French Leftists Staying Home Could Lead To Le Pen Win

Far-right populist Marine Le Pen is behind in the polls and an outsider to win France's presidential elections Sunday.

But she still has a slim path to victory, according to experts, one that shares similarities with the more ardent left-wing supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders in the U.S. election last year.

Polls predict Le Pen will get around 40 percent of the vote, a huge increase on her party's previous performances, but not enough defeat centrist front-runner Emmanuel Macron, who is tipped to score around 60 percent and win the presidency.

Although unlikely, a victory for Le Pen would represent a political earthquake not just in France, but across Europe and beyond. As a populist, she sees herself as a continuation of the movement that elected President Donald Trump, whose victory she hailed as "an additional stone in the building of a new world."

One way Le Pen could win is if enough French voters stay home — apathy and voter abstinence are her friends.

Le Pen and her Front National party already received a boost in this regard, when Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left candidate defeated in the first round of voting, refused to tell his supporters to back Macron.

This broke with a French tradition known as the "Republican Front," where voters from the left, center and center-right club together to keep the far-right from power — a lesser-of-two-evils voting tactic.

Mélenchon's silence appears to have had an effect. On Tuesday, a poll revealed two-thirds of his supporters planned to spoil their ballots or abstain entirely.

...Some 35 percent of people who supported scandal-plagued conservative François Fillon in the first round are also planning to stay at home, according to Antonio Barroso, managing director at Teneo Intelligence, a New York-based think tank.

"A high level of abstention is still the biggest threat that Macron faces," he said. "But the threat does not come from Mélenchon's voters only."