French presidential election, 2022

[Lord Halifax]

Realistically there won't be a join left candidate.

So given that Macron is guaranteed to beat Le Pen the only way he can lose is if Bertrand somehow makes the run-off and a lot of left wing voters stay home?

[Lord Halifax]

There has been a fair deal of "a Macron-Le Pen rematch is inevitable" coverage this week. But I wouldn't say it is at all. Remember how fast things changed last time round. Among other things there is still the potential of a Zemmour candidacy, or some anti-establishment outsider coming in and messing things up. Add to that the ever existing potential of scandals/covid disasters/protests or riots and so on. Although having said that, there does seem to be a core of 20-25% who will back Macron no matter what, so I'd still expect to see him in the second round

I assumed Zemmour was a no-hoper.

[Lord Halifax]

There has been a fair deal of "a Macron-Le Pen rematch is inevitable" coverage this week. But I wouldn't say it is at all. Remember how fast things changed last time round. Among other things there is still the potential of a Zemmour candidacy, or some anti-establishment outsider coming in and messing things up. Add to that the ever existing potential of scandals/covid disasters/protests or riots and so on. Although having said that, there does seem to be a core of 20-25% who will back Macron no matter what, so I'd still expect to see him in the second round

I assumed Zemmour was a no-hoper.

The point is more, if he's at close to 10%, then it's pretty obvious whose electorate most of that 10% is coming from.

Yes, but if the Left doesn't have a unity candidate that'll either benefit Bertrand (afaik the only centre-right candidate that could pass even a weakened Le Pen) or be irrelevant.

[Lord Halifax]

Remember how fast things changed last time round.

The obvious difference is that there's an incumbent this time, which generally makes the situation less volatile.

[Lord Halifax]

Then on the right, Chirac and Juppé were former communists who somehow found themselves being Gaullists (Chirac surely due to his marriage with Bernadette and to make his in-laws happy, Juppé idk), but their convictions seem to have always been more to the left.

Never knew that about Juppé. When was he a Communist? He came from a Gaullist family (his father was in the Gaullist part of La Résistance).

[Lord Halifax]

Macron will lose next year, I’m pretty sure about that.

The Republicain candidate will prevail in the 2nd round, not Martini LePen.

why not? drunk Le Pen ("shaken, not stirred") is the best Le Pen.

[Lord Halifax]

* Le Pen is proposing to exempt from income tax every young under 30 and even explained on radio that, if elected, even Kylian Mbappé would be exempted from paying income tax until the age of 30.

Sounds counterproductive not to exclude rich athletes, singers, actors and models from the proposal. I mean, presumably her core voters will find it very unfair that young multimillionaire celebrities (esp. "of color") don't have to pay taxes.

[Lord Halifax]

All of the right-wing politicians are also doing some sort of pilgrimage to Armenia because its a core constituency.

Do you mean America? Why would French politicians care about Armenia?

Third largest Armenian diaspora community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenians_in_France

[Lord Halifax]

Mélenchon himself used this opportunity to start the year with some rambling against ‘the European Marian flag’ (he is obsessed with that; note that Léaument has claimed that the EU flag should be removed because it is a symbol of religious origin and, as such, an infringement on laïcité)

WTF

[Lord Halifax]

Given that there doesn't seem to be any realistic alternative to Macron I wonder what would happen if he died before the election? Would LREM be allowed to nominate a replacement, and if not who do you think would win?

[Lord Halifax]

Who are these Zemmour-Macron voters?

A lot of them very rich people, who are more likely to see le Pen as unacceptably "common".

Yeah. Though according to this (from 2017 so admittedly out of date) Le Pen is richer than Macron—and Mélenchon is richer than both lol.

how did Mélenchon became rich? book deals?

[Lord Halifax]

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1517041819552522240

25-34 year olds are the only group Le Pen is leading with (and by 20 points)

Macron leads 18-24s by 8 points and 65+ by 30 points

Are French millennials conservative leaning or something? I get that they don't love Macron but this is like Millennials in the US just choosing to vote Trump out of spite?

The correct way to view this is that young people make up the majority of the round 2 abstainers who went Melenchon in round 1. Which shouldn't be surprising given political culture. When you are examining a pool smaller than the universe of voters, and one that has self-selected to exclude much of the left, you are left with a result that is only representative of a fraction of the whole.

In fact, one should look at every subsample that does not include the abstention from r1 in mind. How many people are missing, and how much does this slant the electorate? To this end, I recommend actually looking at the polls pdfs, cause the abstentions are included in these but often not discussed in the press releases.

As far as 25-34/35-49 goes, this also shouldn't be surprising. The European far right does best with the middle aged groups, and this is Le Pen's normal base.

25-34 is not "middle aged" and it's surprising that she's doing better with that group than the middle aged (35-49) and that there is such big gap between young (18-25) and young-ish (25-34) voters.