The hard-right political talk-show star Eric Zemmour, a Jew of Algerian descent who believes in a "Catholic France," has gained more ground and would reach the second-round runoff vote in France's presidential election next April, a Harris Interactive opinion poll showed on Wednesday.
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The poll is the first since Emmanuel Macron won the presidency in 2017 to upend the long-anticipated scenario of a repeat knockout contest between Macron and right-wing leader Marine Le Pen.
A divisive figure who has made a career pushing the bounds of political correctness on subjects such as immigration and national identity, Zemmour has emerged in past months from the pack to become one of the most popular candidates.
The Harris Interactive poll showed Zemmour winning 17% (up 4 points on a late September poll) of voter support, beating Le Pen on 15% and any one of the three challengers vying for the center-right ticket.
"A candidate has never been known to experience such a change in voter intentions in so short a space of time as we've seen with Eric Zemmour," pollster Antoine Gautier from Harris Interactive commented on the results of the survey.
Macron would best Zemmour 55%-45% in the second round, the poll showed. Macron beat Le Pen 66%-%34 in the run-off in 2017. The Harris Interactive poll showed Macron against Le Pen at 53%-47%, if she were to get through this time.
Zemmour, 63, who holds convictions for inciting hatred, has not formally thrown his hat in the ring, but he is behaving every bit the challenger choosing his moment to act, describing himself as a "candidate in the debate," quitting his prime-time chat-show spot to comply with electoral rules and publishing a book "France Has Not Yet Said Its Final Word."
Zemmour paints himself as a political outsider in tune with an alienated middle class and in his book draws parallels between himself and former US President Donald Trump.
Zemmour views France as slipping towards a civil war and he is an open advocate of the "great replacement" theory which posits that white Europeans are being replaced by immigrants.
In his best-selling books and regular appearances on television, he casts the future as a battle between France's Christian traditions and the culture of Muslim newcomers who he has described as "colonizers."
Analysts stress the election remains highly unpredictable and the final lineup of candidates is still unknown, with Zemmour himself, as stated, yet to formally announce his bid.
But the poll, published in Challenges magazine, is likely to lend further momentum to Zemmour's anti-immigration, anti-Islam campaign which has been boosted by exhaustive media coverage and interviews over the last month.
"The polls are encouraging," Zemmour told CNews on Wednesday. "It's not in my interests to declare my candidacy now. You need to choose the right moment."
The poll showed Macron beating all main challengers in the second round, including Xavier Bertrand. Bertrand is running against Valerie Pecresse, head of the Ile de France region, and former European Union Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier for the mainstream right ticket.
Zemmour's surge has left Le Pen struggling to respond.
Over the years, she has sought to distance herself from her firebrand father and reposition the party – since rebranded the National Rally (RN) – as a mainstream nationalist group.
She initially sought to ignore Zemmour's challenge and privately urged him to step aside.
But her grassroots campaigning this month has been entirely overshadowed by the pundit's media blitz that has seen him feature daily on France's biggest TV and radio shows.
"Apart from a form of brutality, what is he offering in terms of solutions?" Le Pen said of Zemmour in an interview at the weekend that signaled a more aggressive stance.
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, meanwhile, has already thrown his support behind Zemmour.
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Zemmour has been criticized by Jewish groups in France for his views on the Vichy regime during the Nazi occupation, which he has said "tried to save" French Jews from the Nazi death camps and was both misunderstood and misrepresented, a victim of a historical orthodoxy that views everything about the collaborationist regime in terms of "absolute evil."
According to Zemmour, the 75% of French Jews who survived the war were "saved by the strategy of [Vichy leader] Philippe Pétain and [wartime Prime Minister] Pierre Laval in the face of German demands."
Specifically, he says they deliberately "sacrificed foreign Jews [living in France] in order to save French Jews."
