Macron Opens Lead Over Fillon in Frances Biggest Monthly Poll
Source: Bloomberg
The independent front-runner Emmanuel Macron opened up a 4.5 percentage-point advantage over his closest challenger in France’s presidential election, Francois Fillon, in the most comprehensive monthly poll of voters’ sentiment.
Twenty-three percent of respondents said they plan to back Macron in April’s first round vote compared with 18.5 percent for Fillon in an Ipsos-Sopra Steria survey of 15,874 people published by Le Monde newspaper and conducted between Feb. 7 and Feb. 12. National Front leader Marine Le Pen leads the polling for first round with 26 percent, but all surveys so far have shown that she’ll lose by a significant margin in May’s run-off, whoever she faces.
In his first ever political campaign, Macron is facing a slugging match with the Republican veteran Fillon for the second slot in that run-off and daily tracking polls have shown the gap between them narrowing to as little as one percentage point in recent days.
Fillon, a former prime minister who started the year as the front-runner, has seen his support stabilize after being buffeted at the start of the month by reports that his wife earned a public salary as a parliamentary aide without doing an appropriate amount of work. Fillon Wednesday called for new partnerships with Russia, tighter fiscal policy and tougher criminal laws for youths.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-16/macron-opens-lead-over-fillon-in-france-s-biggest-monthly-poll