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France heads to 1st round polls with Le Pen leading in 2nd round

Sunday, 10 April 2022 12:28 AM [ Last Update: Sunday, 10 April 2022 12:28 AM ]

Ramin Mazaheri

Press TV, Paris

France is gearing up to start a presidential election, which has rapidly gone from a certain win for Emmanuel Macron to a dead heat.

New polls show that in a hypothetical 2nd round matchup with the far-right’s Marine Le Pen, the incumbent would lose 51 to 49 percent. These polls accurately predicted Macron’s 66-34 defeat of Le Pen in 2017.

First-round polls show that Macron and Le Pen should advance, with Le Pen easily outdistancing the third place candidate, leftist Jean Luc Melenchon.

With his once-comfortable lead evaporated, Macron admitted he regrets not declaring his candidacy until March 3, not holding his first campaign event until this week and being overly-preoccupied with the unrest in Ukraine.

European markets are panicking over a Le Pen victory, and many pundits are now warning of Le Pen’s effects on France’s Muslim community. That may be a hard sell, as for months the media and all candidates, except Melenchon, engaged in months of unprecedented xenophobia and Islamophobia.

The mainstream media is trying to portray Macron as a centrist, despite unprecedented closures of Muslim mosques and NGOs, the brutal repression of the Yellow Vests, and an authoritarian style of governance which favored the wealthy.

Another new poll has also caused shock waves; 7 out of 10 French people want Macron to leave office. That indicates that Macron has not been able to grow his core electorate from the roughly 25%, which got him elected.

In 2017, his voters said the primary reason he was elected was to sweep out the two mainstream parties. The secondary reason was to block Marine Le Pen, with his personality and policies only running third. Highly-accurate snapshot results of the first round will be released at 1800 Greenwich mean time on April 10.

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