Macron and Le Pen go through to run off for French president

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Here

Worrying to have Le Pen as a candidate this far in, but hopefully voters will be switching to Macron.

Tell me what it all means someone Please......

I am hoping someone with a more informed opinion will come along.

I understand that France has a system in which presidential candidates are whittled down in the first round of voting, to these 2 that remain. Le Pen is far right but most of the candidates in the preliminaries were much more moderate. The chances are that people who would have voted for other moderate candidates will switch to Macron.

Macron is a 39 year old former banker who formed a new political organisation, "En marche" only a year ago. He is standing as an independent but is a former PS (socialist party) member, and held senior roles with them.

France has been a prime target for terrorist attacks, it may well be that right wing attitudes in turn might have been fostered by this, hence the support for Le Pen. If Le Pen were to get in, she might well want to take France out of the EU as well.

Hence, other middle ground EU politicians are likely to be supporting a Macron win.

Just like this time last year, there is Too Much Politics at the moment.

Trip de politique!

Apparently their election is on 7 May.

Yup second round is 7th May.

Most the losing candidates have told their supporters to vote Macron. I'd be incredibly surprised if Macron didn't win.

Le Pen's dad got through to the 2nd round in 2002 and got totally trounced - he basically only got the same number of votes as in the first round and everybody else voted for Chirac.

I'm not sure this will happen this time (there were 11 candidates for the first round) but I'm hoping Macron will win.

It would require really unimaginably large polling errors, or some sort of political earthquake, for Macron to lose. Polling suggests that the outcome will be 60-65% for Macron vs 35-40% for Le Pen.

It's not totally impossible for la fasciste to win, but it would be an enormous miss by polling companies - who were remarkably accurate in first round polling.

Note that in the first round it appears that Macron very slightly out-performed his polling, whereas Le Pen slightly under-performed. Make of that what you will.

ah ok,

So this is why Angela Merkel is so thrilled - the EU is effectively saved.

Angela needs to keep a bit quieter and not to a Barack-Obama style annoy-the-French-into-voting-Le-Pen style thing though I think.

The posters for LPen have all been defaced round here (we live in central west Fr. for 6 months of the year). We are praying that Macron wins the presidential election next month, but the Fr. seem to have got the Trump zeitgeist.

It would only take another terrorist attack in France in the next few weeks to tip the balance in favour of Marine, as she is all for securing France's borders.
In that event, who could really blame her?

It would only take another terrorist attack in France in the next few weeks to tip the balance in favour of Marine, as she is all for securing France's borders.

So you are actively hoping for one?

Not that it will make any difference (Macron lead widened at the end of the campaign despite the Paris police shooting). The FN polled about 27% at their height in 2015, down to 21-22% now.

Of course I'm not hoping for a terrorist attack, but I was just pointing out that if one were to happen, it could well increase Marine's support.

I don't think a terrorist attack will make that much difference to Le Pens share of the vote. The sad truth is that the French are to depressed and apathetic to do anything other than vote for more of the same failed policies.

What are the French polls like for reliability? Nobody saw brexit and trump coming.....I think maybe France may well vote Le Pen in.

Providing turn out is good, Macron will be the next French president.

Closing the orders would not have altered a thing anyway. The protagonists were all home grown.

I am fascinated with the story of Macron's wife - I know the age gap is no different to Trump and Melania but the age he met her is a tad scandalous.

Anyway I hope very much he becomes president, what a disaster Le Pen would be for the EU.

What are the French polls like for reliability? Nobody saw brexit and trump coming.....I think maybe France may well vote Le Pen in.

Lol ... First round took place yesterday and the polling was astonishingly accurate. Compared with the final pre-election polls from a week ago they were within about a percentage point for all four main candidates.

Hard to imagine Le Pen overcoming a 24 point disadvantage but I suppose one should never say never.

closing the borders might stop more people coming who will produce more home grown terrorists. If you come from North Africa and have no money and no education where are you going to live. The banlieue. So your kids will grow up in the banlieue with lower educational opportunity's , parents who aren't able to pay for tutors or computer equipment. The children will get poor qualifications and struggle to get any sort of decent job, many of the young men will drift into crime and drugs and get arrested. Once they get arrested they will then get sent to prison where they will be radicalised before being released back into society.

And that is the future of France.

Anyone else noticed he's quite hot, n'est pas?

Sadly, the reality of modern France is the version that lessworriedabout thecat describes. We spent a lot of time in the Gard, in a rundown area with a substantial Maghrebb, and I suspect that this election is not as cut and dried as the media would like it it to be. Not saying that I know anything, but these are the candidates I thought would be the second round contenders and I don't think I could write off Marine. France is not in love with the EU, unless one has a secure public sector job.

In the first round, the old voted for Fillon, the young for Mélenchon, those doing badly for Le Pen and those doing well for Macron.

Bobo , this election will establish how the French think France is doing? That makes me favour Le Pen electorally. There are too many parts of France suffering. Even if the public sector is huge.

There was a big urban-rural split too.

I don't think Le Pen is the candidate of the people not doing well - she wins votes among older, less educated, middle-income people outside the big cities (plus the racist Mediterranean strip). It's basically a Trump vote.

A lot of them are just plain common or garden racists who don't like North Africans - if you read interviews with her voters, they are often afraid of leaving the euro and aren't bothered by EU immigrants.

Le Pen's heartland is in the very run down North East.