Far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement National are gaining credibility among right-wing voters although most French people still view her as a danger to democracy, a recent survey has found.
Read the original French story here.
Trust in Le Pen has gone up between January and December, according to the survey conducted by Kantar Public-Epoka for Le Monde and franceinfo. Public perception of Le Pen is also rising, particularly compared to a 2018 study, conducted after her first election defeat against Emmanuel Macron in 2017.
In December, 57% of those surveyed viewed Le Pen as being “capable to take decisions”, a five percentage point increase compared to January.
Increases were also recorded with regards to Le Pen being viewed as “understanding the problem of the French” (52%) and being “capable of rallying” (45%) – for which the metrics respectively went up 10 and 13 percentage points during the same period.
Among those surveyed, the far-right leader is seen more as a representative of a “patriotic right and attached to traditional values” (48%) than as a leader of the “extreme nationalist and xenophobic right” (36%).
But despite the positive trend, Le Pen is still overwhelmingly described as a “danger to democracy” by 54% of French people, far ahead of her main competitors for 2022, far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (39%) and President Macron (36%).
“Credibilisation is not synonymous with trivialisation”, Kantar experts said.
Strongest opposition force
Public perception of her party is even better. The party is viewed as democratically dangerous by 46% of the respondents in the December survey – a 12 percentage point drop since 2017.
Views on the party’s “capacity to participate in a government” have also changed in the past five years, with an increasing number of French people believing in the party’s governing credentials, which means that fewer people believe the party’s mission is “to gather opposition votes”.
Though belief in Rassemblement National’s governing prowess is not supported among voters on the opposite sides, with just about one in four Left and Macron voters believing it can be called a “governing party”, more than half (51%) of mainstream right-wing party Les Républicains supporters are of that opinion – a 19-point jump compared to January.
Generally speaking, Le Pen’s RN is seen as “the main opposition to Macron” by 40% of the French, ahead of the leftist NUPES alliance (33%) and Les Républicains (3%).
Similarly, the number of respondents saying they “agree” with RN’s ideas has been growing steadily for the past six years, reaching 31% in 2022.
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An ideology that is losing appeal
But Rassemblement National’s political ideology is losing appeal across society, particularly since 2000, when the first such survey was carried out.
On Islam, one of Rassemblement National’s key talking points, only 41% of those surveyed considered that “too many rights are granted to Islam and Muslims in France”, which is 13 percentage points lower than in 2013.
The same is true with regards to foreigners, with just 36% of those surveyed believing that “one no longer feels really at home in France”, while figures hit 44% in 2000 and 48% in 2005.
The “normalisation of the Rassemblement National in the French political landscape does not seem to equate a hardening of society”, the study also noted.
Le Pen and her party’s Euroscepticism is also losing ground as only 29% consider that “the construction of Europe is a threat to France’s identity” – a trend that could be explained by RN dropping its age-old drive to leave the eurozone and go for Frexit.
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Possible alliances
On forming alliances to adopt parliamentary texts, the electorate and lawmakers do not see eye to eye.
While lawmakers find it difficult to rally behind the National Rally to adopt laws, party supporters, including from NUPES (56%) and the Républicains (60%), are in favour of this.
According to the survey, the Rassemblement National is indeed “gaining credibility, which explains that the hypothesis of joint votes with it in the National Assembly is not rejected by the French”.
“The French now see the RN deputies as deputies like any others,” the survey added.
The improved perception of Le Pen might even allow her to conquer the Elysée in the future.
If elections were held at the end of October, six months after the presidential election in April, Le Pen would probably even take first place in the first round with 30%, above Emmanuel Macron on 29%, an IFOP survey has found.
In a second round, Macron would again come out on top with 53%, but this would give him an even smaller margin than the 58.5% he obtained in April.
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[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
Source: euractiv.com
