ORLEANS, France - Far-right leader Marine Le Pen formally launched her presidential campaign on Sunday in Orleans, the city of Joan of Arc - the 15th-century heroine revered by French nationalists as a symbol of patriotism and sovereignty - promising 'zero tolerance' policing and saying restoring security was the state's first duty. 'We are not living through the end of the world but the end of a world, their world,' she told cheering supporters of her political opponents, building her speech around a theme of national 'Renaissance'.
Source: Reuters, Oct 25 (Zepeda/Economou)
Le Pen pledged a hard line on immigration - restoring border controls, automatically expelling foreign criminals and cracking down on gangs and drug traffickers - and sought an optimistic note: 'Things were good before, they will be better tomorrow,' Reuters reported. France 24 reported she addressed some 10,000 supporters at the closing rally of the National Rally's two-day congress, where party president Jordan Bardella was re-elected as party leader, and that a large counter-demonstration against the far right had been held in the city on Saturday.
Source: France 24, Oct 25
The launch lands in a country rattled by weeks of unrest: mass protests over living costs and inequality last weekend descended into looting and vandalism, and protests flared again on Saturday. The turmoil has boosted Le Pen - France 24 reported the latest Ifop poll, taken in the wake of the protests and riots, suggested she would win the first round by a wide margin, with Melenchon her most likely runoff opponent; Reuters said surveys suggest she would easily defeat Melenchon in a runoff expected in early May.
Source: France 24 / Ifop poll reporting, Oct 25
What is solid
- Le Pen formally launched her campaign at the National Rally congress in Orleans on Sunday, October 25 (Reuters; France 24)
- She promised zero-tolerance policing and a hard immigration line, and a Sunday poll put her first at 32-33.5% (Reuters)
What is only claimed
- Polls this far from next year's vote are a snapshot, not a result - the field, the runoff pairing and the protest situation can all change before election day
Why Orleans, and why now
The staging was deliberate: Orleans, south of Paris, is inseparable from Joan of Arc, and the congress doubled as a show of party unity under Bardella, who was re-elected party president unopposed, AFP-sourced reporting ahead of the congress noted, with security tightened in the city and sizeable counter-demonstrations planned. With mainstream parties losing voters to the extremes, Le Pen's team is betting that a campaign opened on order and security, in the middle of a protest wave, sets the terms of the race.