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Marion Maréchal plans to support Éric Zemmour in the presidential election
Photo: Jean-Francois Badias/AP
In the election campaign for the presidential election in France, the right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen suffered a blow in the competition with the even more right-wing competitor Éric Zemmour.
Her niece and former collaborator Marion Maréchal declared her support for Zemmour on Sunday, a move that had already been expected.
"Yes, I have decided to support Éric Zemmour in the presidential election," Maréchal told the magazine "Valeurs Actuelles" on Sunday.
"I join the candidate I see best placed today to bring to fruition the ideas I have always defended."
Maréchal withdrew from politics five years ago and from Le Pen's right-wing party, which has since been renamed the Rassemblement National (RN).
Still, her move to Zemmour's camp is seen as a weakening of Le Pen, who was temporarily overtaken by even more right-wing Zemmour in the polls ahead of the April election.
On Sunday evening, Maréchal presented himself at a Zemmour campaign event in Toulon, southern France, which was watched by over 100,000 people on Zemmour's YouTube channel.
Runoff elections by Macron and Le Pen are currently the most likely variant
In the polls for the presidential election, incumbent Emmanuel Macron has been consistently ahead for weeks.
Most recently, he came to about 25 percent, followed by Le Pen with 17 percent and Zemmour with 14 percent.
According to this, Macron and Le Pen could compete against each other in the runoff election, as they did in 2017.
Right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse has fallen to 12 percent and is almost level with left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Of the other green, socialist and left-wing candidates, none of them currently make it into the double-digit range in the polls.
svs/dpa