TOKYO -- In the first round of the French presidential election on April 10, hard-right candidate Marine Le Pen racked up a strong result, with a share of the vote just a few percentage points below the total garnered by sitting President Emmanuel Macron. Opinion polls suggest that 56% of younger voters plan to vote for her in the runoff on Sunday.
How could this happen? Quite easily, would be the answer of Eric Protzer and Paul Summerville, co-authors of the recently published book, "Reclaiming Populism." Indeed, France is one of their key case studies, the others being the U.S., the U.K. and Italy.
