Is the poll published on Twitter by the French Far Right party treasurer reliable?

On the day following the first presidential debate hosted by French TV channel TF1, the National Front party treasurer, Wallerand de Saint Just, posted on Twitter a falsified poll carried out by French newspaper Le Figaro.

The visual of this poll includes Le Figaro’s logo and indicates that 32% of respondents answered “Marine Le Pen” when asked the question “Who was most convincing during last night’s debate?”. This poll cannot however be found on Le Figaro’s website, as quickly noticed by Le Figaro’s head of social media in answer to the tweet.

(Translation Tweet 1: ‘Survey @Le_Figaro “who was the most convincing?” @MLP_official largely in the lead…’ Tweet 2: ‘Hello @wdesaintjust! We cannot find these numbers anywhere on our website – where did you find them?’)

Wallerand de Saint Just’s tweet assures that Marine Le Pen is “largely in the lead…”

Le Figaro did indeed publish an online poll on the 20th of March asking the question “Which candidate did you find most convincing?”. However, the poll numbers differ greatly from those put forward in Wallerand de Saint Just’s tweet. On March 21st at 4 p.m. Marine Le Pen had 18% of the respondent’s votes, putting her behind François Fillon (41%) and Emmanuel Macron (24%).

Contacted by CrossCheck, Wallerand de Saint Just claims to have found his figures on Twitter and not on “Le Figaro”.