Five years ago, just before the final round of the 2002 French presidential election, I went to see Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front candidate, address an election rally in front of the Paris Opera House. I was not the only curious foreigner in the crowd. Le Pen had also drawn in far-right zealots from all over Europe – I spotted people carrying Flemish, Spanish and Italian flags. And these guys were the real deal – genuine fascists. When I asked the Italian standing next to me whether he was a supporter of the Alleanza Nazionale – the party once regarded as the heirs to Mussolini – he reacted indignantly, and made it clear that he regarded the AN as sell-outs. No, he proudly informed, he was a supporter of Forza Nuova – a much harder-line far-right outfit.

With just five days to go until the first round of voting in the 2007 presidential election, the nightmare of respectable French public opinion is that Le Pen will somehow force his way into the run-off again. It is true that the polls consistently show Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal – the centre-right and socialist candidates – as coming in first and second. But Le Pen’s success was not predicted by the pollsters last time. So there is a genuine nervousness in the air, reflected in the odd story, that the French secret services have been doing their own polling – and that their polls place Le Pen in second.

The secret services have denied the story. And it is not clear why their soundings should be any more accurate than those of professional pollsters. But the notion plays into the conspiratorial and edgy nature of the current French political debate.

There is a huge element of unpredictability hanging over the election. Some 40 per cent of voters are still said to be undecided. And we know that Le Pen voters are often shy about stating their intentions. The pollsters try to correct for this. But are they over-correcting or under-correcting?

You could make a case either way. If you wanted to argue that Le Pen is not going to make it this time, then you could point to the fact that in 2002 he faced two really lacklustre mainstream candidates – Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin. This time Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal are much more likely to inspire voters and prevent them drifting off to the fringes. Then there is the fact that the 75 per cent (or more) of French voters who dislike Le Pen know what happened last time – and so are going to be much more wary of splitting their vote by voting for frivolous and fringe candidates in the first round. And Le Pen is now 78.

On the other hand, you could argue that Le Pen is better placed this time. Since the 2002 election there have been widespread riots in poor, Muslim areas, which should energise his supporters. There is also no split in the National Front this time, whereas in 2002 a sliver of the Le Pen vote (2.33 per cent) was cut off by Bruno Megret in the first round. And the large “No” vote in the French EU referendum in 2005 shows that the country’s anti-establishment and nationalist mood has not disappeared.

Le Pen, meanwhile, shows no signs of mellowing. During the course of the campaign, he has attacked President Chirac’s decision to apologise for France’s role in the deportation of the Jews during the second world war. He has also suggested that Sarkozy is unfit to be president because three of his grand-parents were not born in France. And he has suggested that because Ségolène had four children without marrying her partner, the average French-woman would regard her children as “bastards”. Nice man.

April 17th, 2007 in French election | Permalink