After being relatively stable for nearly two months, there is now movement in the polls. The official campaign began today, April 10. The election will be held on April 23.
On March 20, a TV debate was held with the top five candidates. (This preceded the date when legally all official candidates must be included.) Western media response: Le Pen middling, Hamon awful, Fillon looked presidential, Mélenchon amusing, and Macron rocked. Non-MSM and French speaking response disagreed on Mélenchon and Macron assessments with Macron also middling, but Melenchon the star on the stage. The subsequent polls confirmed the second view.
Eleven candidates appeared at the April 4 marathon (over three hours) debate.
A total of 6.3 million people representing an audience share of 32% viewed the debate; BFM TV alone claimed 5.5 million viewers, equivalent to 28% audience share – an all-time record for the channel
Reuter’s report on it led with:
Centrist Emmanuel Macron kept his position as favorite to win France’s presidential election after a televised debate on Tuesday night in which he clashed sharply with his main rival, Marine Le Pen, over Europe, just 19 days before the election.
They would wouldn’t they. However,
In the Elabe snap poll taken when the debate ended in the early hours of Wednesday, firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a veteran of France’s political circuit, took first place as the most convincing performer.
Le Pen lagged in fourth place behind Macron and Francois Fillon.
Also:
In a debate that also discussed trade, immigration and security, Fillon and Le Pen came in for stinging attacks from two far-left candidates, who cited the judicial investigations facing them.
Note Reuters didn’t see fit to identify those two far-left candidates, and only named one, Nathalie Arthaud, later in the article.
The LaRouchie is holding steady at 0.5% or less.
Asselineau (far-right, euroskeptic) may have advanced from <0.5% to 1%
Dupont-Aignan (Gaullist) bouncing between 3% and 4.5% which is down slightly from before the debate.
LaSalle (new party; split from MoDem that passed on this election) hanging in at 0.5% to 1%
Arthaud (far left) no change at 0.5%
Poutou (anti-capitalist) up from 1% to 2% (almost a point better than his ’12 result).
Hamon (Socialist) continues his downward slide and is now at 9% (or somewhere between 8% and 10%). It was the debates that put him into the primary and in which he won both rounds. He hasn’t been able to replicate that in the general election. Hamon appears not to be a strong enough candidate to revive the party that Hollande destroyed.
Fillon (Republican) has been bouncing between 17% and 20%.
Le Pen down slightly from her 25% with ticks up to 27%. She’s now at 24% (with a low of 23% and high of 24.5%)
Macron is also down from 25% (with ticks up to 26%) to a range of 23% to 24%.
Mélenchon has steadily climbed from 10-11% (where he was in 2012) to 18%. (A flip from a 2/1 poll that had Mélenchon at 9% and Hamon at 18%). He’s not yet in contention to come in at first or second.
A third debate was scheduled for April 20 but has been cancelled. Macron only wanted one debate with all the candidates (echoes of Hollande in 2012). Mélenchon objected to holding it three days before the election and therefore, wouldn’t participate if it were held.
The prognosticators are using the outcome of Brexit and the USG election to conclude that Le Pen is being under-polled and therefore, will make it to the second round. In 2002 her father finished in second place with 16.86% and was only able to take that up to 17.79% in the final and in 2007 sunk to 10.44%. Marine Le Pen got 17.9% in 2012. It didn’t turn out that way in Dutch election, PVV (racialist party) fell far short of its polling numbers, only 20 seats out of 150 seats for 13.1%, a gain but only up from 10% in the prior election. The socialist party also collapsed there and VVD to the right ended up weaker.
That 18% for what can be referred to as a “neo-nazi” candidate may be the upper limit in coutries like France and Holland that experienced the real thing if the candidate offers nothing more. In the debates, Le Pen demonstrated that she doesn’t have anything else and her rise in the polls is a function of current difficulties with immigrants and terrorist attacks, but she may not be substantively that different on this issue from other candidates.
In 2012 the right side of the aisle ended up with 47.12% and that’s where it is now in the latest polling. At this point in the 2012 election, Le Pen’s poll numbers were between 16% and 17%, but that may not have been an undercount because the abstention/protest vote was projected to be much lower than the actual of 20.5%.
This time around, pollsters are getting an abstention/protest vote averaging in the mid-thirties. Who is lurking in there that may end up voting or not voting? A reasonable guess is disgusted/demoralized Republicans and Socialists. At the end of the day in 2012 it appears to have been disgusted/demoralized “moderates” and lefties. So, low turn-out, Le Pen gets to the second round. High turn-out, who knows?
