The OpinionWay-Tilder poll for newspaper Les Echos published on Thursday showed Ms Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (RN) party with 24 percent of voting intentions compared to 23 percent last month, while Mr Macron’s La République en Marche (LREM) fell to 21 percent from 23 percent. The conservative Les Républicains party was seen coming in third place with 14 percent of the French vote, followed by the far-left La France Insoumise party with nine percent. A separate poll also published on Thursday, however, showed Mr Macron’s centrists in the lead with 22.5 percent of the vote, and Mrs Le Pen’s nationalists lagging slightly behind with 21 percent.
The Ifop-Fiducial poll for newspaper Paris Match, television channel CNews and Sud Radio showed Mr Macron’s LREM gaining 0.5 points in one week, and Mrs Le Pen’s RN losing 0.5 points over the same period.
Ms Le Pen on Thursday said that the bloc’s populist far-right parties were offering a “new European harmony” in the May 23-26 elections, which are already shaping up to be a bitter battle between nationalist, eurosceptic factions like the RN and pro-Europe progressive parties like the LREM.
The far-right leader spoke alongside Dutch populist Geert Wilders in Prague to support local far-right lawmaker Tomio Okamura in his bid to give the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party its first seat in the European parliament.
Ms Le Pen told reporters: “What we see here is the birth of a new European harmony with European national parties joining forces to offer 500 million Europeans a new framework for cooperation, a new project and a new potential for the future.”
At a rally later on, she added that “the democratic movement of patriots in all countries allows a reform of the European framework”.
The parliamentary elections determine who leads the major EU institutions, including the Commission, the bloc’s civil service, but are also important as a bellwether of sentiment among citizens, who are increasingly disillusioned with the European project.
A survey of 27,978 people conducted by pollster Kantar Public in all 28 member states between February 19 and March 4 found that 27 percent of EU citizens think that the European Union is “neither a good thing nor a bad thing”.
Only 38 per cent of those interviewed knew the elections were being held in May, and only five percent knew the actual election dates, according to Kantar Public.
The OpinionWay poll of 1,965 people was carried out online between April 17-18 and April 22-23; while the Ifop-Fiducial poll of 1,850 people was carried out between April 20-25.