Le Pen leads polls with up to 38% six months before election

To discuss all this further, we can welcome our guest, Gilles Valdi, a political scientist at Sciences Po. Gilles, thank you so much for joining us on the program today. So as we've been reporting, Marine Le Pen launching her presidential campaign in Orléans, putting law and order at the center of her message. Could the current unrest that's been unfolding here in France play into the hands of her National Rally party oh yes definitely i think those chaotic scenes that we've seen last week more than yesterday clearly have given this impression that you know france is going through insurrection looting rioting and we've seen that the Rassemblement National has been playing the law and order card and it just so happens that people are shocked deeply shocked in france and and most people would like to see more law and order just like the government did this weekend So I think, yeah, this can definitely fuel support for the far-right in France. Now, Gilles, you know, this shocking image that we've seen, we know a lot of people were very surprised by what had happened last weekend. The ones that were so shocked by the recent violence and chaos, is there a chance that they can be converted to voters for the national rally at the polls in the upcoming elections? I'm not sure I think what we are seeing at the moment is that there is a demand for law and order especially to the right of the political spectrum in the mainstream right those conservative voters especially older voters so right now I think Marine Le Pen is convincing people that the Rassemblement National is the best option for those who want more law and order and I mean she's been you know playing that card for many years now as you know it's not something knew. So right now, what I see is that she could be able to convince those people in the conservative segments of the electorate, those people voting for the Republicans or even for Edouard Philippe and the center-right. So right now, there might be a shift among those people towards the Rassemblement National. And as we can see, she's still leading in the polls. And there has been even a marginal gain in some most recent polls showing that this could bring more support to the far right. Now, Gilles, the party, though, is still dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism. I mean, Marine Le Pen's father was a convicted Holocaust denier. And now this social media tweets with Jordan Bardella showing that he also was sharing anti-Semitic comments. So what impact does this have on support for the party? Right now, we see very little impact, at least on the core base of the party, the first round base, so to speak, because in the polls we have seen no change whatsoever since those revelations about anti-Semitism. What can change will be maybe in the second round, because then the Rassemblement National will have to convince more moderate voters who are not voters who are the most loyal to the party. So maybe then those accusations of anti-Semitism will resurface as part of the campaign, and that might convince people to turn away from the Rassemblement National, from Marine Le Pen, but that would be in the second round. In the first round, right now, what we see, there is a very solid, very stable and loyal base for Marine Le Pen, around 35% of the vote, and so far, we haven't seen any significant change um you know depending on the events or even those revelations so right now this is a very very stable and very solid base on which Marine Le Pen can count for the first round Jill, let's take a moment and look at Marine Le Pen herself because she's also no stranger to scandal apparently today she says that she wants to talk about a renaissance and inject some optimism ahead of elections but you know she's uh there was concern she'd be campaigning with the with the with her legal woes over her um misuse of funds for her party can she shake all of this off is is this anything that could have an impact again so far we've seen very little impact i mean she's been convicted convicted twice you know and and very strong uh sentences and and still nothing happened in terms of how many people are likely to vote for her in the first round so these are just polls but still we were expecting maybe to see something in the polls and we saw nothing happening so right now what she will be doing and today in her speech i think she will take this Gaullist posture just like to give her vision of the future of France this new renaissance narrative that is core of her campaign and I think she will very much focus on that and she doesn't really have to talk about her convictions or what happened it seems to be already behind her, maybe it will resurface again later in the campaign but right now I mean she's leading the polls and we see nothing that seems to touch her if I may say in the polls and nothing that can seem to be changing the the level of support that she's enjoying in the in the first round polls now let's talk a moment about these protests they're about the high cost of living there's been a lot of finger pointing around all of this at the moment what proposals to address that issue has the national rally offered yes you're right this um this protest actually it's quite it's quite a very uh quite an heterogeneous protest because you have students you have those yellow So jackets, you have a trade union. So there are different groups protesting at the moment. But yes, you're right. The main issue is about the cost of living. And the thing is that Marine Le Pen, since 2017, but even in 2022, she had lots of proposals. And even this year for the next election, she has a number of social proposals to tackle the issue of the cost of living. She wants to reduce VAT on, you know, energy, fuel and things like that. She has, you know, proposals for pensioners, for young people to cut down taxes for young people, for students. And so she has what I call a social populist agenda in terms of her economic program that seeks to address the concerns of those people who are hit the most by the crisis of purchasing power and the cost of living. So she has a strong social agenda that speaks to those people. And that's why the Rassemblement National is so popular among the working class and lower middle class. These are the people most affected by the crisis. And she has a social program for those people. Now, Agnès, I mean, from her past statements and the party in the past, we know it focuses on law and order. It's anti-immigration, a bit anti-EU. So if we're looking at all these anti things, what in terms of this optimism portion, what is the party offering France and French voters? Well, I think it's pretty much offering this story of political voluntarism. This idea that, you know, if you have a strong political will, you can change things. And what we see in our surveys is that people are really longing for change. They want things to change. They think society is broken, that we need to change society. Most of them actually call for a radical change or for a deep change. And Marine Le Pen somehow has managed to become the incarnation of this change. People think that with Marine Le Pen, there will be a strong will and that things will eventually change. And these people, they have the feeling that with Emmanuel Macron and the right and the left before him, things didn't really change. So I would say it's a little bit of a Donald Trump moment in French politics. Donald Trump came with this idea that he would be the one who could change things. And we pretty much have the same narrative and the same trend here in France now with Marine Le Pen being the incarnation of change and people really want things to change. Now, Gilles, yesterday in Orléans, there was a counter demonstration against the national rally, those concerned about a Le Pen presidency. But as you've been mentioning, you know, the polls do show her quite easily making it into the second round. And now here's where things potentially could get tricky because the far left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is also polling well. So if the two face off in the second round, who will voters choose and where does that leave the moderates here in France? Well, right now, if we look at polls in the scenario where Marine Le Pen is facing Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the second round, she's winning by a large margin, more than 65 percent. The thing is that Jean-Luc Mélenchon has become very unpopular in France. I mean, he's popular with his base and core supporters, but he's very, very controversial and he's rejected by many people. Actually, the demonization that used to be targeting the Rassemblement National now is targeting La France Insoumise. So what we know is that in the event of a runoff between Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, probably most moderate voters of the right will go to Marine Le Pen. Some of them will abstain, but the majority of them could go to Marine Le Pen. And it's not clear that left-wing voters, moderate left-wing voters, would turn to Jean-Luc Mélenchon because some of them are very, very much against him. So in that case, in that scenario, we potentially have a massive victory by Marine Le Pen, at least in the polls. That's very much the case at the moment. And Gilles, finally, across Europe, we've seen these populist parties making inroads. But have they proven that they can govern effectively? Yes, some of them have proven that they can be in government, lead government. I'm thinking about Italy with Giorgia Meloni. I mean, she's just celebrated her fourth year in power, which makes her, I think, the longest, the more long-lasting government in Italian politics for many, many years. So, yes, they can govern. The thing is that they can govern, but we know that when they are in power, there is this process of democratic backsliding, which is very, you know, you don't really see it, But it's a progressive, gradual process of undermining liberal democracy. And that's why we should worry about those parties getting into power. And that's something we've seen with Giorgia Meloni. We see it very much with Trump in the US. We've had the case of Hungary with Viktor Orban or Poland. So we have lots of experiences of far-right government where we see how much liberal democracy is under attack when those parties get into power. So we should be worried. Gilles, thank you so much for joining us today on the program, sharing your expertise with us.