Could Marine Le Pen actually defeat Emmanuel Macron?

Until last week, the British media seemed uninterested in the French presidential election. The first round is next Sunday, with the second round two weeks later. Emmanuel Macron had for a long time seemed headed for a second five-year term, as his often unpredictable centrism kept his mainstream opponents in disarray, and he retained a comfortable lead over Marine Le Pen, his likely opponent in the run-off.

There have been brief flurries of interest in other candidates over the past six months. Eric Zemmour tried to move in on Le Pen from the anti-immigration right, attempting to take advantage of her move to the centre, but has fallen back. Then Valerie Pecresse surged as the candidate of the united centre-right, before unsurging again. Finally, Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Corbyn-like left has made a late run.

However, the early phase of the war in Ukraine gave Macron a boost. He was active on the world stage as the only western leader who was engaged with Vladimir Putin. It seemed that the contest was all over bar the formalities. It looked as if we were heading for a repeat of 2017, at least in the second round of voting, when Macron trounced Le Pen by 66 per cent to 34 per cent.

Until last week, that is. On Wednesday, an Elabe poll put Macron just five percentage points ahead of Le Pen in a notional run-off: 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent. That is the kind of gap that could easily be closed in a volatile three-week election campaign.

Of course, it is just one poll, but it dramatised, for those who were not paying attention, which probably includes many French people as well as foreign observers, that Macron’s popularity has been falling since the middle of last month – and Le Pen’s has been rising.

Macron’s lead in straight-choice polling between him and Le Pen was down to an average of eight points last week. Normally, that would be a comfortable enough lead, and Macron outperformed the opinion polls last time by four points. But he was also 20 points ahead and the outcome was never really in doubt.

This time, Le Pen is a serious candidate, and her strategy of dediabolisation (de-demonisation) has been vindicated. She changed the name of her Front National party to the Rassemblement national and changed policies to try to shake off the charge of extremism.

In the last election, she was a fringe candidate who got lucky in a crowded field in the first round. She was easily crushed when the mainstream left and right united behind the opportunist Macron to defeat what they saw as the unacceptable right. Now, she will pick up support, especially in the second round, from the mainstream right but also from the extreme so-called left. This time, she is in with a chance.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator