# French Presidential Election, 2017
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [March 3, 2017, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294 "2017-03-03T14:29:26Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Silver\_lining](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_lining)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2017, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/81 "2017-05-03T13:47:29Z")
> [@astorian](#):
>
> Entirely possible, BUT…
>
> Even the pollsters who predicted Hillary would win thought the race would be close. (And, as liberals like to remind us, she DID win the popular vote.)
>
> And even the pollsters who predicted Brexit would fail said the vote would be close.
>
> In a close race, a small shift can change things. If polls said Marine LePen was trailing by 3%, she’d be very confident and rightly so. But even the worst pollsters are never off by 21%- and that’s how much she trails by, with just 5 days to go.
What percent of the population votes in France?
---
### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2017, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/82 "2017-05-03T14:15:11Z")
Good question. But ref myself and \*\*UTJ \*\*just above, there’s also the opposite effect to consider as well: folks who normally vote but who abstain in protest this time. They’re in effect a reservoir of “antivotes” that are just as powerful in swinging elections.
Ref the US again, a non-trivial chunk of D voters stayed home out of either misguided allegiance to Sanders or disgust w Clinton largely fomented by decades of R attack advertising and paid punditry.
Bottom line: Getting one of yours out to vote or convincing one of theirs to stay home are equivalent. A well-balanced political attack plan includes both measures. Would that it were not so.
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### Author:  [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/83 "2017-05-03T21:26:19Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> From the rumblings I’m hearing, this is shaping up to be a Le Pen blow out victory.
I recommend Pepto-Bismal.
Can’t see France providing a majority to LePen. Only thing that could upset the apple cart would be another terrorist incident, which I feverently hope doesn’t occur.
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### Author:  [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2017, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/84 "2017-05-03T21:33:13Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#):
>
> What percent of the population votes in France?
It’s too simple in the new paradigm; more like, who will stay home - last minute deciders, how big will the wave of people too disillusioned these past 10-20 years who are on no pollsters radar, how large now is the group of active/disgusted abstainers … all stuff the pollsters cannot get a handle on.
There is major major churn in, say, 70% turnout this time as compared with any other.
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### Author:  [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/85 "2017-05-04T07:39:38Z")
> [@Silver\_lining](#):
>
> What percent of the population votes in France?
For presidential elections, it’s usually somewhere between 75 and 90%. But the last time the FN passed the first round (with Le Pen father in 2002), the voter turnout reached record highs on the second. Outside of FN voters, NOBODY wants the FN anywhere \*near \*power.
[QUOTE=Great White Dope]
From the rumblings I’m hearing, this is shaping up to be a Le Pen blow out victory.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure who you’re hearing this from, especially after last night’s debate where Marine out-fasched herself.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/86 "2017-05-04T14:23:20Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> From the rumblings I’m hearing, this is shaping up to be a Le Pen blow out victory.
Presently Macron is beating her by eighteen points in the polls; the different in popular vote almost precisely matches, say, the 1984 Reagan-Mondale Slaughter. Even a better turnout performance by the FN campaign isn’t going to make that up.
Fascists remain very hopeful, but something has to happen big time for Le Pen to make up the gulf, and thank God for that.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/87 "2017-05-04T14:49:28Z")
> [@Kobal2](#):
>
> I’m not sure who you’re hearing this from, especially after last night’s debate where Marine out-fasched herself.
Derek is hearing it in the heated imagination writings of the anglosaxon extreme right that he reads.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/88 "2017-05-04T14:52:51Z")
> [@Quartz](#):
>
> As Minister of Economy and Finance from 2014 to 2016, Macron is one of the architects of France’s current economic woes.
that is 100 per cent wrong. Macron attempted to push for some of the badly needed liberal reforms, he was not the architect of the primary economic policies of the PS or of Hollande.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/89 "2017-05-04T15:21:49Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> From the rumblings I’m hearing, this is shaping up to be a Le Pen blow out victory.
That says more about the sources you listen to than anything else. You should consider getting out more.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/90 "2017-05-04T16:06:38Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> Derek is hearing it in the heated imagination writings of the anglosaxon extreme right that he reads.
I agree with your assessment, but I think you’ve mis-named the poster in question.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/91 "2017-05-04T18:37:44Z")
It is a footwear. Maybe I am guessing wrong what footwear is covered, but it is a footwear.
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### Author:  [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/92 "2017-05-04T21:48:06Z")
> [@Ramira](#):
>
> that is 100 per cent wrong. Macron attempted to push for some of the badly needed liberal reforms, he was not the architect of the primary economic policies of the PS or of Hollande.
Right or wrong, the perception is the reality.
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### Author:  [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2017, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/93 "2017-05-04T21:56:33Z")
The perception of not well informed anglosaxons does not much matter to this voting.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/94 "2017-05-05T12:42:51Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#):
>
> Does anyone else think it’s pretty weird that at age 15 Macron fell in love with a married 40 year old teacher (who had kids older than him), and later married her?
Yes, I think it’s extremely weird. His parents freaked out and tried to stop it, but they kept in touch and apparently true love prevailed. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed to marry or anything like that, but it’s \*very \*strange for someone about to become president of a major nation like France.
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#):
>
> So it’s like true love, someone wanting an intellectual equal, instead of a powerful guy looking for a hot chick?
>
> Dear god. The horror.
So you would also shrug it off if the genders were reversed? :dubious:
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### Author:  [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_Arachnid_Laser_1)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/95 "2017-05-05T13:29:22Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> So you would also shrug it off if the genders were reversed? :dubious:
It is being shrugged off all the time right now.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/96 "2017-05-05T14:30:31Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#):
>
> It is being shrugged off all the time right now.
Fifteen year old girls’ love affairs with their male teachers is being shrugged off all the time? :dubious:
Furthermore, I am–again–not talking about such a couple simply living out their lives, but about their becoming the President and First Spouse of a major industrialized power.
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### Author:  [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/97 "2017-05-05T14:42:14Z")
> [@Great\_White\_Dope](#):
>
> From the rumblings I’m hearing, this is shaping up to be a Le Pen blow out victory.
>
> It’s safe to say the clock has struck 11:59 on the E.U. and the globalists’ dream of worldwide power and control.
Y’know, you can just go ahead and say “Jews”. The “globalist” figleaf isn’t fooling anyone.
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### Author:  [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/98 "2017-05-05T14:51:45Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Ref the US again, a non-trivial chunk of D voters stayed home out of either misguided allegiance to Sanders or disgust w Clinton largely fomented by decades of R attack advertising and paid punditry.
So they stayed home out of allegiance to the guy who had been campaigning his ass off for Clinton and telling everyone to vote for her for the last six months? That would be misguided indeed, except that it didn’t actually happen; Sanders voters voted for Clinton at just about exactly the rate at which supporters of the losing primary candidate typically vote for the winner, about 90%.
It’s amazing the lengths to which Clintonists will go to convince themselves that the loss was someone else’s fault, and that nominating someone who most Americans disliked before the campaign even started wasn’t a catastrophically stupid decision with an entirely predictable outcome.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/99 "2017-05-05T15:01:39Z")
Let’s please leave Clinton and Sanders out of this. I have no desire to rehash all that.
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### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [May 5, 2017, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-presidential-election-2017/781294/100 "2017-05-05T15:26:38Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> Let’s please leave Clinton and Sanders out of this. I have no desire to rehash all that.
As an American political junkie, seconded.
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