Illustrating a change over the past two weeks (using Ifop polling).
March 26-31
Macron 26%
Le Pen 25.5%
Fillon 17.5%
Melenchon 15%
Hamon 10%
April 9-12
Macron 22.5%
Le Pen 23.5%
Fillon 19.0%
Melenchon 18.5%
Hamon 8.5%
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UPDATE 4/12/17
The Guardian Freaks Out. And somewhat irresponsibly.
A dramatic seven-point surge by the wildcard leftwing veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon appears to be holding, unexpectedly turning France’s roller-coaster presidential race into a possible four-way contest.
Barely 10 days from the first round of voting on 23 April, the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine Le Pen, both with 23-24% of the vote, are still favourites to go through to the run-off round.
But Mélenchon, an acid-tongued political showman with a radical tax-and-spend platform, is now just five or six points behind. Some recent polls have placed him third, ahead of the scandal-hit centre-right candidate, François Fillon.
Back in January before the Socialist Party had selected its nominee, Melenchon was polling at up to 15%. That dropped to 10% when a non-Hollande affilited nominee was chosen. By the end of March, Hamon was down to 10% and Melenchon was up to 15%.
The race between Macron and Le Pen isn’t tied up; Le Pen is still in the lead. More interesting is that both have dropped a few points.
The difference between Melenchon and Fillon is currently running at 0.5% with variance between polls as to which of the two is leading for third place.
With an acid-tongued political showman with a radical tax-and-spend platform…, The Guardian got in all the negative buzzwords they couldn’t use in describing Corbyn or Sanders. Then a moment of accurate reporting before they really get rolling:
Mélenchon’s rise means that with up to a third of voters undecided, no two opinion polls entirely alike and margins of error to account for, it is impossible to say with certainty who of the front four will go head-to-head in the second round.
As I noted above, that’s correct.
The extreme unpredictability of the contest is rattling financial markets and observers alike. The campaign “smells bad”, the outgoing president, François Hollande, has privately told friends, Le Monde reported.
Fearing what commentators are calling a destructive mood among voters, Hollande also warned against the dangers of “simplifications and falsifications” in an election widely marked by anti-establishment anger and populist politics.
How dare voters be angry! Oh, and the “smells bad” has been coming from Hollande; so much so that he didn’t stand for re-election.
Then the fear-fear-fear card.
Pierre Gattaz, the leader of France’s main business group Medef, said this week a second round pitting Mélenchon against Le Pen would be “a catastrophe” for France, forcing voters to choose between “economic disaster and economic chaos”.
The plebes and rubes are supposed to STFU and choose more income/wealth inequality and more war. Not sure why they think this will work better than it did in the UK and US.
UPDATE #2 Uh Oh
A MONUMENTAL computer blunder could cost Marine Le Pen the French general election as 500,000 citizens living outside of France have the chance to vote twice.
Half a million people received duplicate polling cards in the post, which would allow them to cast two votes at the first round of the election, held on April 23.
French authorities confirmed they would not be investigating the potential electoral fraud until AFTER the election, when retrospective prosecution may take place.
This could crush Ms Le Pen’s dreams of surging to power, as most French nationals living outside of their country are not right wing – demonstrated by the fact many feel they depend on the European Union (EU) to guarantee their stay in foreign countries.
Emmanuel Macron visited London in February and held rousing talks urging London’s 300,000-strong community to vote for him.
London’s French population equates to France’s sixth largest city, and now many of those 300,000 people will have the chance to vote for Mr Macron twice.
…Interesting how a computer “glitch” just happened to put two ballots in the hands of TPTB favorite candidate. Doubt they will now be screaming that Putin-Russia did it. (Of course it’s illegal for those that received two ballots – and some that aren’t eligible at all to vote received ballots — to cast both of them. But with a crook or two running for president, why should the little people worry about legal niceties?)
UPDATE #3 Sondage popularité : le grand bond de Mélenchon Ifop public approval rating for various politicians. May mean nothing considering that the 72 year old convicted felon Alain Juppe, who lost the LR primary to Fillon, has a 60% approval rating. 2017 Presidential candidates in order of approval rating:
Melenchon – 68%
Macron – 55%
Hamon – 48%
Dupont-Aignan – 41%
Le Pen – 32%
Fillon – 27%
