Republican candidate Francois Fillon is back on track to qualify for the run-off in France’s presidential race, a poll showed on Tuesday, as a sweetened program of reforms and intensive campaigning on social media and across the country pay dividends.

Fillon leapfrogged independent front-runner Emmanuel Macron, gaining three percentage points to 21 percent, while Macron shed five points to 18.5 percent, according to the survey by Elabe for L’Express magazine. National Front leader Marine Le Pen would still get the most votes in the first ballot on April 23 but she would lose to Fillon by 56 percent to 44 percent in the second round on May 7. Le Pen was on 28 percent, up as much as two points.

Contenders across the board are searching for traction in the most open presidential election in living memory. The campaign has already seen former Prime Minister Alain Juppe lose the Republican primary after a year as favorite while one ex-president dropped out and the incumbent Francois Hollande opted not to run.

For a dashboard on European political risk, click here

While no surveys have shown Le Pen winning the presidency, Elabe showed she’s narrowing the gap polling above 40 percent in the second round against both Fillon and Macron for the first time.

The prospect of the anti-euro Le Pen cutting through the melee to claim victory has pushed the spread between French 10-year bonds and similar-maturity German bunds to its widest in more than four years. The risk premium rose 2 basis points to

Fillon, a 62-year-old former prime minister, has made gestures to both conservative and moderate voters in the past days with an intense campaigning to ram home his credentials on security while dialing back his plan to cut health care spending. Macron was in London Tuesday to raise his international profile, meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May before a rally later to court expatriate and a fund-raising dinner.

For an analysis of the hurdles facing a Le Pen presidency, click here

Running for office for the first time in his career, Macron suffered his first significant misstep of the campaign last week, when he qualified French colonial rule in North Africa as a “crime against humanity.” Since then he’s taken the brunt of rivals’ attacks and was forced to apologize to French citizens who left Algeria when it gained independence in 1962.

David Fuller's view

There are two reasons why this year’s French presidential election is probably closer than French pollsters currently indicate. 

1) According to the Pew Research Centre, French voters with an Unfavourable view of the EU number 61%, versus 38% with a Favourable view.  2) Some supporters of Le Pen will not publicly disclose their views because of her Party’s reputation when it was run by her father. 

France’s Pro EU parties from both the left and the right will try to defeat Le Pen but she currently has the momentum. 

(See also: Hotly Disputed, but No Longer Unthinkable: Could France be Ready for President Le Pen?, by Ambrose Evans Pritchard of The Telegraph, posted in Comment of the Day on 16^th February 2017)