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There's been surprisingly little talk of it here recently. Let's get a general thread going.

First round is on April 23rd. Second round is May 7th. The two top candidates from the first round go head to head in the second.

The field is currently headed by the centrist liberal Emmanuel Macron of En Marche!, and the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen of Front National.

I have been watching it furiously. Right now, the changes are just right such that really it's up in the air. The future of France varies heavily depending on who will win. Possibly, the future of the EU is at stake here, as I believe 2 of the candidates said they'd call for a referendum on the EU if they won. If France left the EU, it'd be a gigantic blow.

It is probably the most important election the world will have soon, so definitely keep an eye on it.

Well. If Le Pen wins the the first round will the other candidates gang up on her or not?

I'd be happy with Macron or Melenchon – moreso with Melenchon, but Macron is probably more likely to win. That being said, I guess I'm good as long as Le Pen loses.

C'est dommage que je sais pas beaucoup de cette élection… ou de politique française en général

I'm… interested in seeing Le Pen win, though I make the assumption that she's at least competent and what people take issue with is her platform. From what little I've gathered, France is dealing with garbage due to the refugee crisis, but they haven't been taking it as bad as some other countries (someone, please illuminate me on the particulars, if you want); at the same time, there needs to be a change in how they handle these refugees, or they need to take in less of them for their own survival.

Speaking of survival, though, I'm wary of how she wants to pull out of the EU and disown the currency of the EU-- which is going to put France into an initially unstable position-- but also is okay with protectionism, which is almost always a bad idea. The former may very well be necessary, but the latter is probably not going to help anyone.

Apparently, though, a lot of the French don't agree.

I will be in Paris for 3 weeks so I may witness a shitshow outside.
That being said, in any case Le Pen wins I must spend all of my Euros and return home with absolutely 0. The EU economy could change drastically if France leaves it.

Most probably yes. That already happened once after all. Jean-Marie le Pen lost in every single department during the second round after being the second most voted candidate during the first one.

Results for the first round are expected in around four and a half hours. Keep your eyes peeled. I'll be asleep when they're released so if someone could do me the courtesy of posting them here I'd be grateful.

Macron (23%)and Le Pen(21%) for round 2

The numbers are a little shaky, but yeah, it's Macron vs Le Pen. For once, the polls were right. Let's see in 2 weeks if they're still right. Either way, what an intense election. Too bad I can't vote this year, damn.

Just providing a source to back up the Macron v Le Pen talk.

Also, Predictwise is giving Le Pen 13% chance of winning, while it gave Trump 10% on November 8th.

^If the other candidates gang up on her she won't Win.

The only ray of solace in all of this is the "Right" not even joining round 2 this time.

La Droite normal?

The normal Right?

>it's a centrist vs. far-right episode

fuc

"If you're not far-right, you're far-dead-wrong."

/s

Fillon, Hamon, and Hollande have all openly endorsed Macron.

Edit: r/neoliberal has become r/the_macron. /r/the_donald is now rooting hard for Le Pen and… Jeb!

Well, this is becoming even more interesting. Can't wait to see how it ends.

I knew lepen would be on round 2, was expecting to see melenchon or macron against her, not disappointed.

I'm just sad to see some of my family voting lepen because they are just fucking racists, and they didn't even read other candidates programs.

IMO, nationalism was never good in all the human history.

Marine Le Pen Is In A Much Deeper Hole Than Trump Ever Was

Macron is an overwhelming favorite to win the runoff on May 7. But we’re likely to hear two weeks of punditry that draws misleading comparisons between Le Pen, President Trump and Brexit -- and that exaggerates Le Pen’s chances as a result.

Although vote counts are still being finalized, the first-round result should be a good one for pollsters, which correctly had Macron and Le Pen in the top two positions. In fact, the pre-election polls -- which had shown Macron at 24 percent, Le Pen at 22 percent, the center-right François Fillon at 20 percent and the far-left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 19 percent -- should come within a percentage point or two of the final result for each of the top four candidates.

The same polls show Macron in a dominant position in the runoff. He leads Le Pen by 26 percentage points in polls testing the two-way matchup…

Before the U.S. election, Trump trailed Hillary Clinton by only about 2 percentage points in the average swing state. In the Brexit vote, the “Remain” campaign’s lead was at least as narrow: about 2 points according to a simple average of polls, or just 0.5 percentage points according to a more complex averaging method…

But while there were plenty of precedents for a polling error large enough to elect Trump, there aren’t all that many examples of a 26-point polling error, which is what Le Pen would need.

I was going to say "Hur-dur, Macron is president, go home" …

… but then I realised this is 2017, not 2002.

^ But similarities are all over the place.

Does anybody have a good enough polling statistics based on demographics on the election, because what's going on over there, France? I don't know jack about French politics and I do know you and the U.K. are likely the closest to the US in culture, but shouldn't being in Europe in close proximity to several upstanding countries and fucking Scandinavia give some kind of disadvantage to having a Nationalist in a top position in a race for the presidency?

So…Le Pen temporarily steps down as National Front's leader for someone else…who then stepped down due to casting doubts on the types of gas used in Nazi concentration camps.

