PARIS — The killing of a policeman by a suspected Islamist militant pushed national security to the top of the French political agenda on Friday, two days before the presidential election.

With the first round of voting in the two-stage election taking place on Sunday, far-right nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen promised tougher immigration and border controls to beat “Islamist terrorism” if elected.

Centrist Emmanuel Macron, who narrowly leads a tight race ahead of Le Pen, said the solutions were not as simple as she suggested, and that there was “no such thing as zero risk.”

Anyone who said otherwise was irresponsible, said Macron, a former economy minister in the government that Le Pen has repeatedly criticized for its security record.

There are four leading candidates in a race that is still too close to call. Sunday’s voting will be followed by a runoff on May 7 between the top two candidates.

The first poll conducted entirely after Thursday’s attack suggested Le Pen had gained some ground on Macron.

While he was still seen winning the first round with 24.5 percent, his score slipped half a percentage point while Le Pen’s rose by one to 23 percent.

Conservative Francois Fillon, a former prime minister, and the far left’s Jean-Luc Melenchon were both down half a percentage point on 19 percent in the Odoxa poll for the newspaper Le Point.

The attack on the Champs-Elysees boulevard in the very heart of the capital added a new source of unpredictability to an election that will decide the management of France’s 2.2 trillion euro economy, which vies with Britain for the rank of fifth-largest in the world.

U.S. President Donald Trump told The Associated Press on Friday he thought the attack will “probably help” Le Pen because she is the candidate who is “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

Trump told the AP in an interview he was not explicitly endorsing Le Pen but that he believes the attack will affect how French people vote on Sunday.

The outcome could also have a bearing on France’s place in the world and in a European Union still reeling from Britain’s decision to leave. While Macron is ardently pro-EU, Le Pen wants to quit its single currency and potentially hold a referendum on leaving the bloc.

All the candidates are seeking to woo the huge number of undecideds — some 31 percent of those likely to vote, according to an Ipsos poll on Friday.

Fillon also seized on the attack, which was claimed by the militant group Islamic State, saying the fight against “Islamist totalitarianism” should be the priority of the next president. “It’s us or them,” he said.

The Champs-Elysees shooting is the latest in a series of attacks by Islamist militants on France since 2015, in which more than 200 people have been killed. A truck plowed into a Bastille Day crowd in Nice last year, killing more than 80, while coordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and other sites in Paris claimed about 130 lives in November 2015. There have also been attacks on a satirical weekly and a kosher store.

However, previous attacks that have taken place shortly before elections, including the November 2015 attacks in Paris ahead of regional polls, and a shooting in a Jewish school before the 2012 presidential election, did not appear to boost the scores of those espousing tougher national security.

An assault on a soldier in February at Paris’ Louvre museum by a man wielding a machete also had no obvious impact on this year’s opinion polls, which have consistently said that voters see unemployment and the trustworthiness of politicians as bigger issues.

One policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded in Thursday night’s attack.

Investigators are trying to assess whether the gunman had accomplices, anti-terrorism prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference, adding that the shooter had never shown any signs of radicalization despite a long police history.

After an emergency meeting of security officials, Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said security forces, including elite units, were on alert to back up the 50,000 police earmarked to ensure safety during the election.

“The government is fully mobilized. Nothing must be allowed to impede the fundamental democratic process of our country,” Cazeneuve told reporters. “It falls to us not to give in to fear and intimidation and manipulation, which would play into the hands of the enemy.”

Controls on immigration and national security are cornerstones of Le Pen’s National Front agenda, and on Friday she said she would reinstate border checks and expel foreigners who are on intelligence services’ watch lists.

“I’ve heard Madame Le Pen saying again recently that, with her in charge, certain attacks would have been avoided,” he told RTL Radio. “There’s no such thing as zero risk. Anyone who pretends (otherwise) is both irresponsible and deceitful.”

In an Elabe poll conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, and published on Friday, both Fillon and Melenchon were seen narrowing Macron and Le Pen’s lead.

Should both Macron and Le Pen make it to the second round, he was likely to win the runoff by 65 percent to 35, according to the survey for BFM TV and L’Express magazine.

Fillon, who has slowly clawed back some ground lost after a fake jobs scandal, saw his score in the first round rise half a percentage point to 20 percent.

