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French poll predicts Zemmour-Macron showdown in 2022 presidential election

A poll in France suggested on Wednesday for the first time that far-right pundit Eric Zemmour would qualify for the second round of next year's presidential election and eclipse traditional far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Placards in support to a candidacy of France's far-right media pundit Eric Zemmour in next year presidential elections in Paris.
Placards in support to a candidacy of France's far-right media pundit Eric Zemmour in next year presidential elections in Paris. Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP.

Some 17-18 percent of voters told Harris Interactive polling they would vote for Zemmour in the first round, compared with 15-16 percent for Le Pen.

This would mean he would advance to a second-round with President Emmanuel Macron, who was credited with 24-27 percent of voter intentions in the first round, set to be held on April 10th.

The online poll of 1,310 people, carried out on October 4th and published in Challenges magazine, implied Macron would win a run-off vote against Zemmour by a margin of 55 percent to 45 percent.

Analysts stress the election remains highly unpredictable and forecasting is rendered more difficult by France’s two-round system, which sees the two highest-placed winners in the first round proceed to the run-off.

But the poll will add momentum to Zemmour’s radical anti-immigration and anti-Islam campaign, even though he is still yet to officially declare his intention to run.

READ ALSO OPINION: Zemmour won’t worry Macron, but he should worry France

For the last four years, polls have consistently suggested Macron and Le Pen would meet in the run-off on April 24th – a repeat of the last election in 2017.

“A candidate has never been known to experience such a change in voter intentions in so short a space of time as we’ve seen with Eric Zemmour,” pollster Antoine Gautier from Harris Interactive commented on the results of the survey.

Zemmour was seen as winning only 7 percent when the group tested his popularity with voters for the first time on September 8th.

Le Pen’s low-key grassroots campaigning in September has been overshadowed by a media blitz by Zemmour that has seen him feature daily on France’s biggest TV and radio shows.

The acid-tongued media pundit, who has several convictions for racist hate speech, views France as slipping towards a civil war because of immigration and the number of Muslims in France. 

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POLITICS

French bill seeks to ban hair discrimination affecting black women

France's parliament on Thursday began debating a bill targeting workplace discrimination based on hair texture which the draft law's backers say targets mostly black women wearing their hair naturally.

French bill seeks to ban hair discrimination affecting black women

Olivier Serva, an independent National Assembly deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe and the bill’s sponsor, said it would penalise any workplace discrimination based on “hair style, colour, length or texture”.

Similar laws exist in around 20 US states which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In Britain, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Serva, who is black, said women “of African descent” were often encouraged before job interviews to change their style of hair.

‘Target of discrimination’

The deputy, who also included discrimination suffered by blondes and redheads in his proposal, points to an American study stating that a quarter of black women polled said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the job interview.

Such statistics are hard to come by in France, which bans the compilation of personal data that mention a person’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The draft law does not, in fact, contain the term “racism”, noted Daphne Bedinade, a social anthropologist, saying the omission was problematic.

“To make this only about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them a target of discrimination, mostly black women,” she told Le Monde daily.

While statistics are difficult to come by, high-profile people have faced online harassment because of their hairstyle.

In the political sphere they include former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye, and Audrey Pulvar, a deputy mayor of Paris, whose afro look has attracted much negative comment online.

The bill’s critics say it is unnecessary, as discrimination based on looks is already banned by law.

“There is no legal void here,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specialising in labour law.

Calling any future law “symbolic”, Rocheblave said it would not be of much practical help when it came to proving discrimination in court.

Kenza Bel Kenadil, an influencer and self-proclaimed “activist against hair discrimination”, said a law would still send an important message.

“It would tell everybody that the law protects you in every way and lets you style your hair any way you want,” she said.

The influencer, who has 256,000 followers on Instagram, said she herself had been “forced” to tie her hair in a bun when she was working as a receptionist.

Her employers were “very clear”, she said. “It was, either you go home and fix your hair or you don’t come here to work”.

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