France 2002 : Who would win had Lionel Jospin been in the second round?

[Tintrlvr]

Jospin.

Why?

Because I'm a socialist.

"Who would win?" Not "Who would you vote for?"

Jospin, but not by too much.

Haha, I totally misread this.

Why do you think he'd win though? I, for one, know nothing of the 2002 French political scene.

Granted that the first round was a big polling miss, but polling of the second round prior to the first round did generally have Jospin with a very slight edge in March-April 2002, though it was definitely a toss-up and some polls did have Chirac up, including later in the first round.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2002#Chirac.E2.80.93Jospin

That said, the combined Left and Far Left was about three points behind the combined Right and Far Right (counting Bayrou as neither left nor right, which is probably a slightly Jospin-favorable assumption), though Le Pen and Megret's voters were not, especially in 2002, guaranteed to swing behind Chirac in the runoff (whereas the various far-left parties already had a tradition of swinging behind the center-left in the runoff), and a fair number of Saint-Josse voters probably would have voted Jospin rather than Chirac in the runoff also.