PARIS (Reuters) -French pollster Odoxa predicted for the first time that 30-year-old far-right leader Jordan Bardella would win the next presidential election, scheduled in 2027, no matter who his opponents would be.
The current president of far-right National Rally (RN) party, and heir to long-time leader Marine Le Pen, would garner more votes than anyone else if a presidential vote was held this week, Odoxa found surveying 1,000 people on November 19 and 20.
Depending on his opponents in a first round, he would get either 35% or 36% of the votes, Odoxa said, while he would win against all the other candidates making it to the second round.
“Unfortunately for Jordan Bardella and his supporters, and fortunately for everyone else, being the overwhelming favourite in a presidential election several months before it takes place is no guarantee of success,” Odoxa said in the report released with the poll results.
In the past, Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, both faced broad political alliances that defeated them three times in the second round of presidential elections.
Marine Le Pen, 57, was barred from seeking public office for five years after a court found her and some members of her party guilty in March of misappropriation of funds.
She has appealed the ruling.
Bardella, whose popularity rating has surpassed his mentor’s, is seen as the party’s natural candidate if her ban is upheld.
Odoxa tested Bardella against far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, moderate leftist Raphael Glucksmann and centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe.
The poll showed Bardella winning with 74% against far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon in the second round and with a narrower 53% against Philippe. The poll’s margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Earlier this month, another poll showed Bardella narrowly losing in a run-off against Philippe.
The weak performance of current President Emmanuel Macron’s heirs follows a steep fall of his popularity since his decision to call a general election in mid-2024 led to a hung parliament unable to form a working coalition.
(Reporting by Inti Landauro; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Alex Richardson)
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