Eric Zemmour is eating Marine Le Pen alive

French opinion polls are best taken with a generous bucket of sel de Guérande but this evening’s drop of a Harris Interactive survey of intentions to vote in the 2022 presidential election might genuinely be described as explosive.

This poll contains the crucial assumption that Xavier Bertrand will emerge as the candidate of the centre-right Les Républicains, but it nevertheless suggests that trends are moving in unpredicted directions. Bertrand is currently only marginally ahead of Eric Zemmour, whose insurgent campaign from the right is starting to profoundly unsettle the conventional wisdom.

If Zemmour, who still hasn’t officially announced his candidacy, continues to climb and Marine Le Pen to decline, something extraordinary might happen. Zemmour might even make it into the second round, besting Bertrand and setting up a contest with Macron that nobody had predicted.

There are 195 days remaining until the first round of voting.

Efforts to cancel and demonise Zemmour are plainly failing.