Edouard Philippe looks to be gaining momentum after winning reelection as mayor of Le Havre, but there’s still more than a year to go before the race for the Elysée.
PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is emerging as the strongest challenger to far-right figures Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential race, a new poll suggests.
A survey published by pollster Elabe Saturday shows Philippe, whose reelection as mayor of Le Havre has helped bolster his presidential bid, separating himself from a crowded field of candidates to take on whoever represents Bardella and Le Pen’s party, the National Rally.
Le Pen is the party’s preferred candidate, but her political future is in limbo until a verdict is rendered this summer in her appeal of an embezzlement conviction and five-year election ban.
The various scenarios polled by Elabe showed Philippe netting as much as 25.5 percent of the vote depending on which other candidates feature in the race, far better than any leftist candidate or Philippe’s centrist and center-right rivals.
The survey shows the National Rally retaining its place as France’s most popular political party and its candidate on track to comfortably qualify for the runoff in the country’s two-round voting system. Both Bardella and Le Pen come in ahead of the second-place finisher in all scenarios tested, often by double digits.
The poll also tested voter intentions for the second round of the vote, which showed a potential tight race. Philippe defeats Le Pen in a head-to-head matchup 53 percent to 47 percent. If he were to face Bardella, that shrinks to 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent — within the margin of error.
In the last survey taken of second-round scenarios in November, Bardella was seen beating all his challengers from the center-right to the hard left.
Far-right figures have publicly dismissed the poll, and with more than a year to go before the presidential election, a lot could change.
But the survey is likely to renew fears within the populist camp that the party will again be beaten in the next presidential election due to the tradition in France of uniting against the far right.
It’s also likely to renew calls for consolidation, among both centrists and the left, and force Philippe’s ideologically aligned rivals to up their game if they want to stay in the race.
The poll shows Gabriel Attal, another former prime minister who now leads President Emmanuel Macron’s political party, and the conservative leader Bruno Retailleau failing to qualify for the runoff against the slate of candidates tested.
Attal has not announced his intentions for next year, but has a book coming out at the end of April and will kick off a tour around France that seems designed to lay the groundwork for a presidential campaign.
Retailleau has already declared his intention to run, but his party, Les Républicains, are gearing up to decide on April 18 how it will choose its presidential candidate.