Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader who managed to soften her image and is excited to become president of France

With a speech focused on purchasing power and a moderate image compared to the ultra Éric Zemmour, Marine Le Pen is on the verge of fulfilling the decades-long dream of the far right: to become president of France.

“I have never been so close to victory,” said at the end of March the 53-year-old candidate for the National Group (RN), who lost in the second round to liberal Emmanuel Macron with 33.9% of votes in 2017.

However, the third time may be the charm. According to early estimates, Le Pen would be able to move to balotage this Sunday with between 23.5% and 24.7% of votes against Macron (27.6% and 29.7%).

According to the last polls on Friday before the first round, the centrist's lead in the second round on April 24 is reduced to between 2 and 8 points.

If she won the keys to the Elysee, this lawyer would successfully crown her strategy of erasing the extremist image of the party since in 2011 she took the reins of the then National Front (FN), founded by her father.

Jean-Marie Le Pen already reached the milestone of contesting balotage in 2002, when he lost with almost 18% of votes to conservative Jacques Chirac, but with an image of a racist, anti-Semitic and nostalgic party for colonial Algeria.

Marine Le Pen separated the prominent members of these sectors, including his father, and others joined the ranks of his rival Éric Zemmour, who, according to observers, seeks to revive the traditional FN.

Smoothing your image

“The mere presence of Éric Zemmour, perceived as more radical than her in both substance and form, has mechanically re-focused the image of Le Pen,” Mathieu Gallard, an analyst at Ipsos France, tweeted recently.

The RN candidate has also made efforts to soften her image to leave behind the heated face to face with Macron in 2017, in which she was reproached for her “aggressiveness” and “lack of preparation”.

Le Pen “plays nice and takes advantage of it. And, in addition, we have become accustomed to extremes,” lamented the minister of agriculture close to Macron, Julien Denormandie, about the rise of the rival candidate in her third presidential election.

The politician born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy city west of Paris, visits markets, climbs tractors and gives intimate interviews... to differentiate itself from Macron, perceived as “arrogant”.

In interviews, she also often presents herself as a farmer, a cat breeder, in an attempt to normalize her image and undermine the “republican front” of parties against her in the second round, according to a report by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.

“Fundamentals of the FN”

His campaign has focused on criticizing the rise in energy prices, in a context of fear about the loss of purchasing power, and on ensuring that he will not push the retirement age to 65 as Macron proposes, but to bring it up to 60 in some cases.

However, “his program has hardly changed from the fundamentals of FN, such as immigration and national identity,” Cécile Alduy, a professor at the American University of Stanford, recently told AFP.

His plans include curbing migration and combating “Islamist ideology”: reserving social benefits for the French, ending family reunification or banning the veil in public space, among other proposals.

“But he has chosen a different vocabulary to justify it: in the name of secularism and republican values, and even feminism,” added Alduy, a specialist in far-right discourse.

Dressed in light colors and smiling all the time, she has chosen to appear as the candidate for “civil peace” and “national unity”, and seeks to “make the harshness of her program forget”, according to the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.

Marine Le Pen, a blonde with a firm character and clear eyes, presents herself as a “modern woman” and single. This mother of three divorced twice, separated from her last partner and lives with a childhood friend she took in.

( Por Toni Cerdá, AFP)