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Mélenchon is running as the candidate of the Unbowed France political movement, in an alliance with the French Communist Party. The latest polls show him narrowly trailing Emmanuel Macron, long seen as the favourite, and Le Pen, expected to qualify for the final round of the two-round vote but to lose to Macron in the final. In the final days of a truly unprecedented campaign, Mélenchon’s unexpected surge is a reminder that radical change is in the air, and that its extremist apostles — right or left — may soon hold power.

Some have reacted with panic: Investors have begun frantically selling off French bonds, while the head of France’s largest trade union has decried what he described as Mélenchon’s “rather totalitarian vision.”

But thousands of others have responded with joy.

Nearly 25,000 people assembled in this predominantly middle-class northern French city Wednesday night to hear Mélenchon, dressed in his signature Mao jacket, take the stage. With his distinct wit, erudition and rhetorical flair, he charmed his crowd, packed inside and outside a local sports arena, waving communist banners, Palestinian flags and signs adorned with the Greek letter “Phi,” the campaign’s official symbol.

“It’s the people who make history,” Mélenchon said, standing on a dais before thousands. “It’s you! So we have to do it. Let’s go, folks! Courage!”

Perhaps more than any of the other candidates, it is Mélenchon who best represents 2017’s potential rupture with history, or at least the status quo. Central to his platform is the promise to abolish France’s Fifth Republic, the system of government established by Charles de Gaulle in 1958.