GETTY Marine Le Pen is one of the frontrunners in next year's French presidential electin

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Marine Le Pen is neck-and-neck with Emmanuel Macron going in to this weekend’s first round of voting, with just one point separating them in the latest French opinion polls. Ms Le Pen is widely tipped to progress to the final round of voting and is in with a real chance of becoming France’s next president. The National Front leader has won support for her hard-line stance on Islamist terrorism and migration, and her vow to give France a referendum on EU membership. Speaking after the Paris shooting yesterday, Ms Le Pen called for France to “immediately” take back control of its borders from the EU and deport all migrants who are on a terror watch list.

Who is Marine Le Pen? Marine Le Pen is the leader of France’s National Front (FN) and a frontrunner in next year’s presidential elections. She took over leadership of the FN after her father and the party’s founder Jean-Marie Le Pen stepped down in January 2011. He was later expelled from the far-right movement by his daughter after he said the Holocaust was “a detail of history”. Born in 1968, Ms Le Pen was the youngest of three sisters. Aged eight, she survived a bomb attack on the family home, which was carried out by enemies of her father.

GETTY Ms Le Pen enjoyed a close relationship with her father while growing up

She soon began accompanying Mr Le Pen to meetings and rallies and she started to campaign with him when she was 13 years old. Father and daughter became even closer when Ms Le Pen’s mother, Pierrette Lalanne, deserted the family in 1984. The couple's divorce was said to have been "traumatic" time for Ms Le Pen, especially due to an episode in which Ms Lalanne posed nude in Playboy magazine to ridicule her ex. In 1992 she graduated with a master’s degree in criminal law from the University of Paris and began working as a public defender – often representing illegal immigrants who could not afford a lawyer. She first married in 1995 to Franck Chauffroy, a fellow party member. The couple had three children – Jehanne, 17, and twins Louis and Mathilde, 15 – before their divorce in 2000.

Marion Le Pen in pictures Tue, May 9, 2017 Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of defeated French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen and a National Front lawmaker, announced that she will not run for re-election in the June legislative elections Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 13 Marion Marechal-Le Pen will announce that she leaves her political mandates, according to the far-right National Front

Two years after the split, Ms Le Pen remarried to another FN official Eric Lorio. After their divorced in 2008, the mother of-three has been in a relationship with Louis Aliot, vice-president of the FN. After first joining the FN in 1986, Ms Le Pen became head of its legal department in 1998, and in 2004 was elected as an MEP. In 2012 she came third in France's presidential election, winning a higher percentage of votes than her father received when he finished second in 2002. Ms Le Pen's neice Marion is a rising star of the FN.

GETTY Ms Le Pen is expected to win the first round of voting

What does Marine Le Pen want? Since becoming the FN leader, Ms Le Pen has tried to distance the party from its extreme right-wing, anti-Semitic past. But she remains opposed to illegal immigration, Islam and the EU. Ms Le Pen has said that French citizenship should be “either inherited or merited” and has called for a radical reduction in immigration. She has also said: “Illegal immigrants have no reason to stay in France, these people broke the law the minute they set foot on French soil.” WILL FRANCE LEAVE THE EU?

GETTY Ms Le Pen has shifted the FN away from her father's divisive stance