French Elections: Macron and LePen Qualify For Second Round, Drawing 23.7% and 21.7% Respectively

The candidates of the two major parties, Parti Socialist (PS) and Les Republicaines (LR), both immediately called on supporters to vote against Le Pen. Francois Fillon called Le Pen "an extremist."

Had the 100%-tax-on-the-rich Melenchon faced off against Le Pen, it could be a race, because center-right voters could maybe decide the arch-socialist, far-left Melenchon was an even bigger threat.

Macron is a standard issue French socialist, running as an "independent," who enthusiastically supports the EU, which I guess makes him palatable to the somewhat-less-socialist Republicaines.

I don't see any possible route to victory for Le Pen, short of ISIS raising black flags over the Eysium.

Incidentally, France's two biggest parties failed to make the second round of the election, because the PS is very unpopular after five years of the very unpopular Francoise Hollande, and the Republicaines nominated Fillon, who looked fine pre-nomination, but soon after was badly damaged by revelations/accusations that his wife was holding a no-show government-paid job.

Alternate View: "Sargon of Akkad," who correctly predicted that Geert Wilders could not win and in fact could not even come close to winning in the Dutch presidential elections, is predicting the unrelenting terrorist attacks in France will in fact turn the advantage to Le Pen.

He notes that one poll claims that half of all French police say they'll vote for Le Pen, which may be (or might not be) a kind of hidden leading indicator.

It surprises me that he'd say that, because I'd figure that the same dynamic present in the Netherlands (everyone not in the nationalist party votes against the nationalist party) would apply to France. But maybe the high rate of terrorism is more of a factor in besieged France.

He notes that Macron is resigning himself a "this is the way it is now" attitude, (he said something to that effect), and further vows, in mocking both Le Pen and Trump, that there will be no wall in his own campaign platform, because the EU will France's walls.

I'm still skeptical myself -- we just had big news in the regional elections a couple of years ago, in which six or seven FN candidates made it to the second tour, but only one (IIRC) prevailed in the election. That was post-Bataclan, so if there was going to be a big turn towards FN, one would imagine it would have happened back then, too.

Poll: Connor linked a poll saying "Bloomberg has Le Pen ahead." I don't know if he misread this, but the latest Ipsos poll has Macron ahead of Le Pen 62 to 32, a blowout.

Remember, this election today is the first "tour", or round, or what we might call a "jungle primary." The next election is the second tour, the run-off between the two top finishers.

FN frequently makes it to the second tour, but then gets beaten in that election (the election that actually results in a win or loss of office) because the partisans of all non-FN parties tend to vote against the FN.