the whole "she's a lightweight" theme, which is honestly only an issue because she's female

That's exactly what it's about. Everyone in politics has now agreed it's not nice to say she's a woman so she can't hack it, but everyone knows that's the bottom line in 90%+ of people's basic assumptions, so they play on it that way. What ever will she come up with next, tee hee? I didn't analyse it any further because it fucking infuriates me.

The drop in both candidate's polls may partly be due to the fact that they both imprinted their presence early on as "inevitable" candidates, and now other candidates are beginning to make an entrance, Bayrou in particular (on 13% in this poll) and the new candidate Bové (credited with 4%).

As always, beware of French polls because Le Pen always gets more than his poll numbers. I doubt if he'll get less than 16% in Round One, but he's only given 12% in this poll.