Poll shows Le Pen leading among French presidential contenders

The leader of the parliamentary faction of the party "National Union" Marine Le Pen collected a record number of votes in a poll on the most preferred candidate for the post of president in future elections in 2027. This became known on December 11 from the results of a poll conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion (Ifop) for the newspaper Le Figaro.

Le Pen is confidently ahead of the other two possible candidates for the presidency of France. In the first round, 38% of respondents would vote for her. Former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal would get 20% of the vote, while former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe would get 26%.

The poll was conducted among 1.1 thousand adult citizens of France between December 6 and 9.

Earlier, on November 16, Le Pen compared the requested sentence for her in the case of fictitious hiring of employees in the European Parliament to a political execution. The prosecution demands punishment for Le Pen in the form of a ban on being elected to state bodies for five years.

Before that, on November 14, BFM TV reported that the prosecutor's office in Paris demanded for Le Pen a punishment of five years in prison, of which three years - suspended sentence, two - with an electronic bracelet.

Le Pen's trial began in France in late September. She was charged with "misuse of public money" of the European Union from 2004 to 2016. The trial will take place at the correctional tribunal in Paris.

Le Pen has run for president three times in her career: in 2012, 2017 and 2022. During the last two campaigns, she reached the second round of the election, but lost both times to Emmanuel Macron.

In 2024, the right-wing coalition led by Le Pen's National Rally won 143 seats in the French parliamentary elections.