00:00Well look, an enormous degree of momentum building behind Marine Le Pen's bid to become
00:06the French President next year. You can see that in the latest French Senate elections where we've
00:15just seen now that local elected officials vote for new senators for half of the upper chamber
00:21every three years and they then get elected to six-year terms. And what you've seen now
00:26is Marine Le Pen's party. Well they got in the Senate for the first time in 2014.
00:31They won three seats in 2023 and what you've now just seen is their biggest breakthrough yet.
00:38In the Senate, the National Rally have gone from three seats to 15 seats. They've now cleared that
00:46threshold to form a group and you can see here Le Pen saying that this will now serve this group
00:52as an essential platform during the presidential campaign. You did also see Jean-Luc Mélenchon on
00:59the left winning their first seat, that party as well. And you can see a senator there saying that
01:06the National Rally winning the group was the culmination of their establishment in the political
01:10landscape. Now why this momentum is so important is because the French presidential election
01:16is next year. And this gives more momentum to Le Pen who is already the clear front runner. In fact,
01:25right now she would be every likely candidate to go against her in the second round runoff.
01:32She leads the first round clearly there. She's on 35 to 36 percent in the first round. If no candidate
01:38gets over 50 percent in the first round, there's a second round. And you can see right now,
01:43the person that would be up against Le Pen, consistently you're seeing this at the moment,
01:48would actually be Mélenchon, Edouard Philippe, another potential option, but he's third at the
01:52moment so he wouldn't reach the second round. But here's the crucial part. Le Pen against Mélenchon,
01:59she wins 69 percent of the vote. So a landslide that would be against Mélenchon. And even against
02:07Philippe, she would win 57 percent of the vote in a second round runoff. So that gives you another
02:14insight there into the extent to which Marine Le Pen now is the clear, clear favourite as things
02:20stand to become the next French president. Do let me know your thoughts on that in the comments below.
02:24Please do whack this video. A quick thumbs up and of course as ever, cheers for watching.
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