The Kinder, Gentler National Front Has Made Only a Small Gain This Year

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I don’t really have any point to make about this, but I was curious about how Marine Le Pen’s National Front has done over the past few decades in elections for president of France. Here it is:

Since taking over the National Front, Marine Le Pen’s strategy has been to sell a softer, less overtly racist version of the party her father founded. This, combined with the nationalist fervor supposedly taking over Europe, has produced a result 4.5 percentage points higher than her lunatic dad received in 1997 and 3.5 points higher than Marine herself received in 2012.

Is that a lot? A little? I’m not sure. It doesn’t seem like a huge swing to me, and it’s a sharp drop from the vote share the party received in recent elections for regional councils and the European Parliament. I don’t know enough about French politics to venture an opinion, but it doesn’t seem like strong evidence in favor of a big European swing to the nationalist right.