There's a curious symmetry to the themes and personalities in the presidential race just run in the US and that in France next year. Like America, in France two of the four most spoken-of candidates, Socialist President François Hollande and former president Nicholas Sarkozy of the Republicans, bizarrely start out with historically low poll confidence ratings. And the third front-runner, Marine Le Pen of the Front National (FN), bears a striking political resemblance to US president-elect Donald Trump.
The far-right, nationalist and anti-EU FN is cock-a-hoop at the US result, as it was with Brexit. Le Pen’s lieutenant, Florian Philippot, boasted of the establishment that “their world is collapsing; ours is being built”.
“Today the US, tomorrow France!” echoed Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie whose success in 2002 in reaching the second round of the presidential election shook France.
This time his daughter is almost certain to make it to that stage – she is currently polling around 25 per cent – and the question is whether, given the fair wind of a Trump victory, she can beat whoever else is on the second ballot.
It’s still quite a stretch and not at all likely given the traditional willingness of supporters of both the main parties, however bitterly they despise each other, to rally to the cause of defeating the FN. Currently polls suggest either Hollande or Sarkozy, or the latter’s party rival, Alain Juppé, would beat her. Juppé, by the most significant margin, but first he has to beat Sarkozy in the Republican primary that starts this weekend.
The Republicans’ two-round “open” primary starts Sunday and, a week later, if none of the seven candidates secures 50 per cent of the vote, the top two will face a run-off. Whoever emerges victorious will be the early favourite to go on to win next year’s presidential election scheduled for April 23rd and May 7th.
Polls place 71-year-old Juppé, who served as foreign minister under Sarkozy, neck and neck with him among Republican party supporters. But three recent studies also reveal that between 260,000 and 560,000 traditionally left voters may be planning to “crash” the right-wing primary specifically to defeat Sarkozy. (The primary mirrors the British Labour Party one which saw Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise election – anyone can enlist for €2 if they sign a statement saying they believe in the values of the right and centre).
Juppé, who has promised only to serve one term, has accused Sarkozy of pandering to the FN voters by adopting hard-right policies on immigrants and law and order and obsessing with identity politics.
The latter has attacked him for engineering a coalition with the centrist François Bayrou. Le Pen would much prefer to face Sarkozy .
There is much at stake in the primary and, as a placard at a party rally warned, no room for mistakes – "Ne Trumpez pas!"