Reims: Firstly, I am retracting my Safe UMP prediction for Reims. Over the past few weeks, the race there changed a lot, to the point where the Socialists are favoured to win! The UMP and the DVD-MoDem candidate would be tied with 26% each and 10% behind the Socialists. The left, according to the same poll, would win in 3 runoff scenarios- with 42% in a three-way runoff (PS, UMP, DVD); with 54% against the UMP; and with 51% against the DVD-MD candidate. I am skeptic about polls, and I am not changing my prediction to lean PS. I will keep it as tossup and will make a call on March 10th.

Marseille: The left has taken a boost in polls these past few days; Guerini (PS) took the lead with in a TNS-Sofres first round poll, with the FN a strong third at 9%. The poll’s credibility is destroyed by the fact they did a runoff poll. Any pollster doing a runoff poll in PLM deserve that have their polls trashed (good pollsters like Ipsos don’t do runoff polling in PLM). Back to the situation. The winner in France’s third largest city will be decided by the 3rd sector currently held by a UMP incumbent. Guerini himself is the PS leader in the 3rd sector. Renaud Muselier leads the UMP list. As said before, I now have serious issues with TNS-Sofres, but they did a poll with the PS leading the first round 40-37.5 and tied 50-50 in the runoff. Local sector runoff polls make a little more sense, but I remain very skeptic as to TNS-Sofres now.

If the PS wins the sector, they will control 4 sectors, as will the UMP, not counting any other UMP or PS gains (which are unlikely).

The prediction for Marseille is now tossup.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 7:58 pm and is filed under French Locals 2008. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.