Although Emmanuel Macron leads in every poll, Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin says differentiated turnout could tip the French election to Marine Le Pen:

We ran simulations with the latest polling data and, with an overall turnout of 72% and voting intentions of 59% to 41% in favor of Macron, if Le Pen’s prospective voters turn out at a rate of 88% vs 61% for Macron, then she would win.

Differentiated turnout to Le Pen’s advantage is a realistic scenario as polls show Macron’s support is more tepid than hers and that French voters currently view her second round campaign stronger than Macron’s (a Harris Interactive poll found 61% of the French population think Le Pen kicked off her second round campaign well compared to 52% who believe Macron did not), that only 40% of people actually want to see Macron elected, and that first-round voters of moderate and left-leaning candidates eliminated from the runoff could abstain en masse.

“Not since World War II has the anti-immigrant far right been closer to gaining power in France. With her second-place finish on Sunday in the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen has dragged her National Front party from the dark fringes of its first 40 years,” the New York Times reports.

“But that remarkable accomplishment is so alarming to so many in France that as soon as the preliminary results were announced at 8:01 p.m., virtually all of her major opponents in the 11-person race called for her defeat in the second-round runoff on May 7. They implored their supporters to vote for the candidate projected to come out on top on Sunday, the centrist, pro-European Union former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, a political novice and outsider.”

President Trump told the AP that he is not explicitly endorsing Marine Le Pen in France’s election.

But he says he believes she will be helped by the attack that left a Paris police officer dead, because she’s the candidate who is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Haaretz: “Le Pen, a leading contender in the upcoming French presidential contest, told France 2 TV that if elected, she will not allow French citizens to hold on to any citizenship in a non-European country. When asked specifically about Israel and Jews, who form a large community in France, the Front National party leader responded: ‘Israel isn’t a member of the European Union, and doesn’t consider itself as such,’ and therefore a dual French-Israeli citizenship will not be allowed.”

“Le Pen said that the ban will also apply to citizens of the U.S. and North African countries, but that dual citizens of the EU and of Russia, which she said is part of she termed the ‘Europe of nations,’ will be exempted.”