French presidential election, 2022

[Senator Incitatus]

1. The video makes all these evocations to French "grandeur" (some would say "delusions of grandeur") - and yet the entire soundtrack is Beethoven - who was German! You'd think he'd at least find some inspirational French music.

My guess is Zemmour is smart and the music choice was designed to elicit this sort of response so that he can fire back that Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 is (like so much of his work) a reflection on Napoleonic France and therefore appropriate for a campaign in the Napoleonic tradition. You could fire back that the Allegretto is a negative assessment of Napoleon, but then Zemmour could fire back that he is the sort of Frenchman who proudly aims to be seen negatively by Germans.

This sort of mistake-that-isn't tactic was a favourite of Nixon and all great modern politicians.

[Senator Incitatus]

Getting a good laugh reading English-language media; they are attempting to utilize their most uncompromisingly alarmist terms against Le Pen while having to invent brand new warnings for the Dangerous Zemmour in the exact same pieces.

[Senator Incitatus]

But that would make them Horrible People you see. The logic is literally "woah my Muslim Uber driving neighbor might get deported under Le Pen but there's no way I'm stopping that by voting Macron because he wants to put up my retirement age".

...

This is a straightforward enough choice to be used in a Le Pen ad.

[Senator Incitatus]

1. Runoff polling is in general of questionable value until the first round is complete and this particular poll was conducted by a Brazilian firm with no track record in France. Polling for this election is extremely frequent (arguably too frequent!) and nearly all recent polls show Macron with a hypothetical second round lead of between six and four points. More have shown larger leads (ten points, eight points etc) than have shown a deficit.

This is true, but why expect Le Pen will decline after the first round? I would think a surprising strong showing (for those who don't religiously follow polling) and reconciliation with Zemmour and (some) Pécresse supporters will improve her standing.

[Senator Incitatus]

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 Though according to this (from 2017 so admittedly out of date) Le Pen is richer than Macron—and Mélenchon is richer than both lol.