It was hard to believe the event was a political rally. The hit song "Bande Organisée" reverberated at Duplex, the famous Paris nightclub, as the star of the evening arrived, at around 11 pm, on Saturday, January 27. A man in a dark suit made his way through a swarm of phones turned towards him: Jordan Bardella, the president of the far-right Rassemblement National party. The atmosphere was festive, punctuated by the subversive lyrics of the rappers from Marseille, who would not usually be associated to the values that the main guest claims to embody. Hundreds of young people in their Sunday best chanted "Jordan, Jordan!" and laughed as a jokester daydreamed out loud about the possibility of "Jordan 2027." Welcome to the launch of Bardella's own branch of the party: Les Jeunes avec Bardella ("Youth with Bardella").
It wasn't just a night out dancing. It was quite the symbolic moment for a party that nurtures the cult of the leader and has only ever sanctified one last name: Le Pen. But Bardella is carried by a powerful current: public opinion, as is evidenced by his inclusion in the traditional list of France's 50 favorite celebrities, produced by the IFOP polling company for the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche: He was the only politician on the list published on January 2. He was 30th in a ranking in which Marine Le Pen has never appeared. A 28-year-old man – imbued with the ideas of the Nouvelle Droite (New Right), a racialist little-known current of the far right – has risen into this pantheon of consensus and conservatism, as part of a very masculine top 50. In the eyes of most of French people, he's still the well-coiffed, suit-wearing young man who is following in Le Pen's footsteps and taking to the airwaves every morning. With his shoulders at a right angle (he says he's a keen athlete), he offers an Olympian calm, clear diction, simple words and punchy lines.
Other polls show his extreme popularity. It is higher than Le Pen's among people with higher education degrees, executives and white-collar workers, city residents, the most politicized French citizens, and particularly those on the right. But digging a little deeper shows that Bardella remains poorly identified in broader public opinion; he is neither a turn-off nor particularly associated with certain policies. The RN's lead candidate for the European elections in June is aiming for this blurred positioning. "Politicians are mirrors for voters. And the less people know about you, the more they can see themselves," said pollster Jérôme Sainte-Marie, to whom Bardella has entrusted the training of RN leaders and activists. "You can't make Marine Le Pen into a conservative, so it's confining. Bardella is more ambiguous. I think I know what Marine Le Pen thinks; I'm not sure I know what Jordan Bardella really thinks."
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