GETTY Marine Le Pen has a four-point lead over rival Emmanuel Macron

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The right-wing leader is expected to breeze through to the presidential election’s second and final round in May. The Front National (FN) leader would lead the first round of voting with 27 per cent of the vote, according to a Opinionway-Orpi poll of voting intentions.

Mr Macron, a former economic minister and the leader of the political movement En Marche!, is on 23 per cent in the poll published on Monday. Conservative candidate François Fillon scored 18 per cent of first-round voting intentions in the poll, and would therefore be knocked out of the presidential race.

GETTY She is expected to breeze through to the presidential election’s second and final round

However, the poll said Mr Marcon who, at 39, is a relative newcomer to politics, would win the second round run-off against Ms Le Pen with 63 per cent of the vote. A separate poll by Ifop-Fiducial for Paris Match, CNews and Sud Radio also published on Monday showed a similar trend for the first round, with Ms Le Pen on 26 per cent, just ahead of Mr Macron on 25 per cent and of Mr Fillon on 18 per cent.

The Ifop-Fiducial also shows that the centrist candidate would beat Ms Le Pen in the second round of the scandal-plagued presidential race with 60 per cent of the vote versus 40 per cent. A third poll by Elabe for BFMTV, however, shows that Mr Macron would win the first round of voting with 25.5 per cent of the vote, just ahead of Ms Le Pen, who would garner 25 per cent, before beating her 63 to 37 per cent in the run-off. Mr Fillon, for his part, is once again expected to lag behind the two front-runners with 17.5 per cent of the vote in the election’s first round, according to the Elabe poll.

French voters head to the polls on April 23 and May 7 in the two-round election, which has been marred by the candidates’ legal woes and which is widely seen as another test of popular discontent with traditional pro-EU parties. The Opinionway poll surveyed a total of 1,593 French voters aged 18 and over between March 17 and 19.

GETTY Mr Macron is a former economic minister and the leader of the political movement En Marche!