A dramatic seven-point surge by the wildcard leftwing veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears to be holding, unexpectedly turning France’s roller-coaster presidential race into a possible four-way contest.
Barely 10 days from the first round of voting on 23 April, the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, both with 23-24% of the vote, are still favourites to go through to the run-off round.
But Mélenchon, an acid-tongued political showman with a radical tax-and-spend platform, is now just five or six points behind. Some recent polls have placed him third, ahead of the scandal-hit centre-right candidate, François Fillon.
Mélenchon’s rise means that with up to a third of voters undecided, no two opinion polls entirely alike and margins of error to account for, it is impossible to say with certainty who of the front four will go head-to-head in the second round…
Source: French election shaken by surge in support for far-left candidate | World news | The Guardian
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