GETTY Marine Le Pen will beat any socialist candidates, shows new poll

FREE now and never miss the top politics stories again. SUBSCRIBE Invalid email Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again. We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Any Socialist candidate will get knocked out in the first, decisive round of next year's French presidential election, a shock BVA-Salesforce poll published today reveals. The poll suggests that it is right-wing Les Républicains candidate François Fillon, a self-confessed Thatcherite, who is to face the leader of the eurosceptic National Front party, Marine Le Pen, in the second-round run-off next spring.

The poll, which was commissioned by the telecom company Orange, also revealed that if former prime minister Manuel Valls wins the upcoming Socialist primaries, he will struggle to gather more than 21 per cent of votes in the first round of the election, compared to 26 per cent for Miss Le Pen and 29 per cent for Mr Fillon. If, somehow, the top three left-wing candidates - Mr Valls, former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, and radical leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon - go head-to-head in the first round of the elections, which is due to take place on April 23, François Hollande's former prime minister will get 13 per cent of votes, and his two rivals 14 per cent.

GETTY Manuel Valls would only get 21 per cent in the first round according to the research

GETTY The election is expected to be a run-off Conservative candidate Francois Fillon and Le Pen

Things you didn't know about Marine Le Pen Fri, May 5, 2017 Marine Le Pen is a French politician who is the president of the National Front, a national-conservative political party in France and one of its main political forces. Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 10 Described as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, she has led a movement of "de-demonization of the Front National" to detoxify it and soften its image

All scenarios, however, predict that the Socialists will be thrown out of the race, and that right-wing candidate Mr Fillon will lock horns with Miss Le Pen in the second and final round of the election.

The left has no chance of making it to the final round. Erwan Lestrohan, a BVA spokesman