France 2012: the official thread

[Bacon King]

PS
Open primaries (a requirement to pay one euro and sign some stupid declaration of adherence to left-wing values) will be held on October 9 and 16.

Wait, so you have to pay to vote in the primary? That seems kind of... unsocialist.

[Bacon King]

Sarko is going nuts... Even more than expected.

From what little I've read, it appear's that he's going balls-to-the-wall in attempting to woo the FN... even if he does convince Le Pen voters to show up and vote for him in the second round, isn't he scaring off a lot more moderates in the process?

[Bacon King]

From the reaction you'd think that it was a poll showing him 10 points ahead.

Doesn't the idea that Sarkozy is gaining ground after his far-right turn freak you out too ?

The weird thing is though that if you look at the poll, though, his support from Le Pen voters has actually dropped. Somehow, according to Ipsos, over the past week Bayrou voters have gone from 33% Hollande, 32% Sarkozy, 35% no voting intentions, to 40% Sarkozy, 34% Hollande, 26% no intentions. There's also a slight decline in the number of Melanchon voters saying they'll vote for Hollande.

That poll basically says the exact opposite of everything that I think would be happening.

[Bacon King]

Enter, before Keystone Phil comes in to say Sarkozy will win re-election:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/assets/pdf/barometre-de-la-presidentielle-2012-V9.pdf

Wow, a bit interesting. Comparing OpinionWay's poll from last week to today, it looks like most of the 1.5 point swing is due to a few very specific shifts.

There's a huge change for younger voters; 18-24 year olds go from 61% Hollande to 54% Hollande. I don't know if that's just due to a small sub-sample size or what.

There's a significant shift in Le Pen's supporters; Hollande loses eight points with most of the change due to an increase number of PanzerGirl voters saying they'll abstain. That makes sense.

However, Melenchon's supporters went from 91% Hollande, 2% Sarko, 7% not voting, to 77% Hollande, 9% Sarkozy, 14% not voting. This seems a bit off. I can understand more leftists deciding to stay home, but what sort of Melenchon voter would actually be voting for Sarko over Hollande?

[Bacon King]

New IFOP poll:

52% Hollande
48% Sarkozy

BK poll analysis (which usually goes ignored, but still)

Shift is mostly due to Bayrou voters shifting from supporting Hollande to abstaining, and previously abstentionist Le Pen voters breaking to Sarkozy. Fairly expected I suppose. 

[Bacon King]

I still don't get this.

The trend isn't that odd. As I've looked at the polls over the last few weeks, while there's been a lot of statistical noise in the break-downs, there's one trend that's generally been consistent. The closer the election has gotten, more and more Le Pen voters are deciding to support Sarkozy instead of not voting in the second round.

[Bacon King]

One question: is the Front de Gauche staying together for the parliamentary elections, or are the individual parties in it competing independently? 

They agreed in 2011 that they'd keep the Front united for the parliamentary election. Their candidates are apparently ~80% PCF, ~20% PG, though they're contesting a handful of seats with assorted minor party and leftist independent candidates.

[Bacon King]

Again, for those over here who care, I'll have a serious liveblog starting at 6PM/noon eastern. Once again, I'll request, and I'm sure Al will back me up on this, that nobody directly posts the leaked exit polls for those who like suspense and living in the dark about such stuff. Look it up yourself if you can't hold yourself, but don't post it here.

Thank's for the head's up. I'll definitely be following your liveblog.

Also, regarding leaked exit polls and such, would it not be acceptable to use tinytext or white font, as a sort of ad hoc spoiler tag?