Melenchon, who would hike taxes on the rich and spend 100 billion euros ($107 billion) of borrowed money on vast housebuilding and renewable energy projects, gained 1.5 points to 19.5 percent as he built further on the momentum he has generated with strong performances in television debates.</s>Leading candidates on the right in France’s presidential vote have been accused of using the killing of a policeman in Paris for political ends.

The far right’s Marine Le Pen pledged to expel radical Islamists while the centre-right’s Francois Fillon talked of fighting “Islamist totalitarianism”.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve accused Mr Fillon and Ms Le Pen of cynically exploiting the attack.

Friday is the last day of campaigning before Sunday’s election.

Ms Le Pen, Mr Fillon and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron all cancelled their final campaign events as a mark of respect for the policeman killed on Thursday.

However, radical leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who also condemned the attack, pressed on with his campaigning, saying “the violent must be shown that they will not have the last word against republicans”.

In an attack claimed by so-called Islamic State, a gunman shot dead a policeman on the French capital’s famous Champs Elysees Avenue, wounding two other officers before being killed by security forces.

The gunman struck as the 11 candidates took part in their last TV appearance together before the election, a tightly fought contest to be followed by a run-off on 7 May.

Opinion polls suggest Mr Macron has a narrow lead over Ms Le Pen, with Mr Fillon and Mr Mélenchon close behind.

Ms Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN), called for foreigners on security watch lists to be expelled and for national border controls to be reinstated immediately.

“We must fight barbarism – none of the French governments for the past 10 years has done enough,” Ms Le Pen said.

Speaking of “incredible lapses in the justice system”, she said that both the current government and its predecessor had done everything to make France lose the war on terrorism.

Mr Fillon, the former prime minister who is standing for the Republican party, said France needed to show its enemies it was united and without fear.

He implicitly criticised the Socialist government when he said that some had not “taken the full measure of the evil”, the BBC’s Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

He himself promised an “iron-fisted” approach.

Mr Cazeneuve criticised Mr Fillon’s record on security when he was prime minister and accused Ms Le Pen of seeking to “exploit fear without any shame”.</s>PARIS (AP) — Marine Le Pen, whose passion for politics and far-right values were forged in the cradle, is making her second bid for the French presidency, hoping this time to break through the ceiling of fear that stopped her father from winning in 2002.

A terror attack that killed a police officer on Paris’ Champs-Elysees Avenue on Thursday night, three days before first round of the presidential vote, fed the central themes of Le Pen. She wants to build a secure sovereign state by cracking down on what she calls the “massive immigration” of radical Muslims she claims are trying to supplant France’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

If elected president, she vowed to immediately put in place a “battle plan against Islamic terrorism … so that France lives!”

At 48, Le Pen, the mother of three, is an ambitious, bold and gritty leader who defied the old guard of her far-right National Front party, expelling most to try to remove the taint of racism and anti-Semitism that clung to it for decades under the leadership of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In 2015, she did not shirk from pushing him out of the party he founded in 1972. The former paratrooper and fiery orator had refused to desist from anti-Semitic provocations that were undermining his daughter’s bid to make the National Front an acceptable political alternative — and compromising her dream of becoming president.

Marine Le Pen placed third in her 2012 bid for the presidency, a year after taking over the National Front, and the defeat only reinforced her desire to win.

She used local, regional and European elections to build up a party machine to serve her ambitions. In 2014, the National Front won 11 towns in municipal elections, and her party performed better than any in France in elections for the European Parliament, where she co-presides over a far-right group.

The anti-establishment Le Pen has a soft touch that appeals to voters once too timid to vote for the extreme right — but her passion for cats can’t hide a steely resolve and a tongue that can be as cutting as her father’s.

First a lawyer then a politician, Le Pen has served as a European lawmaker since 2004 and since 2010 as a regional councilor for the northern region of France, a hardscrabble land where she feels at home.

Born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen in 1968 in a western Paris suburb, the youngest of three daughters, the far-right leader was weaned on family dramas.

Le Pen has written that she was “raised on honey and the acid of politics,” a reference to her privileged life and the weight of her larger-than-life father and his defiant populism.

“To be the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen was not always easy,” she said in a recent interview on the BFM TV station. But to be his daughter was to follow in his footsteps, she suggested, calling politics “the virus one has within.”

