The French Presidential Election

European Straits #13

Dear All,

Next Sunday is the first round of the French presidential election. The two candidates who gather the most votes will compete in the run-off two weeks later. The two frontrunners have long been Marine Le Pen, of the anti-immigration National Front, and young rising star Emmanuel Macron, who’s running as a commonsense centrist without having ever held elected office. But for two weeks now, the opinion polls have started to tell a very different story.

A first trend worth your attention is that François Fillon, the conservative candidate, is crawling back from the abyss into which the scandals surrounding him and his family once threw him. This reversal of fortune was anticipated for quite some time. Conservative voters tend to be quite reliable. Even if their candidate is now widely seen as corrupt and out of touch, it’s enough for them that he claims to be a devout Catholic and that he’s vowed to slash public spending and lower taxes for the rich. Furthermore, Fillon’s elector…