What gets inflicted on USians when moneyed elites panic (all over the MSM right now) combines with entrenched Putin-Russia-phobia at The Daily Beast: The Insane French Elections That Could F*ck Us All. This is Freedom Fries level of stupidity. Which coincidentally was only a few months after the 2002 French presidential election when the combined left, including commies and greens, took 21.4% in the first round and Chirac (republican) got 19.9, Le Pen (neo-nazi) 16.9, Jospin (dem/socialist) 16.2%, and Bayrou (center/center) 6.8% (and republican affiliates (combined) got 9.4%, neo-nazi affilate 2.34%, and socialist affiliate 5.3%). It all worked out well that time with the odious Chirac decimating the neo-nazi in the second round.
But horrors in 2017:
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Let’s be just that blunt. These elections could fuck us all. They have turned into an insane gamble–Russian roulette (and we use the term advisedly) with at least two of the chambers loaded–and the implications for the United States are huge.The biggest winner in the forthcoming French presidential elections may well be Russian President Vladimir Putin, in fact. And while he might have played a few of his usual dirty tricks–indeed, in 2014 a Russian bank funded the party of Marine Le Pen, the current first-round leader in the polls–Putin can now sit back and watch the French themselves try to destroy the European Union and the NATO alliance he hates so much.
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A sanity concession (rethink on 2016 at home)?
But two televised debates took much of the wind out of Macron’s sails. Compared to Le Pen and Mélenchon, he was both wonkish and vague–a deadly combination. …
The Le Pen and Macron choirs dominate the remainder of the article, a reporter and/or editor choice that assumes these two will go on to the second round. The CW at this point and maybe for once in the past year the CW will be right. (Wouldn’t put money on it being right or wrong.)
No other noteworthy news on this election beyond what has already been posted in this diary and thread. This one can be used for updates and comments from now until the April 23rd election day.
Added – Bloomberg weighs in: French Election Shocker: Pollsters Baffled by Four-Way Contest.
With just a few days to go before Sunday’s first round of voting, every poll for the past month has shown independent Emmanuel Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen taking the top two spots. Macron would then easily win the May 7 runoff, polls show. Yet both front-runners have been steadily slipping over the past two weeks, and Republican Francois Fillon and Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon are now within striking distance.
…“This situation is totally unprecedented,” said Emmanuel Riviere, managing director of Kantar Public France. “The fact that there are four potential finalists makes the situation very complex.”
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UPDATE 1 FWIW from FiveThirtyEight The French Election Is Way Too Close To Call
In short, the French presidential election is a mess.
Not a mess except for those projecting election winners and losers. None of whom have been accurate in the past year.
Interesting
Second, pollsters may be herding — putting their thumb on the scales so as not to get any result that’s too far from the consensus (by weighting their results towards the average). While herding can make any individual survey more accurate, it makes the average of polls less accurate and increases the chance of a big miss.
Didn’t know that there was a word for pollsters putting a thumb on the scale to increase “external validity.” Don’t know that they actually do this. But Enten is correct that polls in the last two weeks tend to show more variation due to random sampling than we’re seeing in the French polls.
Concur with (and have previously made comments stating the same thing):
One thing I wouldn’t count on to contribute to a polling miss: “shy” Le Pen voters. Some people have argued that survey respondents might be afraid to admit that they support a candidate who espouses what some see as politically incorrect views (i.e. a French Bradley effect). But we can test this hypothesis by looking at how Le Pen and her father Jean-Marie Le Pen (another far-right-wing candidate) have performed in previous presidential elections compared to their polls.
Would add that in both 2002 and 2012, the polls were based on an expected higher turnout than what materialized on election day. And those were the two elections when a Le Pen exceeded the polls numbers by a couple of points. The 2017 polling is based on low to extremely low (for France) turnout; so, a higher turnout could easily lead to Le Pen coming in third or fourth.