An attack destroyed the family apartment building as 8-year-old Marine Le Pen and her sisters slept.

The French media relished recounting the divorce of her parents in her teen years. In a reflection of that bitter separation, her mother, Pierrette Lalanne, posed for Playboy in 1987, partly dressed in a maid’s costume. The magazine quoted her as saying she was responding to her husband’s Playboy interview in which he said she could become a housekeeper if she needed money.

For years, Marine Le Pen had no relations with her mother, but today “there is lots of love between Mama and me,” she said.

Le Pen is nothing if not loyal. Old friends from her days studying law in Paris, members of a radical student group known for violence and anti-Semitism, hold crucial roles in her inner circle — and are at the center of an alleged party financing scheme. The affair, to be heard in court, raises unanswered questions about Le Pen herself as she balances radical forces within the party with people she has won over from the mainstream left and right.

For Le Pen, it’s not her father but “eternal France” that inspires her.

“Like mother’s love, the love of France is not explained, it is lived,” she wrote in a 2012 book.</s>As France prepares to hit the polls in its most divisive presidential election for years, the stakes couldn't be higher for Europe. Polls suggest liberal and pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron has a slight lead with 24 percent support, with far-right and Eurosceptic rival Marine Le Pen close behind with 22.5 percent. Front National's Le Pen is campaigning on the back of a populist tidal wave that has swept across Europe and beyond. She is expected to perform strongly in the first round of the election on Sunday and if she manages to triumph in the run-off on May 8, it could conceivably spell doom for the EU.

Such an outcome wasn't taken too seriously in the past when a vote for Front National was largely considered a mere act of defiance against the system. Back in 1997 when Front National was under the leadership of Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie, 63 percent of the its own supporters considered it racist while 43 percent said it was dangerous for democracy, according to Ifop. His daughter's efforts to improve the party's image since his removal have proven successful with its racist reputation among its voter base falling to 38 percent this year.

The era of the protest vote is over with Marine Le Pen moulding her party into a powerful movement for the populist-era. Indeed, she has managed to take advantage of the volatile mood in France by attracting support from every corner of the country. It's important to note that Front National's support is real this time. In 1997, 84 percent of Front National's supporters cast their vote as a protest and that has now fallen to 60 percent. As the following infographic shows, trepidation in Brussels is well founded amid Front National's transformation and gathering momentum.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)</s>The Hong Kong-based economist who was one of the very few to publicly predict Donald Trump’s election victory is betting on Marine Le Pen winning in France.

Charles Gave, founder of asset-allocation consultancy GaveKal Research, told Bloomberg the markets are underpricing Le Pen’s chances and not considering backlash in the country against the European Union.

France’s apathy for the other candidates, center-leftist Emmanuel Macron, center-right candidate Francois Fillon and leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon is also being downplayed, Gave said.

“Le Pen’s momentum is a slow-moving reaction against the men of Davos – as we have seen with Brexit and Trump – but markets don’t want to believe it,” Gave told Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, France says it is tightening security for the presidential election after an April 20 terrorist attack killed a police officer in Paris.

“Nothing must hamper this democratic moment, which is fundamental for our nation,” Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said after an emergency security cabinet meeting on April 21.

Cazeneuve said some 50,000 police and gendarmes will be deployed to provide security during the first-round vote on April 23, with an additional 7,000 soldiers also on patrol, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

The first round of the French presidential election is set for April 23. The election is expected to be decided in a May 7 run-off.

Gave said that at least half of the far-left and half of the center-right won’t vote for Macron if he makes it to a run-off against Le Pen, believing he is“tainted” by his association with Francois Hollande’s government.

Gave said many of Macron’s supporters would probably rally to Le Pen if she were to face Melenchon in the final round.

He sees only Fillon with a chance to defeat Le Pen in the run-off. Fillon’s support, however, has been curtailed by graft charges, Gave said.

Login To Your FaceBook to Make Comments</s>The French go to the polls Sunday to cast ballots in the first round of a political race like no other in France's recent history: Entrenched politicians have been swept aside, with fringe candidates and untested newcomers filling the void.

After Sunday, the field of 11 presidential candidates will be narrowed down to two contenders, who will face each other in a runoff on May 7.

The top four candidates offer starkly opposing visions for the country. Yet they are so close in the polls that the race is impossible to predict.

