Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, is prominently back in the French presidential race. According to an Ifop poll released last Friday, she may garner 20 percent of the vote in the first round, the French equivalent of a primary.

That vote, on April 10, would turn her into the final challenger of the incumbent centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, in the second round, on April 24, when only the two first round’s frontrunners are allowed to run. The final score might then be 54 percent for Macron and 46 percent for her. 

For Jean-Marie Le Pen’s daughter and heir, this is a resurrection. Admittedly, she was already supposed one year ago to be Monsieur Macron’s adversary in the second round, more or less in the same terms as today — a noted improvement over the 2017 presidential election, where she made 33.9 percent only, against Mr. Macron’s 66.1 percent.

This can be seen as an indication that even if she does not make it this time, she would retain many assets for a future ballot. After all, François Mitterrand, France’s paramount socialist leader in the late 20^th century, ran for the presidency for 16 years, and was not elected until his third bid, in 1981.

However, throughout the summer, fall, and winter as 2021 became 2022, Madam Le Pen’s standing deteriorated in front of an unexpected rival, the rightwing polemicist Eric Zemmour. For a while, the National Rally’s elected officials, activists, or sympathizers considered defecting to him and his newly founded party, Reconquête, or actually did defect.

Among those who defected were Gilbert Collard, an eloquent lawyer and one of the few RN sympathizers to be elected to the National Assembly, and even Marine Le Pen’s own sexy and brainy niece, Marion Maréchal, a one-time RN member of Parliament who is now running ISSEP, a conservative political studies institute. 

Five weeks ago, Mr. Zemmour was reported by Ifop to be ahead of Mme. Maréchal by a thin margin in the first round — 16.5 percent against 16 percent — and thus in a position to potentially bypass Mme. Le Pen for the second round. Mr. Zemmour’s ascendancy, however, has stalled. He is now down to 11.5 percent, almost nine points behind Mme. Le Pen. Some polls even suggest that he may fall under 10 percent. Such a sudden reversal of fortune certainly deserves to be assessed and explained.

Mr. Zemmour’s followers point to the Ukraine war, which in their opinion has obliterated any “democratic debate” about French domestic issues, and their champion’s debating skills. True enough, but one cannot deny on the other hand that Mr. Zemmour, who had adamantly supported Vladimir Putin’s Russia before the war, made the terrible mistake not to shift to Ukraine’s side once war erupted.

Mr. Zemmour did not even pretend to be shifting, despite a growing Ukrainomania in French public opinion. Mme. Le Pen, who had been no less pro-Russian and had even resorted to Russian banks in the past to keep her party solvent, has proven to be much smarter in this respect.

Mme. Le Pen is ostensibly supporting Ukraine in the present war, thus assuaging the more sentimental voters, while noting, mezza voce, for the benefit of her more ideologically motivated followers, that Russia may still be a “French national interest” in the longer run.

Mme. Le Pen’s resurgence and Mr. Zemmour’s erosion can be ascribed to deeper factors as well. Foremost, the same “bandwagon effect” that played until recently into the hands of Reconquête and its leader is now working, in a different way, for the National Rally. The closer people get to Election Day, the more they tend to forgo — within their political family — the candidate they like for the candidate that is the most likely to win.

Hard-right voters, who account nowadays for some 30 percent of the global vote, may have enjoyed Mr. Zemmour’s roller coaster as long as it lasted. Now that his momentum seems to be over, though, they are switching back to Mme. Le Pen. Moreover, this is the time when hitherto undecided voters enter the game. As a rule they tend to be more practical and more results-oriented.  

A second factor is that Mr. Zemmour is, after all, an intellectual, the author of some 20 books and a keen lecturer on French history. While the upper class and the upper middle class are awed by such a profile, the working class feels bypassed and prefers the more casual Mme. Le Pen.

A third factor is that Mr. Zemmour deliberately took on the tough guy’s role throughout the campaign, while Mme. Le Pen played the soft, feminine card. Likewise, he tried authoritarian, if not Fascistic, concepts, not shying away from prospects of war or civil war, while Mme. Le Pen took care to distance herself and her party from anything of that sort.

For a while, Mr. Zemmour seemed to be more in tune with his constituency. At this stage, however, it appears that many right-wing sympathizers want above all to be mothered and reassured. Moreover, Mme. Le Pen has managed to reshape her party in this manner.

Jerome Bardella, a 27-year-old member of the European Parliament, is in particular the convincing face of a moderate National Rally. Last Tuesday, during a public debate sponsored by the conservative weekly Valeurs Actuelles, he insisted that the Rally’s mission was not to divide but to unite.

Finally, one may wonder if Mr. Zemmour’s Jewish identity is not disserving him, despite his repeated efforts to sideline it and to keep his distance from Zionism, while flirting with right-wing Catholicism. It might be easier for Ukraine, the one time locus classicus of pogroms, to elect a Jewish president, than for France.