Going into the first round of the French presidential election, four candidates have polling figures between 19 and 23 per cent. The shooting of a policeman in Paris on Thursday night won’t do any harm to Marine Le Pen’s chances of making it to the second round. In 2002, her father narrowly beat the Socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, into third place (16.9 to 16.1 per cent), setting up a second round contest with Jacques Chirac that he lost by the record margin of 18 to 82 per cent. Since the 13 other candidates, who between them took 47 per cent of the vote in the first round, were more left than right-wing, it is quite possible that Jospin would have won the second round if only he had got that far. Almost certainly, several of the 13 would have beaten Le Pen.
