How will Champs-Elysées terror shooting impact on the French election?
French political expert Bruno Cautres from the Cevipof think tank says the impact on voters will be minimal.
I dont think it will change much at this late stage, Cautres told The Local. The campaign has been running for months now and most voters know the candidates they will vote for.
Cautres accepted however it could reinforce those undecided voters who were tempted to vote for either Marine Le Pen or François Fillon.
The danger for Marine Le Pen is that she could face a backlash if, as she has done in the past, she tries to make political gain so soon after the distressing killing of a French policeman.
She cannot give the impression she is trying to profit from this, Cautres said. Candidates would have to show they are the ones who can unite French people and bring them together.
But as already shown, Le Pen, who is no longer guaranteed a place in the second round run off, will not hold back.
Jean Yves Camus a specialist on the French far right told The Local that an attack on a policeman that was over almost as soon as the news broke does not have the same kind of traumatic impact on the public as the mass killings in Nice or Paris in November 2015.
Psychologically its not the same. We knew the number of victims on the Champs Elysées very quickly but at the Bataclan we had to wait hours without knowing," Camus said.
Two weeks after those Paris terror attacks in 2015 Marine Le Pen achieved her highest ever vote count when some 6.8 million French voters backed her in the regional elections.
But as Camus pointed out, it was still not enough votes for her to win any of the regions outright.