Does Le Pen have a chance of winning French presidency?
Centrist
Emmanuel Macron is a long way ahead in the polls - so is there any way
far-right leader Marine Le Pen could still pull off a shock victory in France's
presidential election on 7 May?
What do the numbers
say?
Since
his impressive first-round victory on Sunday, Mr Macron is still at least 20
points ahead, which sounds an unassailable lead.
The
omens look good for him too. He won 8,657,326 votes on Sunday, almost a million
more than his National Front runner-up.
And
the polls also suggest many voters from the other main candidates are likely to
back him in the second round.
He
has strong backing from key political figures: outgoing Socialist President
François Hollande and candidate Benoît Hamon on the left and defeated
Republican candidate François Fillon and ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy on the
right.
So what could go
wrong for him? Abstention is the biggest threat, says political scientist
Aurélien Preud'homme.
"If
there is a very weak turnout for Macron and very strong support for Le Pen, she
could go above 50% of the vote," he told the BBC.
So could apathy win
Le Pen the vote?
Marine
Le Pen does not even need to go above 50% in the polls to become president,
according to one expert, as long as Macron voters stay away in big enough
numbers.
All
she needs is to advance a little more in the polls, and this is how she could
do it.
"If
she gets 42% of the vote, which isn't impossible, and Macron gets 58%, normally
she loses the election," physicist and Sciences Po political expert Serge
Galam told RMC radio.
"But
if 90% of people who said they would vote for Le Pen do it, and at the same
time only 65% of people who declared they would vote for Macron actually do it,
then it's Marine Le Pen who wins the election with a score of 50.07%."
It
is not that the polls are wrong, it is just that they cannot gauge the level of
voter apathy in advance. Under Serge
Galam's mathematical formula, he gives three examples of how Marine Le Pen can win, where
she is candidate "A turnout x" and Emmanuel Macron is "B turnout
y" with a Turnout (T).
He
calls this model "differentiated abstention".
Whether
or not the polls might fail, it is worth pointing out that almost all the
polling organisations were uncannily accurate in predicting where the top six
candidates would finish.
US pollster Nate Silver gives Marine Le Pen no chance at all,
arguing she is in a far worse hole than Donald Trump ever was.
But Ian Bremmer of
risk consultancy Eurasia Group puts the chance of a Le Pen victory at 30%.
"I
feel he's going to win but it's not a safe bet. It's significantly about
turnout and there are externalities that are very plausible."
One
of those external factors, he believes, might be a terrorist attack on a
greater scale than the murder of policeman Xavier Jugelé in central Paris three
days before the first round or perhaps an outbreak of fake news.
What are the chances
of a low turnout?
It
could happen, as the 7 May run-off comes in the middle of a holiday weekend.
Why make a special effort to stay home and vote on Sunday when Monday is a
public holiday? It could work both ways but the Macron vote is more city-based
and more likely to venture away from home.
Then
there are the significant groups who cannot bring themselves to back an
economic and social liberal in Emmanuel Macron. All of them are attracted to the hashtag #SansMoile7mai (Without me on 7 May).
One
is Sens Commun (Common Sense) a socially conservative group opposed to same-sex
marriage and adoption. Their leader sees the "political decay" of Mr
Macron as no different to the "chaos" offered by Le Pen.
Historically,
however, turnout in the second round is as high as 80%, so there would need to
be a dramatic decline.
Can Le Pen improve
her chances?
The
far-right leader has only a few days to claw back a 20-point deficit but she
has hit the ground running since she polled 21.3% on Sunday, well behind her
rival on 24%.
She
has already stolen the limelight with prime-time interviews two nights running
on France's top two TV channels and a dramatic political stunt, upstaging her
rival in front of striking workers at Amiens.
By contrast Mr
Macron has appeared flat-footed, beginning with a celebration party on Sunday
night at a pricey Paris bistro and what sounded like a rebuke from President
François Hollande. "We need to be extremely serious and mobilised and not
think it's a done deal, because a vote is earned, it's fought for."
But
the centrist favourite has begun to hit back and a lot will hang on the TV duel
on 3 May. In earlier TV debates Mr Macron performed noticeably better than his
National Front rival.
Can she attract new
voters?
Marine
Le Pen has already achieved a record number of votes for her party and is even
trying to distance herself from the brand by restyling herself as the people's
candidate with ex-banker Emmanuel Macron as a "candidate of the
oligarchy".
The key lies with
two blocs: the right wing of François Fillon's Republican support base and the
radical left who opted for the surprise package of the first round, Jean-Luc
Mélenchon.
Together
the two candidates polled almost 40% of the vote. And Mr Mélenchon refuses to
back either candidate, raising the possibility that a section of
anti-globalisation voters could find common cause with Marine Le Pen.
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