Fillon, Le Pen Unlikely to Advance to Second Round of French Election – Poll

The Republicans party candidate for the French presidency, Francois Fillon, and National Front leader Marine Le Pen are unlikely to advance to the second round of the presidential election, a new poll showed on Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The poll conducted by Elabe for French newspaper Les Echos on Monday and Tuesday included two voting scenarios, the results of which varied if the leader of the French Democratic Movement (MoDem) party, Francois Bayrou, participated in the election or not.

Le Pen’s first round score remained almost unchanged from the beginning of the year. It went up by 3 percentage points to 26-27 percent, according to the poll.

Fillon is predicted to get 19-20 percent of the votes, which is 5 to 6 percentage points less than was predicted by the previous poll, the survey showed.

At the same time, first round voting results for independent candidate Emmanuel Macron remained almost unchanged. He scored 22-23 percent depending on the voting scenario.

Fillon will therefore not make it to the second round of the election, according to the poll results.

Elabe suggested Macron would beat Le Pen in the second round with 65 percent of the votes.

The first round of the French presidential election is scheduled for April 23, with the run-off slated for May 7.