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French Far-left Presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon ruled out asking Benoit Hamon, the official Socialist party candidate he has overtaken in opinion polls, to pull out of the race and join him.
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Melenchon, who has risen to as high as 16 percent in polls over the past few days, told French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche: "No, I do not bother with him. My challenge is not to 'unite the left wing' ... it is to federate the people."
Asked if he would ask Hamon to join him, he replied "no."
Melenchon's backing stands at 16 percent, 1 percentage point off third-placed conservative candidate Francois Fillon, for the first-round of the election to be held on April 23, an Odoxa poll showed on Friday.
Separately a BVA poll released Saturday showed Fillon at 19 percent and Melenchon at 15 percent.
BVA said official Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon, who is in fifth place with 11.5 percent, could be vulnerable.
Picked as the ruling Socialist party's nominee in January, Hamon has struggled to make any poll impact ahead the April-May vote.
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The government of Socialist party leader Francois Hollande has been marred by protests in response to his neoliberal reforms, in particular, the labor reform which led to massive strikes from the country's unions.
Earlier this week a Harris Interactive poll found that 53 percent of voters felt Hamon should pull out of the race in favor of Melenchon, a firebrand left-winger who quit the Socialist party several years ago and is now a candidate of the Left Party.
Melenchon, who is widely seen as successfully capitalizing on left-wing voters’ disappointment in the Socialist party, supports economic measures to ensure the country's welfare state as well as liberal social policies including same-sex marriage. On the foreign policy front, he has opposed economic globalization and France's participation in NATO.
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