Far out

20 April 2017 By Swaha Pattanaik Follow @swahapattanaik

Investors are nervous the presidential contest will be a choice between far-right Marine Le Pen and hard-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon. That’s unlikely. Still, candidates who are blasé about debt and hostile to the EU could get two-fifths of the vote. Their ideas may catch on.

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The top four candidates in the French presidential election - centrist Emmanuel Macron, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, conservative Francois Fillon, and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon – are within touching distance of each other, according to polls published less than a week before the first-round vote on April 23.

Melenchon has enjoyed a surge in support in the past month. A Harris Interactive poll published on April 20 put Macron’s support in the first round at 25 percent, Le Pen’s at 22 percent, with Fillon and Melenchon both at 19 percent.

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Far out

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