http://www.smh.com.au/world/poll-tips-s … 1bl4r.htmlLONDON: The new leader of the far right, Marine Le Pen, has sent shockwaves through France after a poll suggested she could win an unprecedented first-round victory in the presidential elections.
Two weeks before the regional elections known as the ''cantonales'' - the last real electoral test before next year's presidential round - the lawyer daughter of Front National former leader Jean Marie Le Pen has eclipsed both the President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the Socialist leader, Martine Aubry, with 23 per cent of the vote.
The online poll, published in Le Parisien, has been questioned for its accuracy as its respondents are not carefully weighted like a telephone poll.
Advertisement: Story continues below It also assumed that Ms Aubry will be the socialists' candidate when it is becoming increasingly likely that the widely respected Dominique Strauss-Kahn, at present the head of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, will soon declare his presidential candidacy for the socialists.
However, a two-point lead over both Mr Sarkozy and Ms Aubry, who each polled 21 per cent of the vote, shows a dramatic rise in Ms Le Pen's popularity in just a few months. It sparked ferocious debate in France at the weekend as her rise echoes the famous 2002 election rounds when her father, an anti-immigration and anti-Semitic former paratrooper, knocked the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, out in the first round of the presidential poll before losing to Jacques Chirac.
Speaking on French television on Sunday, Ms Le Pen said she had started her political journey ''not to play token or bit parts nor to prove anything''.
''I just want to take my project so that we can implement our Front National solutions and policies [in France]'' she said.
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