Outsider Candidates Poised to Upend Razor-Thin French Presidential Election

PARIS -- Forgive the French if they seem on edge.

Last week, the building housing the campaign headquarters of far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was hit by a suspected arson attack -- authorities reported no injuries and minor damage to the building. This week, Emmanuel Macron, the centrist presidential candidate, lashed back against what he called "fake news" accusations of possessing offshore accounts and a hidden inheritance.

Intelligence services, meanwhile, are warning of a terror threat tied to this weekend's presidential election and have boosted security around all presidential candidates. The threats haven't slowed Le Pen or Macron -- the top two candidates -- as they rally voters in the final week of a neck-and-neck race to the Élysée Palace.

Few national elections in France have been as contentious, close or as unpredictable as the fast-approaching April 23 presidential vote. Even fewer elections here have carried such high stakes. For sure, the results will decide the fabric of the French government and the economic path it pursues. But the election results may also drastically alter the global postwar geopolitical order and determine if the beleaguered European Union endures or crumbles.

"This is obviously not an ordinary election for France," wrote Dominique Moisi, a prolific French thinker and political analyst. "The survival of Europe is at stake, and the stakes are higher than ever before in any other election under the Fifth Republic. Does the French nationalist and xenophobic right have a chance of coming to power?"

The narratives hanging over the French vote ring familiar to last year's presidential election in the U.S. and Brexit vote in the U.K., as well as last month's elections in the Netherlands. Immigration, nationalism and the role of Islam in French society -- Le Pen's favorite themes -- have occupied much of the campaign rhetoric.

Candidates also have found footing by questioning the value of international groupings such as the EU, and by accusing opposing candidates of corruption. In a development sounding familiar with the U.S. election, Russian interference, in the form of "fake news" as detailed by The New York Times, is now in play in French politics.

None of the 11 candidates officially contesting in the first-round vote are likely to receive more than 50 percent of the vote, the benchmark needed to win the election outright. The most likely scenario is the two candidates with the most votes will face off in a second round of elections on May 7 -- but who those two will be is far from certain as the race tightens.

Inching closer to Macron and Le Pen is center-right François Fillon, once a favorite before corruption scandals besieged him, and the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who few had taken seriously until an 11th-hour surge established the former Trotskyist as the dark horse of the race.

Collapse of the establishment

Since the end of World War II, government power here has frequently toggled between the Socialist Party and the Republicans (earlier known by the acronym UMP). But in this election, President Francois Hollande's Socialists are battling for survival.

Hollande grew so unpopular that he became the first sitting president in recent French history not to run for a second term. Instead, a long spell of primaries elected Benoît Hamon as the party candidate. But Hamon, who favors taxes on robots and further reducing France's famed 35-hour work week, isn't even polling among the top four slots.

Typically, the center-right Republicans would have seized this opportunity. Fillon, who had been the prime minister when Nicolas Sarkozy was president, elbowed out his former boss in the party primaries, and looked poised to be the strongest candidate in the race.

But a season of scandals that ranged from allegations that he paid family members for official work they did not do to accusations that he was given about $50,000 of clothing from friends, has tapped into a wellspring of public anger about the French political elite.

Mélenchon, a Mao-jacket wearing politician who is running as an independent, has shot ahead of Socialist Hamon in recent weeks. "He's able to use his charisma and he's speaking with a lot of strength," says political commentator Olivier Rouquan. "He's able to speak to young voters by using YouTube, by using holograms. Essentially, he's a very good communicator."

The outsiders

For the first time in French elections, both the top two candidates don't belong to a mainstream party. Le Pen and Macron have both ridden an anti-establishment wave.

"They can capitalize on it because they effectively want to change the system," Rouquan says.

Macron, a one-time investment banker, was Hollande's economy minister but is running as an independent. His party, En Marche! (Onward!), was formed just a year ago. Macron says he aims to bridge the right-left divide and has styled himself as a pragmatist who can mend ideological rifts.

Le Pen is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which has long been dismissed as an anti-Semitic fringe outfit. Although the party been around for more than four decades, Marine Le Pen has cast herself an outsider fighting an elite political and media establishment that she accuses of colluding to keep her out of power.

Since Le Pen took over the National Front, she has worked to make it more palatable to the French public by focusing on the plight of a working class squeezed out of jobs, a situation she has blamed on the European Union and immigration.

Le Pen, a member of the EU parliament who doesn't support the existence of the EU, has said she'll call for a referendum on membership to the bloc if elected. She has been accused of misusing EU funds but has used her parliamentary immunity to avoid a police summons.

'Twisting the truth'

Although Le Pen and dark horse Mélenchon come from the opposite ends of the political spectrum, they share similar economic and foreign policy platforms. Both candidates favor France leaving NATO, reassessing membership to the EU and warmer ties to Russia.

Previously, whenever the National Front tasted victory in the first round of elections at the national or local level, the two mainstream parties have united to stop Le Pen's party from winning. It's the reason why Le Pen is projected to lose the run-off vote in the upcoming election.

Still, the conditions are ripe for an upset victory. Populist forces excoriating a culture of politics as usual have gained ground in France like elsewhere in Europe and the U.S., fueled here by frustrations over an unemployment rate of 10 percent, and as high as 25 percent among the youth.

At the televised presidential debate of the top five contenders last month, Macron denounced Le Pen for "twisting the truth" about radical Islam, even as the moderate candidate conceded that he supports a ban on the full-body swimsuit known as the burkini, ostensibly for security reasons.

"Marine Le Pen succeeded at defining the French values as eating pork, drinking alcohol, being white and being Christian," Samia Hathroubi, a teacher in the Paris suburbs and director of Foundation for Ethnic Understanding in Europe, said in March at a panel discussion in Los Angeles.

"Even if she doesn't win, she has already won the hearts and minds of some French citizens. The process has already started, her ideas are everywhere and have shaped society."

Sruthi Gottipati is a Paris-based journalist. You can follow her on Twitter here.