europe

The left coalition (NFP) is already much more fragile than it was last year, especially given the Socialist Party's (PS) advances to the current government which especially angered Mélenchon's party (Mélenchon himself declared that the NFP was over when the PS initially started to attempt to court the government). But, on Mélenchon himself, the media demonisation campaign against him has been in full swing for years now and most French people are more scared of him and his party than of the far right purely because of that. In 2022 opinion polls for a Mélenchon-Le Pen round gave a victory to Le Pen, and same for Macron (with a larger margin); contrast this to 2017, when polls indicated that he would have won the second round had he passed the first round. And today his portrayal is even leagues worse than it was in 2022 (probably because the NUPES and then the NFP proved that he was still a relative danger to the neolibs); were he to get to the second round, I'd be incredibly surprised if he gets elected regardless of who he is facing.