Here are the front-runners candidates and their platforms:



Emmanuel Macron currently leads the polls, with an estimated 23 percent of the vote.

The 39-year-old former investment banker founded his political movement — En Marche, or On The Move — last August after stepping down as economy minister to Socialist President Francois Hollande.

Macron has never been elected to public office. He says he is neither left nor right, and says the traditional parties don't have the answers for 21st century problems. The self-proclaimed progressive says he wants to make France innovative and to encourage risk taking.

As president, Macron says he would make France more business-friendly and train workers for new jobs, rather than trying to save old jobs in dying industries.

Corinne Mellul, a professor of political science at the Catholic Institute of Paris, says Macron provides voters hope for change and an escape from the left-right divide.

"Whether it amounts to something real remains to be seen," she says. "But part of his appeal is that no one even knew who he was three years ago."

Macron's critics say he stands for nothing and has an empty program. There also been a disinformation campaign swirling about him, and his campaign says he has been targeted by Russian hackers. The candidate is pro-European Union and takes a hard line on Putin.

Some of the conspiracy theories charge that Macron is an agent of U.S. banks. Others say he has a secret private life or may be gay. Macron married his high school French teacher, who is 24 years his senior. Brigitte, his wife, appears regularly with him in public, and is said to be closely involved with his campaign.



Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, trails by just one point behind Macron in polls.

The National Front party has never been so strong. In 2011, Le Pen took over leadership of the party founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She has worked to bring the National Front more into the mainstream and break with the party's xenophobic, anti-Semitic past. She has succeeded in "de-demonizing" the party to a great extent.

Today, National Front supporters include many more women and young people. Her rallies are now full of middle-class, working professionals, not just angry blue-collar workers. And while Jean-Marie Le Pen just wanted to shake up the system, Marine Le Pen wants true power.

If elected, Le Pen says France will vote in a referendum to leave the European Union, which she calls a tyrannical, undemocratic institution. France is one of the key founders of the EU, and if it pulls out, analysts say the EU could not survive.

Another priority for Le Pen is reinstating France's borders and severely curbing immigration. Le Pen believes the wind of history is behind her. She says globalization is gutting industry and agriculture in countries across Europe, and people yearn for a return to the strong nation-state.

Le Pen promotes "economic patriotism," which she says the EU prohibits. In other words, she wants to promote, buy, consume and eat French.



Francois Fillon is the only candidate from the mainstream political establishment and the only one with real experience in governing.

Fillon served as prime minister to President Nicolas Sarkozy. Though Sarkozy allegedly treated him as an underling, Fillon got his revenge by soundly defeating his former boss (who was hoping to make a political comeback) in the conservative primary last November.

Fillon is a polished and seasoned politician and a wholesome family man who was considered a shoo-in for the French presidency — until January, when allegations surfaced that he may have employed his wife in a fake job as his parliamentary aide. Fillon is now under official investigation. He has also admitted to accepting expensive suits and watches from "a friend." (France has discovered that Fillon is a man of luxury tastes.)

Despite the cloud hanging over him, Fillon has plugged on, proclaiming his innocence. Hiring family members is not illegal in France, as long as they do real work. And he did give back those suits.

Even so, the scandal has tarnished him. Fillon once touted himself as the "irreproachable" candidate for the party founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Not anymore.

"I'm not asking you to love me, I'm asking you to support me," Fillon said at a recent rally. "It's not about choosing a friend but about choosing a leader for the destiny of France."

If elected, the fiscal conservative says he'll get the country's finances back in order by cutting public sector jobs and reducing the deficit. That won't be easy with his own credibility in question.

Still, Fillon cannot be counted out. He's managed to maintain 19 percent support (just a couple points behind Macron and Le Pen) despite the relentless attacks against him. His supporters can also be counted on to go out and vote.

Political analyst Pascal Perrineau says many in Fillon's historically solid base will have no problem supporting him.

"Many people will say, 'OK, so he got some suits and watches, what's so grave about that?'" Perrineau says. "It's like the reasoning in Machiavelli's The Prince. Do we ask a prince to be moral or efficient? And Machiavelli says efficient."



Jean-Luc Melenchon has surged in the polls in recent weeks and is now just half a point behind Fillon.

