@humphrey
a Le Pen doesn't win the second round election. (17.8% in 2002 and 33.9% in 2017)

Can't see where Le Pen picks up enough votes from the first round losers to be a real threat to Macron. (Although in 2016 I couldn't see how Trump could get more than 260 ECV.)

Most of the polls leading up to the election (that I saw) only included head to head matchups with Macron and Le Pen. I think that this was intentional despite the fact that Mélenchon was gaining traction. As a result the preferred result took place.

@The Liberal Moonbat @The Liberal Moonbat
Sarkozy was elected to a single term as president (2007-20012). So, not a towering figure in French politics.

Political parties in France are only semi-permanent. Factions emerge and often splinter and create new parties. Although on a left-right continuum the new one(s) is/are near the old one. Later they may kiss and make-up as happened in 2002 when UMP was created under Chirac from several conservative (Gaullist) parties. Political personalities appear to be prime movers in the splintering and creation of new parties which seems to be a reason why the lifespan of many isn't that long.

Melenchon split from PS – Socialist party - in 2008. In 2017 and 2022, his vote share was substantially higher than that for the PS nominees. (In 2022 the communist party nominee did better than the PS nominee.) In 2012 he got 11% and Hollande (PS) still finished first in the first and second rounds. Will the party survive without Melenchon (who is now 70 years old)?

Macron (& Co.) created a brand new party in 2016 “En Marche! – Forward. A word with a positive connotation but substance free and on which anything can be projected. Very attractive to younger voters in 2017 who had no clue that they were voting for a neo-liberal. Or that En Marche was positioning itself to pick up where MoDem/Francois Bayrou had left off. (In my mind somewhat like the UK's LibDems.)

In 2015 the conservative party reconstituted itself as The Republicans (LR). The 2017 nominee, Fillon, got 20% in the first round. The 2022 nominee received 4.8%. In 2022 LR was challenged from the right by a new far right party (but different from the far position of Le Pen). That candidate took 7%.

Hope this helps.

He was 'M. France' for a long time there (and at least provided us with the amusement/aggravation of showcasing France's reaction to an adultery scandal in contrast to America's); now you never hear about him.

@Blue Republic Where's the "reason to be optimistic" in all this (don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it)?

- but predictable - that Macron would finish first in the first round. But as Marine has a decent chance in the second, there is reason to be optimistic.

Not sure if I can dig it up just now, but saw a head to head poll - Macron v. Le Pen last week broken down by age groups and Le Pen was substantially ahead of Macron in all age groups under 60 or 65.

So, a lot may hang on turnout by younger people, perhaps?

Also, in terms of how many Melenchon voters will break to Le Pen - what about vax/Covid policy?

Melenchon (as with Le Pen and most of the Right) has been opposed to vaccine passports and mandates, obviously a stark difference from Macron Is that going to be a positive for Marine's chances of picking up support from Melenchon supporters?

Check this snarky coverage from July 2021 from the World Socialist web site:

On July 17, tens of thousands participated in protest in France against mandatory coronavirus vaccination and social distancing restrictions. The protests were called and supported by neo-fascist figures, including Marion Maréchal Le Pen and Florian Philippot, the leader of the Patriots Party.

The protest took place against the backdrop of a rise of COVID-19 across Europe, driven by the Delta variant. The Macron government is rejecting scientifically-based social distancing policies, including the closure of non-essential workplaces and schools. Rather, Macron proposes only that health workers be vaccinated and that a “health pass”—demonstrating either complete vaccination, or a recent negative test result, or recent recovery from the virus—be required before entering restaurants and social events. Maréchal Le Pen and Philippot have themselves denounced obligatory vaccination and any social restriction aimed at saving lives.

Their call to let the virus spread unimpeded has won support not only among neo-fascist activists, but inside Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (La France Insoumise—LFI), as well as a layer of the Greens. Some Unsubmissives joined the protests of Philippot and Maréchal, which gathered thousands in several demonstrations in Paris, 5,500 in Montpellier, 4,500 in Marseille, 2,800 in Strasbourg, 2,500 in Toulouse and Nantes, 2,000 in Rennes, and 1,200 in Perpignan and Nancy.

At the head of the march in Paris were Philippot, former leader of the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen; Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of the far-right party Debout la France; and Jacline Mouraud, a known “yellow vest” figure who was broadly opposed among protesters after she urged them to run for positions within the state apparatus. There were chants of “Macron resign” and “Freedom,” and signs declaring “No to mandatory vaccination. Vaccine freedom is a right,” and “Don’t touch our children.”

The demonstration had a heterogeneous character. Among the demonstrators were health care workers wanting to denounce Macron’s policy, restaurant owners opposed to the requirement that they inspect “health passes” of their customers, and former “yellow vests.” Jerome Rodrigues, a well-known figure of the movement whose eye was shot out by the police, called for refusing vaccination, but refused to participate in the demonstration led by the neo-fascists.

However, the political character of this demonstration was clearly dominated by the extreme right. In France and around the world, the extreme right is leading the opposition to a scientifically-guided policy of vaccination and social distancing to contain the virus. This opposition is fundamentally reactionary, given that the pandemic has already killed more than four million people internationally, and 1.1 million in Europe, and is once again accelerating.

Philippot welcomed the tacit support of police for the policy of propagating the virus, saying on Twitter, “I’m meeting a surprising number of restaurant owners who have absolutely no intention of supporting the #PassSanitaire [health pass] and, even more unprecedented, police officers who tell me they have no intention of actively enforcing them… Humanity still exists.”

Marion Maréchal Le Pen, present at the protest, told the far-right Valeurs actuelles: “I am resolutely opposed to the mandatory vaccination against COVID and the health pass. It seems to me that the right to doubt should still be permitted in the land of Descartes!” She added, “And now, one should justify one’s state of health to a stranger to have the right to drink a coffee? There is an obvious drift taking place, a radicalisation of those who hold the reins of power.”

... Mélenchon adopted all the arguments of the far right against not only Macron's reactionary policy, but also a scientific policy against the coronavirus.

He called the obligation to present a health pass “a profound change in our way of life,” “a considerable restriction of freedoms” and “collective conditioning that pushes everyone at every moment to feel obliged to say who they are, what they are sick with, and what they are not sick with.” He claimed that this “totally abnormal” situation would lead to “a society of permanent and universal control,” and to “a society of permanent conflict...