Marine Le Pen loses popularity, Macron gets a serious opponent; who is Éric Zemmour?

Marine Le Pen loses popularity, Macron gets a serious opponent; who is Éric Zemmour?

Political journalist, essayist, writer and television analyst Éric Zemmour surpassed far-right doyen Marine Le Pen in popularity, according to public opinion polls on presidential candidates, currently presenting himself as the main challenger to incumbent President Emmanuel Macron ahead of the April elections.

Zemmour once again put the issue of immigration at the center of the campaign. In the last month, Le Pen has lost the monopoly over the radical right, which she has enjoyed since she took over the leadership of the National Front party from her father in 2011.

Zemmour, an ultranationalist with several condemnations for racist hate speech, has begun to snatch voters' favor from Le Pen since he entered her field as a more radical challenger, RFI writes. A poll published on Wednesday shocked the country, showing that Zemmour overtook Le Pen for the first time.

"Never before has any candidate experienced such growth in such a short period of time as we saw with Éric Zemmour," commentator Antoine Gotti commented for RFI Harris Interactive.

Some 17-18 per cent of those polled said they would vote for Zemmour in the first round scheduled for April 10 next year, compared to seven per cent in early September. Le Pen has the support of about 15-16 percent of citizens. That result would be enough for Zemmour to enter the second round of voting, in which he will face President Emmanuel Macron, who will beat him by a margin of 55 to 45 percent.

But analysts point out that everything is still open and that the elections are far away. Zemmour himself has not yet officially announced his candidacy, but he is acting as a challenger by choosing the time to act, describing himself as a "candidate in debate", leaving a place in the debate show in prime time to respect election rules and publishing a book 'France has not yet said its the last word', which he tirelessly promotes.

Zemmour was also a guest at Orban's demographic forum, where a diverse right-wing team gathered. The poll, published in Challenges magazine, is likely to give additional impetus to Zemmour's anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic campaign, spurred by exhaustive media coverage and interviews he has given in the past month. Zemmour, who is of Algerian-Jewish descent, believes that France is sliding towards a civil war and is an open supporter of the "big exchange" theory, which claims that white Europeans are being replaced by immigrants.

In his best-selling books and regular television appearances, the 63-year-old throws the future into the battle between the Christian tradition of France and the culture of Muslim newcomers, which he described as "colonizers". Addressing reporters Monday night after a sold-out debate show in a conference room in Paris, Zemmour reduced his popularity to his ability to connect with the problems of ordinary people.

"I think many French people were waiting for someone to tell them about France, about how they feel: that the country is in danger of dying, undermined by a wave of unprecedented migration, that entire areas of the country have become enclaves of foreign Islamists," Zemmour said.

One of his proposals is to force parents to give their children names that sound French, and he would ban the use of the name Muhammad in the country. Philippe Corcuff, a left-wing French political scientist who recently published a book by the far right, believes that Zemmour is more dangerous than Marine Le Pen and a kind of "intellectual Trump".

"If he makes it to the second round, he has a better chance (than Le Pen) against Emmanuel Macron," Corcuff said, explaining that Zemmour was considered more popular than Le Pen thanks to a long career as a journalist on the right - wing daily Le Figaro and his TV career.

"He is more far right than Marine Le Pen, but he is considered more respectable," said Corcuff, a political scientist from the Institute for Political Studies in Lyon.

Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti blamed the media this week for focusing on Zemmour, while Socialist candidate and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said she was "disgusted to the point of nausea" by his growth.

Zemmour's blow forced Le Pen to fight back. For years, she tried to distance herself from her father, a firefighter, and to transfer the party - from the renaming of the National Assembly (RN) - to the ranks of nationalists.

At first, she tried to ignore Zemmour's challenge and privately persuaded him to move out. "Éric, you will get three percent and you will not stop me from passing to the second round," she told Zemmour, if what is written in his new book is to be believed.

Le Pen's modest campaign at the local level was overshadowed by Zemmour's media appearances in the last month in the biggest French TV and radio shows. "Apart from the form of brutality, what does he offer in terms of a solution," Le Pen said that for Zemmour in an interview this weekend, pointing to a more aggressive attitude.

Le Pen's allies attacked Zemmour because of his views on women, whom he believes do not have the same strength and leadership skills as men.