A political realignment appears to be underway in France ahead of the impending presidential election, with polling suggesting that a significant cohort of young voters are moving towards National Rally candidate Marine Le Pen.
Though long held up as a bogeyman for left-leaning French youth, the National Rally appears to be attracting a historic level of support from 18- to 24-year-old voters.
According to an Ifop survey reported by the Valeurs Actuelles Paris news magazine, the Le Pen party now boasts 30 per cent support among younger voters for the presidential election to replace Emmanuel Macron next Spring.
While she trails far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who currently enjoys 40 per cent support among 18- to 24-year-olds, 58-year-old Marine Le Pen has improved her standing with young voters compared with her previous attempts to reach the Élysée Palace.
In her first attempt at the highest office in 2012, the then-National Front leader only earned 15 per cent of 18- to 24-year-old voters. In 2017, she improved her standing to 21 per cent, and in 2022, Le Pen secured one in four votes from the youth bloc.
Her party experienced another breakthrough in 2024 during the legislative elections, in which the National Rally won 33 per cent of votes from 18- to 24-year-olds.
This strong performance may have been partly due to the campaign being led by Le Pen’s 30-year-old deputy, Jordan Bardella, who has cultivated a large social media following among younger voters.
Bardella’s presence as Le Pen’s effective running mate — having already been announced as her future prime minsiter should she win the presidency — may therefore also be currently benefiting the ticket with younger voters.
Commenting on the polling results, the editor-in-chief of the Hexagone observatory, Paul Cébille, said: “We talk a lot about Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s success among them, but we forget that Marine Le Pen also attracts a more rural or suburban youth, whose geographical location severely limits their future prospects. As the countryside becomes deserted, what can young people in these areas hope to maintain when a tank of gas costs nearly 100 euros?”
“Until now, driven by the hope of improving their lives, a feeling inherent to age and entering working life, young people now feel threatened, and the radicalism typical of their age pushes them towards political options offering a break with the past,” he added.
It is not only young voters who are moving towards Le Pen as the elections approach, with Le Figaro reporting that “several polls reveal an unprecedented shift: some of Emmanuel Macron’s 2022 voters are preparing to vote for Marine Le Pen in the first round.”
While Macron had successfully pitched himself as a steady hand compared to the supposed unpredictability of a Le Pen presidency, some in the centrist camp now increasingly see Le Pen as the safe hands to guard the republic from the likes of Mélenchon and his radical Islamo-leftist LFI party, which has been widely accused of fomenting the recent spate of riots across the country.
Three separate polls over the past two weeks have shown a significant number of former Macron voters siding with Le Pen, despite longstanding animosity between the two camps.
According to the latest Ifop-Fiducial survey, between 16 and 19 per cent of 2022 Macron supporters would vote for the National Rally leader in the first round depending on matchups. Meanwhile, Toluna Harris Interactive found that Le Pen is on pace to win between 12 and 15 per cent, and Ipsos BVA pegged her Macronist support at between 11 and 14 per cent.
Like Macron, Le Pen has also presented herself as an alternative to the left-right paradigm, drawing on France’s Gaullist tradition. Indeed, during her campaign launch in Orléans last month, the National Rally leader quoted from an ancient Indian proverb: “I am neither the right wing nor the left wing, I am the bird”.
