The French Presidential election is two years off, but if new opinion polls hold there might be a disturbing shift in the electorate’s tastes.  It shows the leader of the ultra-right National Front (FN) Marine LePen would come in first place.

“If the first ballot would take place today,” the magazine wrote said that LePen “would gather between 29 and 31 percent of the votes, depending on the adversaries”.

The survey is published in Thursday’s edition of the magazine Marianne.  It pitted Le Pen against French President Francois Hollande, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy as well as some minor candidates – and despite a minor resurgence in popularity, Sarkozy would come in second if the elections took place today.  President Hollande of the Socialist Party wouldn’t even make it to the second round.

It’s just one poll, but it comes in the wake of this month’s terror attacks in Paris that saw twelve people killed in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, a police woman killed at a gas station, and four hostages killed in a siege at a kosher food store.  The three terrorists responsible were also killed by police, and their connection is still under investigation.

LePen inherited leadership of the FN from her father, founder Jean-Marie LePen, and is credited with putting a more telegenic face on FN’s xenophobic and extremist policies.  It has reportedly caused a family rift, but we’ll see if electoral success changes to that.