French Presidential Election: Can Marine Le Pen Win?

Join France’s renowned political commentator and sociologist Virginie Martin of Kedge Business School in Paris and Tristan Cabello, a historian of American and French social movements and a senior lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, for an analysis of the first round of the French election, on Thursday, April 21, 2022, at 1 p.m. EST.

After dominating the first round with 27% of the vote to Le Pen’s 23%, French President Emmanuel Macron will face the far right’s candidate in a presidential run-off on April 24. The repetition of the 2017 run-off supports both Macron’s and Le Pen’s political assessments. The left-right division is no longer significant; instead, an opposition has emerged between a mainstream pro-European bloc on one side and nationalists on the other. While polls indicate that Macron will win re-election in two weeks, first-round results show that the president cannot rest on his laurels. With Macron polling as low as 51%, the possibility of a Le Pen presidency exists.