En allemand

Will Marine Le Pen win the French presidential election and continue the populist revolution that started with Brexit and exploded in Donald Trump’s America last year?

Some opinion polls place the National Front leader ahead of her rivals for the first round of voting, which is scheduled for this weekend. Most polls see her at least in second place. Betting websites put the odds of a Le Pen victory in the crucial second round run-off at around 20%.

This suggests that a National Front victory cannot be ruled out. After all, even cautious observers gave Donald Trump only a 29% chance of winning the US presidential election last November; the New York Times Upshot declared the odds to be as low as 15%.

Although we agree that the a Le Pen victory remains possible in an environment of substantial uncertainty, we think Marine Le Pen’s electoral fortunes may be waning.

We base our analysis, which we present below, on unique data describing the news consumption of the French public in real time and on social media trends. The French Election Tracker, which compares how much attention each candidate gets online based on billions of clicks since January, has seen the National Front leader lagging behind rivals Emmanuel Macron, François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon for some time. Moreover, the TV debates seem to have further undermined her ability to attract attention from the electorate. Together with evidence from social media, this points to a weakening of Le Pen over time, undermining her chances of reaching the run-off stage of the election.