2017 French Presidential Election

[Former President tack50]

Why are people suddenly falling in love with Melenchon? If he becomes the new French left, I will never be able to support it.

Strong debate performance

Not to mention a majority of people are just now starting to pay attention to the whole circus. Up until now it was just all background noise about Fillon's and Le Pen's judicial troubles, but with the first debate the campaign has actually started and people are now aware of at least 5 candidates instead of just 3 or 4.

If that were true wouldn't Hamon have also seen a rise in his polling numbers? (Assuming the 3  "well known ones" were Fillon, Macron and Le Pen)

[Former President tack50]

Valls will vote for Macron

Is PS dead after this? (assuming Hamon keeps falling) I can see their voters splitting between Melenchon and Macron.

[Former President tack50]

Has anyone polled a Len Pen-Melenchon second round, out of curiosity?

Iirc there was a poll semi-reciently which had something like 60% Melenchon 40% Le Pen? Can't find the source though, and it probably isn't all that accurate.

Edit: Here it is. 64-36 actually, which doesn't sound realistic at all. Might be between 18-25 year olds though, which would make it more realistic (I don't speak French, so I can't totally confirm that, but it certainly looks that way)

htt p://ww w.ifop.co m/media/poll/3693-1-study_file. pdf

(Delete the spaces manually, can't post links)

[Former President tack50]

Tracking polls

OpinionWay
Le Pen: 24% (-1)
Macron: 24% (-1)
Fillon: 19% (-1)
Mélenchon: 15% (=)
Hamon: 11% (+1)

Second round: Macron 63% (-1), Le Pen 37%

Ifop
Macron: 26% (=)
Le Pen: 25% (-0.5)
Fillon: 17.5% (=)
Mélenchon: 15% (+0.5)
Hamon: 10% (=)

Second round: Macron 60% (=), Le Pen 40%

Mélenchon comes really close of Fillon. I think it will be really difficult for Mélenchon to go beyond 15% but who knows ...

Wow, at this rate France's 2 traditional parties might come dead last XD. Can Melenchon overtake Fillon? Because I guess if he does so France's 2 main parties are toast, replaced with some weird 3 party system (FN-En Marche-whatever Melenchon's party is called).

[Former President tack50]

Another question for experts on French politics: Why doesn't Dupont-Aignan drop out and endorse Le Pen?  He and his party seem to align with her (except for him wanting a quicker Frexit).

Well it's too late to withdraw from the election officially. Other than that, the French far-right has many concerns, but electability is not one of them.

To be fair, you could always go out and say "please don't vote for me, vote for her instead!", but with France's 2 round system it does not make that much sense, especially when Le Pen is almost guaranteed to go to the 2nd round

[Former President tack50]

Hamon 53%
Arthaud 53%
Le Pen 52%
Poutou 52%
Fillon 48%
Mélenchon 47%
Cheminade 47%
Dupont-Aignan 46%
Macron 44%

That was... interesting. I do agree with Hamon being my first choice, but I am surprised to see Le Pen as the 2nd (of the major candidates); to see Fillon above Melenchon and to see Macron as the worst choice for me.

Then again mostly tied. The diffrence between Macron and Hamon for me is only 9 points

Edit: After weighing my results, it moves to:

Le Pen 57%
Hamon 56%
Melenchon 52%
Fillon 51%
Macron 44%

Even more interesting. For some reson Le Pen jumps to number 1.

[Former President tack50]

A French Town Known for Picking Presidents Sees Big Upset Ahead
The foie gras town of Donzy is almost always right in picking a winner, and this year it sees Fillon beating Le Pen.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-04-09/a-french-town-known-for-picking-presidents-sees-big-upset-ahead

There are 36,000 communes in France, so there are probably others that have been good bellwethers for the last few elections, but have different results for the current election.

Yeah, just in Spain alone we have 81 municipalities that qualify (the largest being Ponferrada, a Galician town with 67 000 people). Interestingly there is a "state" that does always predict the election (Aragon, which is often called Spain's Ohio for that reason)

[Former President tack50]

Melenchon has an online video game now: http://fiscalkombat.fr/

If he gets elected I hope his policies are better than his videogames XD

[Former President tack50]

The UK press are starting to talk about Melenchon; and it's leading to similar articles that I saw in 2012 where people said that Hollande winning was a good sign for Miliband (but obvs for Corbyn now)

Pretty sure nothing will come out of it. Hell, does Corbyn even have a chance of forcing a hung parliament? (let alone winning or forming a majority government)

[Former President tack50]

Yeah but French polls have always been consistent with one another. In 2012, in 2007, for the national trends in the local elections, ... with no major surprises in those elections.