Known by some as "French Bernie Sanders," Melenchon is a charismatic speaker and began to soar after his humorous, brilliant performances in both televised debates. (Nevermind that he's a former Trotskyist.)

Many of Melenchon's ideas are similar to Le Pen's. Both oppose globalization and want generous social benefits and protection for workers. Neither likes the European Union.

"That there are a lot of similarities should not be a surprise," says Mellul, the political science professor. "The far left and the far right appeal to the same electorate. The disgruntled, left-out, working class and the disenfranchised victims of globalization."

Like Sanders in the U.S., Mellul says, Melenchon attracts young voters who think he can really change things.

"Don't underestimate the constant popularity of Trotskyism and communist ideas," she says. "And by communist, I'm not talking about the Soviet experiment, but Karl Marx. The appeal of this has never died in France."

Analyst Perrineau says whoever wins Sunday is unlikely to be able to unite a very divided country.

"We see there are two Frances," he says. "One is doing well. It is cosmopolitan, it has many colors and speaks several languages. But go out from the cities, you can find another France. It's immobile, unemployed and worried about its identity. A president must represent both sides of France and each of these candidates only speaks to one."</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump waded into France's upcoming elections Thursday, saying he believes an attack on police officers this week will help Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential candidate.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Trump said that while he is not explicitly endorsing Le Pen, the attack played to her strengths.

"She's the strongest on borders and she's the strongest on what's been going on in France," Trump said in the Oval Office interview. "Whoever is the toughest on radical Islamic terrorism, and whoever is the toughest at the borders, will do well in the election."

U.S. presidents typically avoid weighing in on specific candidates running in overseas election. But Trump suggested his opinion was no different from an average observer, saying, "Everybody is making predictions on who is going to win. I'm no different than you."

Sunday's vote is the first round in the French elections, with the top two candidates advancing to a runoff. The high-stakes contest is viewed as something of a vote on the future of the European Union, with Le Pen calling for a referendum on France's membership in the bloc.

Le Pen has also echoed some of Trump's hard-line rhetoric on immigration, calling for hardening French borders to stanch what she describes as an out-of-control flow of immigrants.</s>Bernard Cazeneuve, 53, gave launched a withering attack on Ms Le Pen’s record in politics and defended France’s record of preventing terror attacks. His remarks came just a few hours after ISIS-inspired gunman Karim Cheurfi shot a police officer in the head on Paris’ most famous avenue, the Champs-Élysées. Mr Cazeneuve said: “It was this government that established border controls and since then 2,300 police officers are sent to our borders ever day.

“Marine Le Pen forgets that 107 million people have been checked since then and 80,000 have been impacted upon while trying to get into the country. “Marine Le Pen is asking for a certain category of people to be expelled but since 2012, 110 people have been expelled from our national territory.” He tried to pick apart Ms Le Pen’s voting record with regards to anti-terror laws being introduced, both in France and in Europe.

The Prime Minister added: “When it comes to fighting against terrorism, it is difficult. “We must be effective and Marine Le Pen asks us to reinforce intelligence services but she voted against any anti-terror law 2014 and she forgets to tell the electorate her party voted against an intelligence law in July 2015. “She forgets she was against anti terror measures at the European parliament that would have helped to collect information on terrorists returning to Europe.

“She deliberately forgets she has opposed everything without making any serious proposals. “She dares to ask for new measures but she has done nothing. She is trying to profit from the situation in order to divide the country. “She is exploiting fear and emotions for political purposes. No enquiry can allow us to make a link between immigration, asylum and what happened in Paris. “This attack is a tragedy and she is trying to turn it into an opportunity, a badly played-out election strategy, at the expense of the truth.”</s>The French go to the polls Sunday to cast ballots in the first round of a political race like no other in France's recent history: Entrenched politicians have been swept aside, with fringe candidates and untested newcomers filling the void.

After Sunday, the field of 11 presidential candidates will be narrowed down to two contenders, who will face each other in a runoff on May 7.

The top four candidates offer starkly opposing visions for the country. Yet they are so close in the polls that the race is impossible to predict.

Here are the front-runners candidates and their platforms:



Emmanuel Macron currently leads the polls, with an estimated 23 percent of the vote.

The 39-year-old former investment banker founded his political movement — En Marche, or On The Move — last August after stepping down as economy minister to Socialist President Francois Hollande.

