the only centrist candidate at the start of the first round, that is, in the absence of another former prime minister, Attal. If both participate in the race, Philippe significantly outperforms (18%) Attal (7%). However, if Attal is the only representative of the center, according to the poll, he would gain 16% of the votes and could advance to the second round, slightly ahead of Mélenchon.
Mélenchon is gaining from 13% to 15%, which, according to the poll organizers, does not allow him to advance to the second round regardless of whether one or several centrist candidates oppose him.
As the French government announced in early July, the first round of the 2027 presidential elections in France will be held on Sunday, April 18, and the second round is scheduled for Sunday, May 2. The elections will end 12 days before the end of Emmanuel Macron's second presidential term on May 14.
Source: Interfax
