Fillon and Macron are in a strong position going into the French election
On 8 March, two months before the final round of the French presidential election, we launched our French Election Tracker. Every hour since then, the tracker has been updated to reflect the latest twists and turns in an increasingly dramatic election campaign.
The dataset on which the FET is built now contains well over two billion data points. We have already used this data to examine the fortunes of Benoit Hamon, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen.
Today we discuss why we think the data points to a possible Macron-Fillon run-off, and why Jean-Luc Mélenchon could surprise us all.
What the data says
Taking into account the entire FET dataset going back to January, we find that Macron and Fillon attracted the most interest from the public throughout the campaign. They were most likely to receive above-average levels of attention (51% and 73% of the time, respectively) and had the highest average rank in the FET. By comparison, the candidate of the main party of the left, Benoit Hamon, received below-average levels of attention over 85% of the time. Fillon received the most attention of any candidate 39% of the time, while Macron was in the lead 22% of the time.
No matter how the two billion clicks behind the FET are aggregated, these two candidates invariably come out on top. Marine Le Pen fared much worse than Macron and Fillon, especially after the TV debate. The same was true for Jean-Luc Mélenchon during most of the campaign (although he has recently caught up with Macron; see below). Benoit Hamon never attracted much interest from the electorate, and has fared poorly in the polls throughout the campaign.
Why the data points to a strong result for Emmanuel Macron
Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron has emerged as an unlikely front-runner in traditional opinion polls. Although he is running without the backing of a major party, his youthful style and optimistic message have resonated with many voters. The FET shows clearly that there is a high level of voter interest in Macron, who consistently attracted above-average levels of attention (a score above 20% in the FET means that the candidate is attracting more interest than the average) and regularly captured a disproportionate share of clicks, often with positive stories and substantive policy announcements.
Why does it matter that Macron was consistently ahead of most of his rivals? A key challenge for independent candidates who try to break traditional voting patterns is demonstrating to voters that they have a chance to win. Without an established party behind him, Macron has to attract the votes of people who previously voted for the Socialist or Republican parties. The Macron campaign will therefore be keen to highlight any evidence that puts him ahead of his rivals. In this sense, the FET represents unambiguously good news for their candidate.
Why the data points to a strong result for Francois Fillon
On the surface, it appears that Fillon attracts much more interest than Macron and is far ahead of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, with whom Fillon competes for voters.
However, the FET shows clearly that Fillon’s performance was driven by extreme spikes in attention on days when major scandals broke. For example, Fillon was the centre of attention on 6 February, 26 February and 1 March 2017. On all three days, revelations related to his wife’s employment as his personal assistant dominated the news. On 12 March, interest in Fillon spiked as his campaign was accused of circulating anti-semitic caricatures of rival Macron.
From Penelopegate to anti-semitic attacks on his rival, François Fillon’s campaign has at times been its own worst enemy. On some occasions, his presumptive replacement Alain Juppé polled better than the candidate himself. The FET clearly captures this dynamic.
Luckily for Fillon, it appears that scandals subside quickly. In each case, it took less than 24 hours for Fillon to revert back to his long-term trend. Perhaps one of the lessons of the Trump campaign, that a constant barrage of scandals numbs the public’s sensibilities, applies to France as well.
Moreover, the level of interest in Fillon was still high even if the scandal-driven spikes are filtered out. Even ignoring these spikes, Fillon still received a higher average score than Le Pen (19.7% vs 18.7%). We interpret this as evidence that his chances of progressing to the second round of the election may be higher than opinion polls, which place him third behind Le Pen, indicate.
We could be wrong — just like traditional opinion polls can be
Given recent high-profile polling misses, declining response rates and the inherent impossibility of predicting the outcome of election races when margins of error are larger than the gaps between candidates, real-time and big data-driven indicators like the French Election Tracker offer a new way to follow how election campaigns unfold. The more data becomes available, the greater their potential — until perhaps one day polls themselves become irrelevant.
At this point, however, our tracker is still experimental. Throughout the campaign, we have frequently cautioned that the level of interest in a candidate, as measured by our tracker, is not the same as support for them.
We are also aware that not all voters read the news online, or indeed read the news at all. Le Pen and Mélenchon supporters in particular can often be heard criticising the so-called mainstream media. However, as we have argued elsewhere, Marine Le Pen is not just lagging behind but also weakening over time in our tracker and on social media. Benoit Hamon is so far behind that it is safe to say that he is not a viable candidate.
What about Jean-Luc Mélenchon?
That leaves Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has recently received a burst of media attention as his poll numbers surged. We argued last month that the candidate of the far left was outperforming his mainstream rival Hamon and perhaps even Marine Le Pen. Yet he remained significantly behind Macron and Fillon in our tracker until recently.
In the last few weeks, however, Mélenchon has gained ground in our tracker. Since the TV debate, he has also seen a dramatic rise in engagement on social media, outperforming Marine Le Pen, and he received more attention online than Macron according to our tracker: Mélenchon’s average score since 20 March was 3 percentage points higher than Macron’s.
We therefore do not rule out the possibility of Mélenchon making it to the next round.
Based on all the available data going back to January, however, we think it is most likely that French voters will choose between François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron in the final round.
You can sign up to receive the latest news about the French Election Tracker and other data showcases here. For more frequent updates, follow @EchoboxHQ on Twitter. For more about Echobox, go to www.echobox.com.