Macron has never been elected to public office. He says he is neither left nor right, and says the traditional parties don't have the answers for 21st century problems. The self-proclaimed progressive says he wants to make France innovative and to encourage risk taking.

As president, Macron says he would make France more business-friendly and train workers for new jobs, rather than trying to save old jobs in dying industries.

Corinne Mellul, a professor of political science at the Catholic Institute of Paris, says Macron provides voters hope for change and an escape from the left-right divide.

"Whether it amounts to something real remains to be seen," she says. "But part of his appeal is that no one even knew who he was three years ago."

Macron's critics say he stands for nothing and has an empty program. There also been a disinformation campaign swirling about him, and his campaign says he has been targeted by Russian hackers. The candidate is pro-European Union and takes a hard line on Putin.

Some of the conspiracy theories charge that Macron is an agent of U.S. banks. Others say he has a secret private life or may be gay. Macron married his high school French teacher, who is 24 years his senior. Brigitte, his wife, appears regularly with him in public, and is said to be closely involved with his campaign.



Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, trails by just one point behind Macron in polls.

The National Front party has never been so strong. In 2011, Le Pen took over leadership of the party founded in 1972 by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She has worked to bring the National Front more into the mainstream and break with the party's xenophobic, anti-Semitic past. She has succeeded in "de-demonizing" the party to a great extent.

Today, National Front supporters include many more women and young people. Her rallies are now full of middle-class, working professionals, not just angry blue-collar workers. And while Jean-Marie Le Pen just wanted to shake up the system, Marine Le Pen wants true power.

If elected, Le Pen says France will vote in a referendum to leave the European Union, which she calls a tyrannical, undemocratic institution. France is one of the key founders of the EU, and if it pulls out, analysts say the EU could not survive.

Another priority for Le Pen is reinstating France's borders and severely curbing immigration. Le Pen believes the wind of history is behind her. She says globalization is gutting industry and agriculture in countries across Europe, and people yearn for a return to the strong nation-state.

Le Pen promotes "economic patriotism," which she says the EU prohibits. In other words, she wants to promote, buy, consume and eat French.



Francois Fillon is the only candidate from the mainstream political establishment and the only one with real experience in governing.

Fillon served as prime minister to President Nicolas Sarkozy. Though Sarkozy allegedly treated him as an underling, Fillon got his revenge by soundly defeating his former boss (who was hoping to make a political comeback) in the conservative primary last November.

Fillon is a polished and seasoned politician and a wholesome family man who was considered a shoo-in for the French presidency — until January, when allegations surfaced that he may have employed his wife in a fake job as his parliamentary aide. Fillon is now under official investigation. He has also admitted to accepting expensive suits and watches from "a friend." (France has discovered that Fillon is a man of luxury tastes.)

Despite the cloud hanging over him, Fillon has plugged on, proclaiming his innocence. Hiring family members is not illegal in France, as long as they do real work. And he did give back those suits.

Even so, the scandal has tarnished him. Fillon once touted himself as the "irreproachable" candidate for the party founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle. Not anymore.

"I'm not asking you to love me, I'm asking you to support me," Fillon said at a recent rally. "It's not about choosing a friend but about choosing a leader for the destiny of France."

If elected, the fiscal conservative says he'll get the country's finances back in order by cutting public sector jobs and reducing the deficit. That won't be easy with his own credibility in question.

Still, Fillon cannot be counted out. He's managed to maintain 19 percent support (just a couple points behind Macron and Le Pen) despite the relentless attacks against him. His supporters can also be counted on to go out and vote.

Political analyst Pascal Perrineau says many in Fillon's historically solid base will have no problem supporting him.

"Many people will say, 'OK, so he got some suits and watches, what's so grave about that?'" Perrineau says. "It's like the reasoning in Machiavelli's The Prince. Do we ask a prince to be moral or efficient? And Machiavelli says efficient."



Jean-Luc Melenchon has surged in the polls in recent weeks and is now just half a point behind Fillon.

Known by some as "French Bernie Sanders," Melenchon is a charismatic speaker and began to soar after his humorous, brilliant performances in both televised debates. (Nevermind that he's a former Trotskyist.)

Many of Melenchon's ideas are similar to Le Pen's. Both oppose globalization and want generous social benefits and protection for workers. Neither likes the European Union.

