French polling firm Odoxa has predicted for the first time that 30-year-old Jordan Bardela would win the next presidential election, scheduled for 2027, no matter who his opponent is.
The current president of the National Rally (RN) party and heir to longtime party leader Marine Le Pen would garner more votes than anyone else if the presidential election were held this week, Odoxa found in its survey of a sample of 1,000 voters on November 19 and 20.
Depending on his opponent in the first round, Bardela would have garnered either 35% or 36% of the vote, according to Odoxa, while beating whichever other candidate was his opponent in the second round. “Unfortunately for Jordan Bardela and his supporters, and fortunately for everyone else, being the heavy favorite in a presidential election several months before it takes place does not guarantee success,” Odoxa said in the report released with the poll results.
In the past, Marine Le Pen and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, have both faced broad political alliances that caused them to lose three times in the second round of presidential elections. Marine Le Pen, 57, has been barred from running for public office for five years after a court in March found her and some members of her party guilty of “misusing funds”. Le Pen has appealed the ruling.
Bardela, whose popularity ratings have exceeded those of Le Pen, is considered the party’s natural candidate if the ban imposed on her is maintained.
Odoxa put Bardela as a candidate against radical left leader Jean-Luc Melanson, moderate leftist Rafael Glicksman and centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Atal and Edouard Philippe. The poll showed that Bardela would win with 74% against Melanson in the second round and 53% against Philippe. The poll’s margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Earlier this month, another poll had shown that Bardela would have lost by a narrow margin in the second round if he had faced Philippe.
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