France’s love-hate relationship with opinion polls is in the spotlight after a newspaper announced it would stop commissioning polls in the run-up to the French presidential election and instead do more on-the-ground reporting to sound out the public mood.



The unprecedented decision by the daily Le Parisien came after months of discussion in the paper’s newsroom following the UK’s vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s election in the US – both of which caught media and some pollsters by surprise.

Polls show the French presidential election is likely to see the rightwing Les Républicains candidate, François Fillon, face off against the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen in the final round.

But, with the maverick, independent centrist Emmanuel Macron making gains while the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon eats into the Socialist party electorate, there is no certainty over who will make it to the final runoff.

“Rather than just talking about what some see as errors in the polls, we’ve decided to go back to the core of our profession: going out in the field, proximity to people,” said Stephane Albouy, editor of Le Parisien, which with its sister paper, Aujourd’hui en France, was historically among the biggest media users of political polls, which often dominated their front pages.



“I’m not attacking opinion polls,” Albouy added. “They don’t do their job badly – they give a snapshot. The problem is the way the media uses them.” He said he wanted his newspaper to stop obsessing about the “horse race” element of which candidate was in top position and do more in-depth reporting on the public mood and policy platforms.

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Not commissioning polls would also save the paper tens of thousands of euros, he said, adding that Le Parisien was still free to comment on other media’s surveys.

France has one of the highest rates of political opinion polling in the world. In the year leading up to a presidential election, there are typically hundreds of major national polls, with about one a day dominating headlines.

Even before recent international debate about media overreliance on polling following the Brexit and Trump votes, as well as the 2015 UK election and Israeli elections, French commentators were questioning their national media’s addiction.



Some French politicians have begun to publicly turn on the polling culture. “Welcome to the unpollable,” quipped Fillon in his new year’s address to the press this week, saying more information could be learned from listening to the “silent, feverish France” struggling on the periphery.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest François Fillon, current favourite to become France’s next president. Photograph: Sebastien Nogier/EPA

Fillon, currently seen as a favourite to win, had been written off as a no-hoper only months ago. He polled low throughout the right’s primary race to chose its candidate in November, then began to rise sharply in the polls in the last days of the campaign before securing a staggering win.



His surprise victory helped him try to style himself as an underdog and outsider to the “system”, despite five years as prime minister and several decades in politics.

France has had key moments when it questioned the pertinence of polls, namely the 2002 presidential election when Jean-Marie Le Pen created a political earthquake by knocking out the Socialists and reaching the final round.

But polling still influences politicians’ choices, namely about whether to stand for election. Macron, the maverick former economy minister running as an independent for the presidency, decided to step into the ring bolstered by his good popularity ratings.

In 1995, the rightwing prime minister Édouard Balladur, encouraged by his good polling, ran in the presidential election only to be trounced by his party leader, Jacques Chirac.

“France publishes a massive amount of opinion polls and that won’t stop despite Le Parisien’s decision,” said Yves-Marie Cann, political director at the Elabe polling group in Paris.

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“The purpose of polls is to shed light on the public debate. They are a useful indicator but we always say they must not be the only indicator – on-the-ground journalism is just as important. We have to keep looking at the whole picture – including what is being said on social networks and what commentators are saying.”

With spring’s contest more open than ever before, some elements are proving almost impossible to poll, including the current Socialist primary race to choose its candidate.

The Socialist primary TV debates – which are pitting the former prime minister Manuel Valls against two leftwingers, Arnaud Montebourg and Benoît Hamon, and an outsider, Vincent Peillon – could change voters’ opinions.

But the debates are being held so close together, coupled with uncertainty on the final turnout and electorate, that many major polling firms prefer to hold off.

Some rival media felt Le Parisien’s decision was a publicity stunt and simple cost-cutting.

Roland Cayrol, a veteran French pollster and political analyst, said: “Opinion polls are part of the tradition of French political campaigns. We are the world record-holders on the number of polls we produce.”

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He said there had always been French election night rows over polls and a perpetual questioning of them, “even when the polls are absolutely accurate”. But he felt polls were more useful than ever on the French political scene and played an important democratic role.

“We haven’t got people used to the idea that poll numbers are a part of social science and carry a margin of error,” Cayrol said. “You mustn’t look at each poll but at the curve of every poll in order to have an idea.

“Polls are useful in helping voters form their ideas. I don’t think people vote based on polls but I think more and more voters take polls into account in terms of the impact of their vote. It allows them to be strategic and that’s fits with my idea of democracy.”