‘There are no elections without minor or major plot twists’

French president and leader of political party La République en Marche (LREM) Emmanuel Macron addresses residents of the town of Spézet during a campaign rally for the elections.Image AFP

Flip through any French newspaper or watch any French TV channel and be sure to stumble upon a poll or political barometer. French are crazy about their sondays with their avalanche of figures, percentages and forecasts. Especially at election time, such as at the polls for a French president. To illustrate: in 2017, there were 560 polls during the French presidential election campaign. That record will almost certainly be broken this election.

The tenor of these polls: the current President Emmanuel Macron has been well ahead for months, Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Éric Zemmour and Valérie Pécresse are competing for a place of comfort in the second and decisive ballot on April 24 and the traditional left hangs with only several percentage points in the ropes.

No wonder that quality newspaper Le Monde has characterized the battle for the Élysée as ‘une campaign fantôme‘ (“a ghost campaign”). And French voters increasingly indicate that they do not even want to bother to vote during the presidential class to go to the polls, because the polls predict a victory for Macron anyway.

Are the opinion polls doing French politics and journalism a disservice? Do the polls really affect Macron, the tone of the debate and political relations? In short, can you say that the polls are shaping events in France rather than anticipating them?

Or is there an electoral smokescreen? And do the combination of covid and the war in Ukraine make the outcome of the presidential election coming Sunday and April 24 more unpredictable than experts in analyzing voting patterns lead the French to believe?

Rudi Wester studied French language and literature, was a critic of French literature for many years and director of the Institut Néerlandais in Paris.

By law, opinion polls in France must always be accompanied by the number of people polled and the warning about the margin of error of 2 percent up or down. In vain, discussion programs and the French public accept the numbers as solid truths. It is useful that polls can indicate a trend. And that can have a psychological effect on the voter, people don’t like to rally behind a losing presidential candidate. For example, a desperate Valérie Pécresse, who dropped to 9.5 percent, shouted to her audience last weekend: “It’s up to you to choose, not the research bureaus.”

But polls are not predictions, anything can still happen. At a meeting of Éric Zemmour, thousands of French chanted ‘Macron killer!’? Yep, a few percent off. Is Marine Le Pen cleverly hiding her longstanding connections with Putin and consistently hammering away at the loss of purchasing power for her impoverished supporters? She is suddenly dangerously close to Macron’s percentages. In recent days, 2,500 artists and intellectuals called for support for the ultra-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon. What will be the effect of that?

Macron’s Jupiter behavior is a blow to many French people. They think he is an expert, but they don’t like him. There are still a few days to go before the French go to the polls on Sunday. The result is uncertain, there is no way to gauge it.’

Laurent Chambon is a French political scientist who studies minorities in politics in the Netherlands and France. He wrote, among other things, a book about Marine Le Pen.

“The French media are required by law to ensure that everyone is given speaking time, proportional to the forecasts. This year, Éric Zemmour (fascist candidate) is everywhere, while he is likely to score below 10 percent. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (far left) may do just as well as Marine Le Pen (far right), yet he remains barely visible. Also, of many candidates only one sentence (petite phrase) broadcast, usually out of context. Journalists are not very critical. Only three French newspapers have reported on Vladimir Putin’s financial support for Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour’s campaign.

Meanwhile, just before the first round of voting next Sunday, Emmanuel Macron finds herself in the midst of a huge scandal that is barely reported by the press. Highly skilled high officials in France have to study very hard and long and then research everything within their ministries for decades. Yet Macron has paid external consultants more than a billion euros to come up with powerpoints full of clichés and ‘Google research’. This goes even further than corruption: Macron has based his policy on corona, education or unemployment not on the work of senior officials, but on the shabby powerpoints of consultancy McKinsey. We should hear that everywhere.’

Niek Pas is assistant professor of French contemporary history at the University of Amsterdam and wrote about Macron and the new French revolution.

‘We should not underestimate the importance of forecasts and certainly not overestimate them. The French have more than enough opportunities to orientate themselves on the current twelve presidential candidates. These are present in old and new media, write campaign books, tour the country and speak at mass rallies.

‘In principle, strict regulations ensure equal speaking time and clear funding ceilings. Macron has cleverly responded to this, taking into account existing legal frameworks. He postponed his official candidacy for as long as possible and campaigned during the presidential period. But such gimmicks also have little influence on the traditional and capricious dynamics of presidential class

“There are no elections without minor or major plot twists. In 2017, the craft investigative journalism of Le Canard Enchaîné which relegated all forecasts to the trash. Fake jobs from his time as a member of parliament killed the famous winner François Fillon.

The fact that the current campaign for the left reads like the chronicle of a death foretold has little to do with the polling circus. Well with inability to find answers to Macron’s dexterity, with ideological narrowness that hinders a new compelling story and, finally, with political egos that have stubbornly ignored the call for a unity candidate.’

Frederik Dhondt is senior lecturer in legal history at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a French expert.

‘The French polling agencies register trends, but do not predict. A study by the Center de recherches de Sciences Po (Cevipof) shows that many voters are turning away from the current political offer and may be staying at home. The polls have for years written a narrative with no viable alternatives to Macron, the consequences of which they are now recording.

Most French people indicate in polls that they do not want extreme solutions: voters of both the left-wing Parti Socialiste and the center-right Les Républicains have fled to Macron. However, he does not have a clear domestic story in this mini-campaign. The criticism that Macron is only a president of the riches (President for the Wealthy) would be revived now because of the McKinsey affair and his plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65. This recent mood-setting intersects with years of ‘storytelling’ in the media, which have also presented the far-right Le Pen as a mainstream candidate.

‘This cocktail can have different effects. The polls have recorded the failure of classic alternatives. The vote will show on Sunday whether this is correct.’

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