"That there are a lot of similarities should not be a surprise," says Mellul, the political science professor. "The far left and the far right appeal to the same electorate. The disgruntled, left-out, working class and the disenfranchised victims of globalization."

Like Sanders in the U.S., Mellul says, Melenchon attracts young voters who think he can really change things.

"Don't underestimate the constant popularity of Trotskyism and communist ideas," she says. "And by communist, I'm not talking about the Soviet experiment, but Karl Marx. The appeal of this has never died in France."

Analyst Perrineau says whoever wins Sunday is unlikely to be able to unite a very divided country.

"We see there are two Frances," he says. "One is doing well. It is cosmopolitan, it has many colors and speaks several languages. But go out from the cities, you can find another France. It's immobile, unemployed and worried about its identity. A president must represent both sides of France and each of these candidates only speaks to one."</s>PARIS (AP) — Marine Le Pen, whose passion for politics and far-right values were forged in the cradle, is making her second bid for the French presidency, hoping this time to break through the ceiling of fear that stopped her father from winning in 2002.

A terror attack that killed a police officer on Paris’ Champs-Elysees Avenue on Thursday night, three days before first round of the presidential vote, fed the central themes of Le Pen. She wants to build a secure sovereign state by cracking down on what she calls the “massive immigration” of radical Muslims she claims are trying to supplant France’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

If elected president, she vowed to immediately put in place a “battle plan against Islamic terrorism … so that France lives!”

At 48, Le Pen, the mother of three, is an ambitious, bold and gritty leader who defied the old guard of her far-right National Front party, expelling most to try to remove the taint of racism and anti-Semitism that clung to it for decades under the leadership of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

In 2015, she did not shirk from pushing him out of the party he founded in 1972. The former paratrooper and fiery orator had refused to desist from anti-Semitic provocations that were undermining his daughter’s bid to make the National Front an acceptable political alternative — and compromising her dream of becoming president.

Marine Le Pen placed third in her 2012 bid for the presidency, a year after taking over the National Front, and the defeat only reinforced her desire to win.

She used local, regional and European elections to build up a party machine to serve her ambitions. In 2014, the National Front won 11 towns in municipal elections, and her party performed better than any in France in elections for the European Parliament, where she co-presides over a far-right group.

The anti-establishment Le Pen has a soft touch that appeals to voters once too timid to vote for the extreme right — but her passion for cats can’t hide a steely resolve and a tongue that can be as cutting as her father’s.

First a lawyer then a politician, Le Pen has served as a European lawmaker since 2004 and since 2010 as a regional councilor for the northern region of France, a hardscrabble land where she feels at home.

Born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen in 1968 in a western Paris suburb, the youngest of three daughters, the far-right leader was weaned on family dramas.

Le Pen has written that she was “raised on honey and the acid of politics,” a reference to her privileged life and the weight of her larger-than-life father and his defiant populism.

“To be the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen was not always easy,” she said in a recent interview on the BFM TV station. But to be his daughter was to follow in his footsteps, she suggested, calling politics “the virus one has within.”

An attack destroyed the family apartment building as 8-year-old Marine Le Pen and her sisters slept.

The French media relished recounting the divorce of her parents in her teen years. In a reflection of that bitter separation, her mother, Pierrette Lalanne, posed for Playboy in 1987, partly dressed in a maid’s costume. The magazine quoted her as saying she was responding to her husband’s Playboy interview in which he said she could become a housekeeper if she needed money.

For years, Marine Le Pen had no relations with her mother, but today “there is lots of love between Mama and me,” she said.

Le Pen is nothing if not loyal. Old friends from her days studying law in Paris, members of a radical student group known for violence and anti-Semitism, hold crucial roles in her inner circle — and are at the center of an alleged party financing scheme. The affair, to be heard in court, raises unanswered questions about Le Pen herself as she balances radical forces within the party with people she has won over from the mainstream left and right.

For Le Pen, it’s not her father but “eternal France” that inspires her.

“Like mother’s love, the love of France is not explained, it is lived,” she wrote in a 2012 book.
The first polls since April 20's attack indicate a slight bump for Marine Le Pen over Jean-Luc Mélenchon and François Fillon, though they still show her losing to Emmanuel Macron in the first and second rounds of the election.