Shock as poll shows far right Le Pen leads presidential race

A SHOCK poll showed far-right champion Marine Le Pen leading the race for the French presidency yesterday, as incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy faced claims he is fuelling anti-Muslim sentiment.

An opinion poll conducted by Harris Interactive for Le Parisien newspaper put the National Front leader Le Pen’s likely support in next year’s vote at 23%, against 21% for the centre-right’s Sarkozy.

The survey itself must be taken with a pinch of salt. It was conducted online, a method sometimes seen as less accurate than telephone polling, and it presumed that Socialist leader Martine Aubry would be in the race.

International Monetary Fund director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has signalled he is preparing to declare himself as a candidate for the Socialist Party’s nomination and other polls have shown him favourite if he does.

In any case, French presidential elections take place over two rounds, so even if Le Pen’s score is enough to get into the second round, centrist voters would likely rally to whichever mainstream candidate joined her there.

But, reservations aside, the big surge in far-right support since Marine Le Pen took over the party from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in January shows she could repeat his 2002 feat and knock out the third-placed candidate.

That prospect has sent shockwaves through the political establishment, and the left is training its fire not on the far-right challenger, but on Sarkozy — accusing him of stirring dangerous anti-Muslim opinion.

Sarkozy last month declared that “multiculturalism is dead” and said he wanted to see a “French Islam and not an Islam in France”.

Last week he reached out to his conservative base, hailing France’s “Christian heritage” in a speech in a Catholic pilgrim town.