Obama endorses Macron

Documents have surfaced revealing Macron may be involved in tax evasion using an offshore holding company called La Providence LLC, and he has since filed a lawsuit against Le Pen for 'cyber misinformation' when it was brought up in a debate
In other news, he also called all of Le Pen's supporters 'hateful cowards', because that strategy totally worked in the US

Farage endorses Le Pen

Polish President criticizes Macron's comments

..Why does this sound so familiar?

A presidential candidate, non-friendly towards the Russian government, has documents leaked about them in an attempt to damage perception towards them from potential undecided voters.

I sense deja-vu.

^Will it work? I don't think so.

Well, the trick to performing "dezinformatsiya" (or deza) is to mix in lies with the truth.

UDPATE:
Foolish 4chan couldn't even get his actual signature right. They were using a signature used on his campaign posters (which was a fake).

For everyone who is going 'oh I don't trust polls, Le Pen will likely win'…

Donald Trump was just a normal polling error behind Hillary Clinton on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. The far-right National Front candidate in France, Marine Le Pen, by contrast, is an enormous, historic polling error behind the centrist En Marche! candidate Emmanuel Macron.

Macron won the first round of the French presidential election in April, 24 percent to 21 percent, and as expected, he has consolidated most of the support that went to candidates who did not make the runoff. Now, he heads into the runoff on Sunday with a huge lead over Le Pen. In an average of surveys conducted over the last two weeks, Macron has earned 61 percent to Le Pen’s 39 percent.

To win, Le Pen needs the polls to be way off. That’s possible. Clinton, for example, led Bernie Sanders in polls of the Michigan Democratic primary by 21 percentage points before Sanders’s shocking win there. But that upset was one of the biggest in U.S. presidential primary history. Polling misses of that magnitude don’t happen very often.

Update (maybe, unless this is already known?) on the so called "MacronLeaks"

- The leaked documents could NOT be authentified so far. Even Wikileaks admitted this just could be a "4Chan practical joke".
- Macron's staff claimed on Friday evening that "most of" the documents were fake.
- Now we're officially on Saturday morning, which means, according to the french law, that the campaign is officially over and none of the candidates have the right to talk to the media, neither have the media any right to show any polls (note : this is due to the fact that any polls or candidate speach on election day could potentially influence the result, and due to the time zones, the french territories of America, i.e. the french Carribean, Guyana and Saint-Pierre-et-Micquelon have to vote on Saturday, instead of Sunday for the rest of the country). Basically, Neither Le Pen nor Macron, and probably nor any media have any LEGAL right to talk about it.
- Wikileaks admitted the timing of the leaks was suspicious, for the reason I mentioned above, indeed, there is no legal way anyone can debunk this until sunday night when the election is over.
- It's not the first time Macron is under that kind of accusation. still yesterday, some FN executive lost their shit about rumors of another Macron's secret bank account in the Bahamas, and an SMS indicating that Macron personally organized the verbal aggression Le Pen was victim of during her last meeting (both documents were debunked as blatant photoshops)
- Finally, Wikileaks themselves indicated that the leaks (if they were authentified) came too late to effectively influence the election result given the the currently huge lead of Macron in the polls (cf Rivers' post just above)

So basically a hit and miss? it's currently too soon to tell…

Clinton's email scandal went on for months, was dropped, picked up again, dropped again, researched by official government agencies, milked dry by Trump's campaign over the entire course, and lastly verified to be legit.

Macron's mails happened last moment, too late to verify and too late for Le Pen to use in her campaign. Regardless of who was behind it, they were too late to sway 20% of the votes most likely. Then again, we have Trump, so I'll wait and see.

Here's another update:
-Macron's campaign may have flooded the phishing attack with false information to confuse leakers.

Macron wins election with 65,5% (exit poll), 2nd lowest voter turnout in history, >10% blank (protest) votes.

PUTIN BLEEEEOOOOOWN THE FUCK OUT

Having to watch MEGA and /pol/ ikes be smug for months only to be utterly shit on feels reaaaaaal nice.

R/theDonald isn't takeing it so well

The only thing going for Le Pen is that she did better than her father.

What is next for the FN? I doubt they can "detoxify" anymore without stripping away their key issues of immigration and euroskepticism.

I'll just leave this here…

Well, they can always disband. :3c

^You sick fuck.

Now Germany is next. Will ADF manage to win unlike FN and the Netherlands Far-right party? Grab your popcorns this will get even crazier

Spoiler Alert
No
Its predictable Merkel will win again

^But to get into a more winnable state, she made deportation easier a few months ago.

She has two big enemies, Martin Schulz and the ADF, she changed a bit some of policies regarding refugees/emigrants because these two are surging in the polls.

Martin Schulz could be dangerous for her but his popularity is slowly going back. The AfD isnt going to win because they losing more and more voters.
There was a election today and they only got 6% so they arent a big enemy for Merkel

Macron wins, unsurprisingly. Winning the legislatives though is gonna be way harder. If he is forced to cohabit with someone that isn't from his movement (say someone from the right, left, etc…), he basically won't be able to do shit because the government will be against him.

Macron president, yes, but will he be able to actually do something ? That's another problem that will be answered in a month.

^People continue the day 1 scheduled losing cries, regardless of who lost.

Would this be appropriate?

Blast this accursed compressed video window!