Le Pen Leads Other French Presidential Candidates by Wide Margin — Poll
French populist right leader Marine Le Pen, front center, is flanked by police officers as she arrives at the court house in Paris, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. 
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — France’s National Rally parliamentary faction leader Marine Le Pen holds a significant lead over the other candidates for the French presidency in the 2027 elections, a Toluna Harris Interactive poll conducted for the M6 broadcaster and RTL radio station showed on Monday. Toluna Harris Interactive analyzed five possible outcomes of the first round of the upcoming elections involving various candidates. Le Pen received 35%-38% of the vote in all scenarios analyzed, significantly outscoring all the other candidates. Jean-Luc Melenchon, the founder of the left-wing France Insoumise party, was the second most popular candidate, receiving 16%-17% of the vote in all scenarios analyzed, and in most cases, finished second in the first round. In one of the five scenarios, in which former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, the leader of the centrist Renaissance party, and former French President Francois Hollande did not participate, Edouard Philippe, the leader of the center-right Horizons party and also a former prime minister, was able to secure 17% of the vote. This was what Melenchon would have received under these circumstances. Thus, with Attal and Hollande absent, these two candidates finished second after the first round. The poll was conducted online from August 18-19 among 1,764 adult French citizens, selected from 2,114 respondents included in the electoral roll. The margin of error was plus or minus 1.4 to 3.1 percentage points.WorldSarkozy’s Sentence Disproportionate, Echoes of Le Pen’s Treatment Raise Concern 16 October 2025, 10:03 GMT
