France's presidential pretenders will this week make mandatory campaign stops at the annual Paris farm fair as polls show farmers increasingly tempted by the far-right's Marine Le Pen when they even bother to vote at all, reports Reuters.
Though only a fraction of the population still works in the farm sector, voters remain attached to the country's agrarian roots, making the annual agriculture fair a fixture of the political calendar.
"Lots of us farmers are pinning our hopes on Marine," dairy and poultry farmer Mickaël Thomas said as he set up for the nine-day-long show. "We see her with farmers more than other candidates."
Polls now show Le Pen placing first in a first round of France's presidential election in April and losing in the second round to a single candidate from the center-left or center-right.
But that race has tightened, raising the prospect that the National Front leader could become the first far-right politician to win power through the ballot box in Western Europe since World War Two.
Le Pen was due on Tuesday to start the parade of politicians at the fair as the first major candidate to visit this year.
After years of crisis in the sector and perceived indifference from other candidates, Le Pen's anti-EU anti-globalization rhetoric strikes a chord with many farmers, once faithful voters for mainstream conservatives.
A Cevipof poll for Le Monde newspaper published on Feb. 16 showed that 35 percent of farmers who plan to vote will back Le Pen in the election, compared to 26 percent of the general population. Conservative François Fillon and centrist Emmanuel Macron are both on 20 percent among farmers, close to their ratings overall.
The same poll also showed farmers are increasingly giving up on politicians altogether, with 51 percent of the 300 surveyed saying they would not vote.
"Farmers were always the French people who voted the most. They voted like they went to mass," said sociologist François Purseigle. "What's surprising about this survey is that they might not go."