Half of French people (50%) consider the candidate of the National Rally Marine Le Pen as “a danger to democracy”, against 62% for the candidate of “Reconquest!” Éric Zemmour, according to the annual barometer of the image of the Rassemblement national carried out by Kantar Public for franceinfo and The world, published Monday, January 17.
Less than three months before the first round of the presidential election, 40% of French people, 9 points less than in February 2019, consider Marine Le Pen as the representative of a “nationalist and xenophobic extreme right”, while 64% of French people consider Éric Zemmour as such.
According to the barometer, the RN candidate is therefore perceived as less extreme than the former journalist. The number of French people who want Marine Le Pen to win the presidential election is limited (21%) but clearly higher than the proportion who express the same wish for the polemicist (8%). In addition, 29% of French people consider it likely that Marine Le Pen will be elected President of the Republic, while 10% make the same prediction for Éric Zemmour.
If the image of the RN candidate has softened for several years, it has not however become commonplace, according to the barometer, which therefore points out that half of the French people questioned believe that it represents “a danger for the democracy”, a much higher percentage than for Emmanuel Macron (31%) or Jean-Luc Mélenchon (29%).
For the next elections, more than six out of ten respondents (63%) say they have never voted for the RN (or the FN) and have no intention of doing so. 10% have not yet done so but are considering it. Among the French who have already voted for the RN, 13% are ready to do so again while 4% will not do so again.
Finally, on political ideas, the share of French people who believe that there are “too many immigrants in France” (47%, +1 point since May 2021) or “that we no longer really feel at home in France” (39%, -1 point since May 2021) remain stable and below the levels observed in the past. The presumption of self-defense for the police, defended by Marine Le Pen in this campaign, arouses some interest (53% agree), but the abolition of state medical aid (32%) or the abolition of jus soli (30%) are much less convincing.
This survey was carried out face-to-face, between January 5 and 11, in the homes of 1,016 people representative of the French population aged 18 and over. The margin of error is 3.1%.