Sure, but I guess those elections were a lot more "traditional" and easier to poll.

[Former President tack50]

French media were never been in a "too close to call" situation, that would be funny to see.

Plus this year the first polls will close at 7pm, which means that pollsters will only have one hour to collect some results and calculate their projections, I believe that they can do a projection under 45-50 minutes after the polls close but maybe it won't be as precise as before, when they had an extra hour to do it.

What about the French overseas territories? (think French Guyana) Do those not vote? Do they vote earlier? Or do French people have to wait 1 day after polls close to know the result? (for reference polls close at 8 here in Spain but the first results come out at 9 when the polls close in the Canary Islands, but 1 h difference isn't as much as France)

[Former President tack50]

Wouldn't we know beforehand, as exit polls would be leaked to Swiss and Belgian media outlets to circumvent France's ban on publishing exit polls?

Ah, the "Andorran fruit market totally not related with the election" poll XD

[Former President tack50]

A melenchon v panzergirl run off would be pretty much the end of the fifth republic as I see it.

Because Melenchon would usher in the 6th republic

Now seriously though, that wouldn't kill France as we know it (although it'd be quite reformed, though I guess it also depends on the parliamentary election later this year?), but it'd definitely kill the EU.

[Former President tack50]

And it's the first time that Macron leads in this poll.

Two men have been arrested as they planed an imminent attack during the presidential elections. The candidates were advised last week. It's unclear at this point if the suspected terrorists targeted a particular candidate.

Damn, had the terrorist attack actually happened it would have been a game changer. Difficult to say who'd benefit, but I guess it'd help Le Pen and hurt Macron.

Something like that happened here in 04 and it changed the polls by around 9 points. (prediction was PP+4 result was PSOE+5 or so)

[Former President tack50]

Poll Elabe (before the attack)

Macron: 24% (=)
Le Pen: 21.5% (-1.5)
Fillon: 20% (+0.5)
Mélenchon: 19.5% (+1.5)
Hamon: 7% (-1)
Dupont-Aignan: 4% (=)
Poutou: 1.5% (-0,5)
The others: at or under 1%

It's the last day of polls today, I don't know if we will have a poll done after the attack.

Does France have a "no polling can be published period" like Spain? If so, will we see polling done at mysterious Andorran shops?

[Former President tack50]

I was actually thinking just earlier today that ISIS had been very quiet lately...it's been many months since they've done anything major

 
  
In Europe and NA maybe but don't forget that the church bombings in Egypt with 45 casualties was less then two weeks ago. And even when we include the west: The attack at Westminster happened less then a month ago.  
  
And when I google for prevented terror attacks I find quite a few recent ones. Vienna, Venedig, Paris, Göttingen, Las Palmas to name a few.

WTF!? What happened there? I don't remember any terrorist attacks in Las Palmas, not just in recient history, but ever.

Edit: Oh, prevented terror attacks. Then yeah, the police has arrested a couple of terrorists here. The Guardia Civil is doing a suprsisngly good job protecting Spain from terrorism (I guess decades of training with ETA help)

[Former President tack50]

I was actually thinking just earlier today that ISIS had been very quiet lately...it's been many months since they've done anything major

 
  
In Europe and NA maybe but don't forget that the church bombings in Egypt with 45 casualties was less then two weeks ago. And even when we include the west: The attack at Westminster happened less then a month ago.  
  
And when I google for prevented terror attacks I find quite a few recent ones. Vienna, Venedig, Paris, Göttingen, Las Palmas to name a few.

WTF!? What happened there? I don't remember any terrorist attacks in Las Palmas, not just in recient history, but ever.

I think it was these guys: Movimiento por la Autodeterminación e Independencia del Archipiélago Canario (MPAIAC)

According to Wikipedia they bombed the offices of the South African Airways in 1977 and in March 27 1977 they bombed a flower shop in Las Palmas airport that made autorities close the airport and indirectly provoked the Los Rodeos airplane accident.

Oh, yeah, forgot about that, but they only ever killed one guy directly. They were involved in that huge plane accident though.

But it was about prevented attacks which have actually happened

[Former President tack50]

Austrian Chancellor Kern (SPÖ) endorses Macron ... and not Hamon:

http://diepresse.com/home/innenpolitik/5205246/Kern_Ich-bin-kein-Masochist

For all what's worth Pablo Iglesias here endorsed Melenchon, but that was totally expected.

[Former President tack50]

Turnout at noon

Guadeloupe: 17.65% (+0.82)
Martinique: 13.93% (-4.3)

Damn, 14% turnout! Is turnout in the outermost regions representative of the mainland? Because if so, Fillon is probably very happy.