Political Odds: Macron Leads in Polls; Le Pen Has Momentum
With the French election less than three days away (May 7th), let’s take a quick look at where the candidates stand.
When I last covered the French election, Emmanuel Macron (En Marche!) and Marine Le Pen (National Front) had edged past their rivals and advanced to the second-round election. The candidates had just two weeks to campaign for the run-off, and Macron started the race with a comfortable 30-point lead in the polls.
Le Pen began by “temporarily stepping down” as leader of the National Front, presumably to gain a better chance with more mainstream voters. The National Front, which was founded by her father, is tarnished after decades of overt racism and antisemitism.
Over the last two weeks, Le Pen has been making steady progress in the polls. Macron’s lead of 30 percentage points narrowed to around 20, and the momentum was clearly in Le Pen’s favor. But there’s only so much ground she can make up, and the latest polls still have Macron leading by a significant margin.
Like in the 2002 French election, when Le Pen’s father reached the second-round, the major political parties have united against the far-right National Front. The candidates from both major parties, Francois Fillon and Benoit Hamon, have urged their supporters to elect Macron. Barack Obama has even thrown his hat into the ring, releasing a video endorsing Macron.
Whether this helps Macron or not isn’t so clear. Both he and Le Pen are outside candidates, and their success is a sign of the public’s disillusionment with establishment politics. The endorsements brand Macron as the status-quo candidate, and that may actually diminish his chances. He entered the election as a fresh-faced candidate for change, and that has been key to his success.
If the polls are accurate, then Macron will win by a landslide. But the reputation of polls have taken a hit recently after the misreading of Brexit and Trump. Also, a large portion of the French public have stated they do not intend to vote, so if something sways them to head to the booths, it could have a big impact on the election.
Macron is the bettors’ favorite, and rightly so. But I think Le Pen’s chances are a lot better than they’re made out to be.
French Election Odds
Odds to be the next president of France:
Emmanuel Macron: 13/37
Marine Le Pen: 37/13
O/U on margin of victory: 20%
O/U on voter turnout: 35.5 million
Odds of a Frexit by year-end 2018: 13/1
Don Aguero is a man of many talents, writing about nearly anything you can put odds to. Don has been writing for SportsBettingDime since 2015, covering sports, entertainment and politics. You name it, he's covered it! He is also a steadfast West Ham fan, and has learned to embrace that suffering.
