French Election Candidate Marine Le Pen Finds Support In Trump Voters On Reddit

A Donald Trump Reddit page has emerged as a place for proponents of the U.S. president to go to throw their support behind French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. The Front National Party candidate has been called France’s own Donald Trump, and his supporters in America are responding with their full endorsement.

Le Pen’s opponent, Emmanuel Macron, is frequently eviscerated on the Reddit page while pro-Trumpers rally behind Le Pen and her party.

“FAKE NEWS, FAKE POLLS. Four polls say Macron leads Le Pen 62 pct to 38 pct. Score is Macron’s best since before first round. Where have we heard this before ahead of an election,” one page said.

Users praised Le Pen while discussing how to gain more support for the candidate.

On one thread, users compared Macron’s condemnation of Le Pen supporters to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment during the presidential race, predicting his downfall as a result. A separate thread called for French speakers to help translate leaked emails from Macron, prompting users to offer up suggestions for advancing Le Pen’s candidacy.

“We need to get this in the hands of more Le Pen supporters, they will know the language and have the passion to dig up the dirt,” one user from New York wrote.

Another thread shared Twitter pages and other sites where people from the U.S. and around the world could go to support Le Pen.

It's unclear whether any French voters are actively perusing the page and it's unlikely to have much of an impact on the actual election. Similarities between Trump and Le Pen have been evident throughout her campaign, though their voting base is markedly different in significant ways.

While Trump’s voter base tended to skew older and less educated, Le Pen’s base contains a lot of millennials. Twenty-six percent of voters under the age of 35 planned to vote for Le Pen, according to a late April poll. A similar sentiment that powered Trump’s rise is evident in France, especially among rural young people that feel “left behind.”

“The urban rural divide is even sharper in France,” said New York University history professor Edward Berenson. “There’s a lot of pretty understandable anger there.”