France Might Elect Its First Female President

Marine Le Pen might become the first female president of France.

The 48-year-old mother of three is a lawyer by trade and the head of France’s National Front party. Her bid for the presidency looked like a long-shot at first, but her rising popularity has many wondering if Le Pen will win–and become France’s first female president.

She campaigns on a platform of nationalism and populism that promises to strengthen the economy, crack down on crime, and reinstate power away from globalists and back into the hands of the French people. Her key policy positions are reinstating security checkpoints at the French border, limiting immigration to 10,000 people per year, and for France to eventually leave the European Union.

French elections are structured differently from American elections. There are currently four candidates running. There is a preliminary election to decide who the two most popular candidates are. These top two then compete in a “run-off” for the presidency.

On Sunday, French citizens will go to the polls to decide if Marine Le Pen is one of those two candidates.

Her chances look good. She is currently the second-most popular candidate in the polls. Le Pen has a strong core group of supporters and although her National Front party is right-wing, a higher than expected number of women and gays support her.

“There are priorities in France other than homosexuality. I myself am in a same-sex couple and there have been many advances in this area, but for me there are more pressing issues like the economy, the national debt and unemployment.”

Although right-wing parties do not usually attract much support from people living alternative lifestyles, problems with Islamic terror have pushed more moderate voters to consider Le Pen for president. And unlike most conservative Americans, Le Pen is not a model religious citizen or a stay-at-home mom–she’s divorced and a working mother of three.

The mayor of Cogolin explained Le Pen’s boundary-crossing appeal.

“Women understand Marine Le Pen, she’s divorced, she has three children, she works — she’s a modern woman.”

Still, she is up against stiff competition. The biggest threat to France naming its first female president is Emmanuel Macron, running under the progressive En Marche! party.

Macron, 39-years-old, made millions as an investment banker and became the French Minister of the Economy. Left-leaning voters are attracted to his party’s progressive values, while right-leaning voters feel confident in his ability to reform business.

Macron’s critics point out that he has almost no political experience to back up his promises. He originally described terrorism as an “imponderable problem” that would be “part of our daily lives for the years to come,” but terrorist attacks that took place in France only days ago caused him to promise policy changes similar to Le Pen’s.

He has an unusual personal life in that he is married to his high school teacher, a woman 25 years older than him who he promised to marry when he was 17.

Although mega-media pollsters predict Macron is likely to win in a run-off against Le Pen, others are not so sure. Nationalist movements like Brexit and the election of Donald Trump were also predicted to fail, so Le Pen’s supporters hope she will ride this wave of dark horse success.

If Marine Le Pen is elected president of France, she will join the short but rich history of female presidents around the world. Isabel Martínez de Perón was the first when she became president of Argentina after her husband died in 1974. In Iceland, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was the first elected female president. Of course, this also makes her the first female president in Europe. If Marine Le Pen is elected, she will be France’s first female president.

[Featured Image by Michel Euler/AP Images]