“We are the ones who decide, Jordan and me,” she said.
Le Pen was found guilty last year of embezzling European Parliament funds and sentenced to an immediate five-year ban from running for public office. She will return to court in January after appealing all charges, which she has repeatedly denied and framed as politically motivated. She has said Bardella will run in her place if the appeal court upholds the election ban, but a decision won’t be known before spring.
Shifting dynamic
But while Bardella is officially his party’s plan B, polls show he is starting to outshine his boss. In an IFOP-Fiducial poll unveiled Tuesday, 44 percent of respondents said they wanted Bardella to run in the 2027 presidential election against 40 percent for Le Pen.
Last week, a survey from pollster Odoxa showed Bardella winning against all the other candidates polled, beating the likes of center-right Edouard Philippe to leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Le Pen wasn’t even polled.
While polls this early before an election have to be taken with a serious grain of salt, the dynamic hasn’t gone unnoticed.
Renaud Labaye, the National Rally group’s secretary-general in the National Assembly and a close adviser to Le Pen, said the poll was good news for the party, showing “the dynamic was on [their] side.”