French Election: Rise of Mélenchon and its immense implication

Many of our readers, who have not been following the 2017 French election campaign vividly, might not be aware of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who represents the left front in the upcoming French election on 23rd April. Recent polls suggest that his popularity has gained pace and he is now just a few points behind the former front-runner Francois Fillon, whose campaign was devastated by fake jobs scandal.  Polls suggest that he might get as much as 16 percent of the votes, just behind Mr. Fillon’s 17 percent. While he is not likely to move to the second round where two top candidates will battle it out, his supporters could make a big difference in the second round.

While Madame Le Pen and Mr. Mélenchon remain political opponents, they both share lot many similar ideas. Both are anti-establishment, they both are anti-EU, and they are both anti-globalization. His voters could be viewed in similarities to Bernie Sanders’ voters in the US election, many of whom backed Donald Trump when their candidate failed to make it to the final round.  We suspect that much of the Mélenchon voters would end up supporting Madame Le Pen rather than Emmanuel Macron. They are likely to find themselves in a much more difficult position to support extremely pro-EU, and pro-refugee Macron in the second round. We believe that the recent rise of Mélenchon support would prove very crucial in the second round.