Le Pen’s Narrow Path Requires Opponents to Stay Home

“With a tense battle for the future of France underway ahead of a presidential runoff election next month, the far-right insurgent Marine Le Pen is pulling a page from the same improbable victory playbook as President Trump: encouraging her opponents to stay home,” the Washington Post reports.

“Opinion polls suggest that Le Pen’s opponent, centrist newcomer Emmanuel Macron, holds a commanding lead ahead of the May 7 runoff, less because French voters believe in him than because they are frightened by Le Pen’s National Front, which has long been dogged by charges of anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies.”

“But in a year when voters are storming the establishment bastions around the world, many mainstream French politicians are warning that Macron’s campaign is dangerously complacent.”