Poll:
Marion Le Pen headed for victory
The
survey raises the prospect of a double regional victory for the
anti-immigration National Front party.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
10/19/15, 11:22 AM CET Updated 10/19/15, 9:46 PM CET
Marion Maréchal-Le
Pen, the granddaughter of ex-National Front party leader Jean-Marie
Le Pen, is on course to win a December local election in southeastern
France.
An Odoxa survey
published Sunday showed the 25-year-old National Front politician
winning 37 percent of the final-round vote, versus 34 percent for her
main center-right rival, Nice mayor Christian Estrosi, in the
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.
Meanwhile her aunt,
party chief Marine Le Pen, maintains a strong lead over both left-
and right-wing rivals in the northern Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.
The poll results
raise the prospect of a double regional victory for the
anti-immigration National Front party, which claims that it could
prevail in as many as six regions.
Winning the
presidency of even two regions would be a major achievement for the
National Front, both symbolically and in terms establishing itself as
a local power broker.
France reshuffled
its administrative map this year, reducing its number of metropolitan
regions to 13 from 22. The newly elected presidents of regions will
hold greater sway than previously over appointments and budgets,
which in 2015 totaled more than €2 billion each in the PACA and
Nord-Pas-de-Calais regions.
Marion Maréchal-Le
Pen, often described as the “darling” of far-right patriarch
Jean-Marie, is conducting an intensive local campaign focused on
immigration, security and the idea of protecting France’s identity.
She has maintained
her ties to Jean-Marie throughout a bitter family feud with Marine
and met with him at the family residence near Paris last Tuesday
despite his exclusion from the party in August.
Jean-Marie, who was
kicked out the National Front for saying he still believed the Nazi
gas chambers were a mere detail of history, maintains considerable
support in southern France. Marion wants to enlist his support as
well as that of his allies to increase her chances of winning.
While Marine has
publicly severed ties with her father, she continues to borrow money
from his finance firm, Cotelec, which acts as a bank for the National
Front.
She even borrowed
money for her regional election campaign, party treasurer Wallerand
de St Just told POLITICO.
Unlike her niece,
Marine Le Pen is not conducting an intensive local campaign. Instead
she is using the regional elections to drum up support and raise her
profile ahead of a presidential election in 2017, which remains her
priority.
The
“darling” of patriarch Jean-Marie is conducting a local campaign
focused on immigration, security and French identity.
A rival in the
Nord-Pas-de-Calais race, Europe-Ecologie les Verts (EELV) candidate
Sandrine Rousseau, told POLITICO that Le Pen declined invitations to
participate in election debates on local TV and spent most of her
time outside the region trying to boost support for other candidates,
including her Vice President Florian Philippot who is running in the
Alsace-Lorraine-Champagne-Ardenne region.
President Francois
Hollande’s socialist party fears a disaster in the December
elections.
In a referendum
Sunday, Hollande’s party asked left-wing voters if they would
accept merging the candidate lists of the socialist party with those
of the EELV and the far-left Parti de Gauche. Presenting unified
left-wing election lists would increase their chances of prevailing
over the Right and far-right in several regions.
However, the chiefs
of both rival left-wing parties have rejected the socialist party’s
overtures. Rousseau said that her party could not associate itself
with the socialists, who have traditionally held sway in the
Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, due to numerous corruption scandals.
“If we join with
their list, we’re getting on board the Titanic,” Rousseau said.
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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