French presidential runoff to pit centrist vs. far right

Le Pen unlikely to pull off Trump- like upset win

PARIS Don’t expect far- right nationalist Marine Le Pen to pull off a Donald Trump- like upset against her centrist rival in next month’s French election.

Le Pen’s ascension to the second and final round of France’s presidential election next month shows how much her Euro- sceptic, anti- immigration political movement resonates with French voters, but the odds are stacked against her ultimate victory, political experts say.

Le Pen won 21.5% of votes in Sunday’s first- round contest, the highest tally her Front National party has scored in a presidential vote. Emmanuel Macron, who ran as an independent, edged past her with 23.8% of the vote in the multi- candidate race.

When the two candidates meet for the runoff on May 7, Le Pen will be the clear underdog. Polls show that her chances of defeating Macron in the second round remain slim.

According to a snap poll released Sunday night by Ipsos, Macron holds a commanding 62% to 38% lead over Le Pen going into the second round.

“To win the second round, Le Pen will attempt to try and take the center- right vote by ratcheting up her anti- terrorism rhetoric while at the same time softening her tone on ( a proposed exit from the European Union) — the most contentious aspect of her program,” Marion Amiot, an analyst at consultancy Oxford Economics, wrote in a research note Monday. “We don’t think she will pull it off. Two weeks is simply too tight a time frame to try and convince the two- thirds of French voters who don’t want to give up the euro.”

Already Le Pen has accused Macron, a former investment banker who wants to reform France’s notoriously bureaucratic business environment, of being “weak” in the face of the threat of Islamic terrorism, a hot- button topic for France, which has seen a spate of attacks in recent years. Campaigning in northern France on Monday, Le Pen said Macron had no clear program on counterterrorism.

“He is a hysterical, radical ‘ Europeanist.’ He is for total open borders. He says there is no such thing as French culture. There is not one domain that he shows one ounce of patriotism,” she said.

Trump won the U. S. presidency in one of the most stunning political upsets in American his- tory by appealing in part, like Le Pen, to rural working- class voters disillusioned with the status quo, immigration and poor employment prospects.

But as France’s two presidential hopefuls embark on the final weeks of campaigning, surveys suggest — and Le Pen supporters fear — that voters across the political spectrum will likely join forces to keep her and her radical agenda from power. Le Pen wants to suspend all legal immigration, ban all visible religious symbols worn in public, including headscarves and the Jewish skullcap or kippah. She expresses contempt for globalization and international organizations, such as NATO and the International Monetary Fund, and wants to leave the EU.

FRANK AUGSTEIN, AP Supporters of far- right leader Marine Le Pen celebrate during a rowdy gathering in Henin Beaumont during Sunday’s voting. Le Pen drew 22 percent of the vote, securing a place in the French presidential runoff.