The far-right nationalist candidate often compared to President Trump faces a very difficult task in the second round of France’s presidential election.
Marine Le Pen of the National Front eked out a second-place showing with 21.7 percent among nearly a dozen competitors in the first round of the election on Sunday. Round two promises to be an even more daunting task against liberal Emmanuel Macron, who is heavily favored in polling to win.
Like Trump, Le Pen has played up the need for stronger border control and favors the kind of anti-immigration rhetoric that helped catapult Trump to the White House. Le Pen’s support base is also strongly in favor of an exit from the European Union, dubbed a “Frexit,” following the United Kingdom’s vote last summer approving a “Brexit.” Trump notably once called himself “Mr. Brexit” and applauded the referendum’s outcome as a sign of people taking their country back and compared it to his own campaign in the U.S. Le Pen has said she is in favor of a Frexit referendum.
Le Pen never endorsed Trump directly during the 2016 presidential election, but in September she offered the next best thing: condemnation of his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. “For France, anything is better than Hillary Clinton,” she said. When Trump won the election in November, Le Pen congratulated Trump on Twitter.
Trump himself has not endorsed Le Pen, but he has complimented her stances on immigration. In a recent interview Trump said that Le Pen is “strongest on borders and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”
Trump also sent out a cryptic tweet on Sunday saying that a “very interesting” election is happening in France.
Le Pen’s party, the National Front, has been on the political scene for decades and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen co-founded it. His daughter got the highest vote total in the party’s 45-year history.
In France’s election Sunday, Le Pen, who earned support for her anti-immigration rhetoric now faces a runoff with the front-runner: liberal and largely political neophyte Macron, who got 23.7 percent of the vote. While full polling isn’t available yet, an average of hypothetical matchups shows Le Pen has a huge hill to climb. A polling average from RealClearPolitics of eight French publications finds that Le Pen is down by 26 percentage points.
The run-off election between the top two candidates will occur on May 7.
Trump too faced a polling deficit against Clinton, but not the double-digit disadvantage Le Pen has to contend with.
It is the first time in France’s history that a major party failed to reach the runoff. Macron previously served as an adviser for the highly unpopular Socialist President Francois Hollande but left and launched his own political party last year.
Le Pen and Macron have very different ideologies, with Macron seen in some circles as a centrist who wants to stay in the European Union. Le Pen on the other hand comes from a party with a history of anti-Semitism and racism.
Already former opponents are starting to consolidate around Macron. Scandal-struck Conservative Francois Fillon, who tied for third in the contest with leftist Jean Luc-Melenchon, said Sunday that he is bowing out and asking for his supporters to vote for Macron in the May 7 runoff. “There is no other choice but to vote against the far-right,” he said.
In a nod to the anti-establishment sentiment sweeping the country, the candidate for the Socialist Party, Benoit Hamon, came in fifth with 6.2 percent.
