Nearly one in four first-time voters to back Front National’s Le Pen in French presidentials

In a recent survey by pollsters Ifop, almost 25 per cent of first-time voters declared their intention to vote for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the first round of French presidential elections on 22 April.

Reuters/Jacky Naegelen

Just over half of those polled said they intend to vote, and among that group, of those who have chosen a candidate, the highest number would vote for Socialist François Hollande, followed by Marine Le Pen and then incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

In Tuesday’s edition of left-wing newspaper Libération, a group of Le Pen supporters from near the northern French city of Lille, explain why they support Marine Le Pen.

Voter intentions - 18 to 22 year olds - first round

One 21-year-old studying to work in the construction industry, said he agreed with some of Marine Le Pen’s ideas. “Billy” said there was not enough order in France and “there are too many people who don’t work, claiming benefits”

18-year-old Cyril is studying to be a landscape gardener.

His parents, a healthworker and a building site foreman, support Socialist François Hollande, but Cyril tells Libération he will vote for Marine Le Pen. “It’s always the same people who pay, the squeezed middle. The poor benefit, the rich are comfortable,” he says, adding “we let too many foreigners in, there is no more work for us.”

Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate for the far-right Front National party, has challenged the heads of opinion poll companies to donate a month’s salary to a charity of her choice for every point she wins above their predictions.

Le Pen claimed on Tuesday the polls are consistently underestimating her popularity and the number of votes she will get in the first round of the election on 22 April.

Speaking on the sidelines of a campaign meeting, she said the money should be donated to the association, Restos du Coeur, which provides help for people living on the poverty line.

“These polls help to give a push: They did it for Bayrou and then they did it for Mélenchon,” she said.

On Tuesday, polls showed Le Pen was trailing the far-left candidate Melenchon for the third time in 10 days. Ipsos gave Mélenchon 14.5 per cent of the vote against 14 per cent for Le Pen.

BVA put the two candidates neck-and-neck, while Harris Interactive showed Le Pen slightly ahead of Mélenchon although the gap is closing between the two.

Academic Joël Gombin, of the University of Picardie is the author of a thesis on the Front National vote in the south of France.

He notes that many first time voters do not perceive the Front National the way their parents do, as a newish party with a different status to the other political formations.

For first time voters, says Gombin, the FN “is a party which is rooted in the political landscape, an important player in politics on the same level as the others”.

Sylvain Crépon, Sociologist at Paris-Ouest Nanterre University, notes that Marine Le Pen is much more popular among young people than her father Jean-Marie was.

“There’s an extraordinary identification with this twice divorced woman, who lives with her partner and their respective children. There is a rule-breaking side to her character and her speeches, which makes her the leader of a party which is rebellious, against the system,” he says.