France’s far right: They can’t keep her down
The Economist takes a look at the Far Right’s new popularity a year out from new elections.
A year before France’s presidential election, the woman who only recently stepped out of the shadow of her father, Jean-Marie, is rocking the political establishment. Last week, when a poll showed that Ms Le Pen would beat President Nicolas Sarkozy into the second-round run-off, his aides tried to dismiss it as an outlier. But since then other polls have found the same. Ms Le Pen could squeeze out the unpopular Mr Sarkozy with support of just 19%, according to one poll. Her best first-round score so far is a hefty 24% (see chart).
Although voting is still a year away, these polls are exercising many French people for a simple reason: they have already lived through the shock of electing the National Front into the second round. In 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen, a blustering former paratrooper, beat the Socialists’ candidate, Lionel Jospin, into the run-off against Jacques Chirac. Ms Le Pen stands virtually no chance of winning in 2012. But she could cause trouble by pushing out one of the mainstream candidates in the first round, as her father did. And this time, both the left and the right are vulnerable.