The final election outcome in the US was not even announced yet, when Marine Le Pen already congratulated Trump and the now ``free American people´´ on Wednesday morning at 7.20 pm on Twitter. Trump`s victory marks another right- wing populist success after the Brexit vote and left the world puzzled about the future. Le Pen, the head of the right-wing Front National (FN), now hopes for a Trump-like win in the 2017 elections. She said in a statement "Today the United States, tomorrow France!" and claims that Trumps win is a “victory of the people against the elite”.
According to a poll published in October, commissioned by RTL and the newspaper Figaro, a duel between Marine Le Pen and the candidate of the conservative Republicans, which could possibly be the former Prime Minister Alain Juppé or former President Nicolas Sarkozy is predicted to take place in May 2017. All polls predict a defeat for Le Pen. Despite these polls many politicians such as the conservative Jean-Pierre Raffarin worry that Le Pen might still win. The FN hopes that the survey institutions might be wrong about the French election predictions, as this was already the case when they were predicting the Brexit vote and now in the presidential elections in the USA. In Great Britain a defeat for the Brexit camp and in the USA a victory for Hillary Clinton was predicted.
There are certain striking parallels between the USA and France. Trump was able to score votes especially in the countryside and in the suburbs of the USA, the FN is also especially strong away from the big cities of France. Both Trump and Le Pen stand up for the white working class instead of the elites and claim that they stand up for people that are forgotten by the system. Furthermore, both have similar policy instincts and were supportive of the Brexit.
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