Emmanuel Macron will face off against Marine Le Pen for a second consecutive election in the French presidential race, but the woman to challenge the current French leader is hardly the same candidate who lost almost two votes to one in 2017. Was.
Le Pen, 53, is currently a member of the French National Assembly representing Calais, a coastal town near Britain that struggles to deal with migrants headed to Britain.
She is best known as a member of the first family of the French far-right. His father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front in 1972, a political party long seen as racist and anti-Semitic. When the younger Le Pen took over the reins as party leader from his father in 2011, he attempted to rebrand the National Front as a more mainstream one – to expel his father from the political party he founded. After leaving, he reiterated his claim that the Nazi gas chamber was a detail of history.
However, Le Pen shares her father's views on immigration. In his unsuccessful campaign against Macron, he attempted to position himself as French Donald Trump, claiming to represent the forgotten French working classes, which are suffering in the wake of globalization and technological progress.
But her economic nationalist stance, views on immigration, Euroskepticism and the position on Islam in France – she wants to make it illegal for women to wear headscarves in public – proved unpopular among French voters, as she was defeated in her first contest against him. Was. Macros.
While "stopping uncontrolled immigration" and "elimination of Islamic ideologies" are the top two priorities of his platform, Le Pen has sought to broaden his appeal.
In the weeks before the first round of elections, Le Pen worked hard on pocketbook issues, often starting interviews and media appearances by explaining to voters how she would help them deal with inflation and rising fuel prices. Top issues for the public.
The strategy seems to have worked. Le Pen voted far better in the first round of 2022 than it was five years ago, and pollster IFOP polls suggest the Macron-Le Pen runoff could be closer to 53% to 47%, favoring the incumbent. It is possible
But some of Le Pen's other political positions may come back to haunt him in runoff caused by the war in Ukraine. She has long been an outspoken admirer of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, who has become an untouchable in the West because of the Kremlin's decision to attack his neighbor. Le Pen met with the Russian strongman during his 2017 campaign for the presidency, but this time, he was forced to scrap a leaflet with a photo of him and Putin from that trip after the invasion.
His past opposition to NATO – Le Pen's 2017 campaign platform involved pulling France from the coalition – may also have been a liability. Recent polling by IFOP shows that 67% of the French public does not believe that France should leave NATO.