Nearly half of all Muslims in France say they would think about going into exile if sovereigntist candidate Marine Le Pen is elected President next year, with a massive one in five followers of Islam saying they would definitely leave the country.

French news magazine Marianne has published the findings of large sample polling conducted for them by Ifop that suggests a large proportion of the country would simply refuse to keep living peacefully in France if their preferred candidates don’t prevail in the April 2027 Presidential Elections. Some 46 per cent of Muslims in the 9,600 respondent poll — a large sample for European polls — said they would consider “leaving France to settle in another country”.

Because the French government is officially secular its collection of data on matters like faith and ethnicity among the population can be patchy, but according to recent estimates adherents of the Muslim faith make up around ten per cent of all people in France. With around 70 million permanent residents, this could mean three-and-a-half million people responding to the election by considering going abroad.

While claims of voluntary deportation around election time are not unknown and often prove to be hyperbole, there is a hardcore within that group at 20 per cent of Muslims in France who say they have already made their minds up and will “certainly” go abroad if Le Pen is sworn in as President, approaching one-and-a-half million people.

This desire to leave may be down to concern about what Le Pen’s France may be like. Some 80 per cent of Muslims said they fear “increase in attacks and discrimination”, and 27 per cent said they would try to hide their religious choices in daily life. Even 18 per cent of hijab-wearing women said they would consider stop veiling if Le Pen won the election, the pollster claimed.

Muslims living in France are not the only group who told the pollster they’d consider going abroad. Almost as welling to sit out a Le Pen Presidency were supporters of hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who seems a credible candidate to make it to the Presidential run-offs against Le Pen, and whose party has been accused of stoking recent riots in France for their own political ends. According to Marianne, 43 per cent of Melenchon voters say they’d consider leaving France.

With his polling hovering around 17 per cent nationally, the results imply five and a half million leftists in France who would consider reacting to losing an election by moving abroad.

Voluntary expatriation isn’t the only option on the table that opponents of Marine Le Pen perceive. The prospect of the left attempting to bring the country grinding to a halt in revenge against a democratic election looms large, with the Marianne / Ifop polling finding that three-quarters of leftist Melenchon voters would simple ignore new laws they consider “unjust” and join in a general strike against the government, a level of resistance raising the fear of “gridlock” in the country.

Left-wing resistance movements or not, any such attempts to bring down the government would be up against a democratic mandate and some policies which, this polling suggests, are popular. Part of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party platform is banning the burka in public — a traditional Arab modesty garment that provides near-total coverage of a woman now associated with fundamentalist interpretations of Islam — and possibly gaining a re-enforced mandate for it by hosting a national referendum on the matter.

Per Ifop, 53 per cent of French people are “opposed to Muslim women wearing the veil in public, even if they choose to do so”, and 60 per cent want a ban referendum, suggesting the measure could possibly become law.

A majority of French also support banning organisations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood with an overwhelming 80 per cent in favour. Presse Agence states support for banning these groups is even held among a majority of left-wing voters, and even if it just misses out on an outright majority, a huge 48 per cent of Muslims were also polled to agree with the measure.

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