Erwan Lestrohan, chief of the research department at BVA Opinion, told Sputnik that one of the factors contributing to this trend is the shift towards Internet surveys instead of polls conducted via telephone.
"During an Internet survey, it’s easy for people to admit that they vote for National Front. It’s not like during a phone survey because there are no interviewers and no social selectiveness… It can also be explained by pre-election pressure, and as the support for the National Front becomes more and more widespread, it becomes more socially acceptable," he said.
Meanwhile, Jérôme Fourquet, head of the public relations department of the French Institute of Public Opinion, told Sputnik that people now are much more willing to admit that they vote for the far-right parties as compared to 10-15 years ago.
He said that this tendency may be a result of the fact that for a long time the National Front based its campaign on the issues that now became a focus of public opinion, "be it the role of Islam, migration or the security situation."
"The revoking of citizenship issue is a good example: for several months the president of France, a Socialist, was promoting a mechanism for revoking citizenship, a measure traditionally advocated by the National Front. So the fact that these issues elicited a widespread response in the society, and that some of them were adopted by other political forces, in a sense makes it more legitimate to support the National Front," Fourquet said.
He also pointed out that the current dynamic, both in terms of the regional and the presidential elections, is quite favorable for the National Front, as the 28 percent of votes it secured during the last elections is almost twice the best result (15 percent) achieved by the party in the 1990s.
