Marine Le Pen’s best chance of becoming President of France is if she faces Fillon in the 2nd round
Head to head: Fillon-LePen
Head to head: Melenchon-LePen
Head to head: Macron-LePen
Today the people of France are going to the polls in the first round of the Presidential Election. The polling stations close at 1900 BST and we should get the first exit polls shortly afterwards.
If the exit polling is close then we might see some delay before any figures are published. Unlike the UK where there is one single exit poll in France several media outlets have their own polls.
Since BREXIT and the election of Trump the big focus has been on whether the far right anti-EU Marine Le Pen could win.
For much of the time in the past year she had led the first round polling but in France coming top is not enough – the top two in today’s elections go forward to the run off two weeks today on Sunday May 7th.
The tables above show the hypothetical second round match ups covering the top four in the polling for today’s election.
As can be seen the person that Marine Le Pen least wants to face is the 39 year old independent who has been the huge surprise of this election. The French Republican party candidate, Francois Fillon, who has been very troubled during the campaign by a financial scandal would probably be a better opponent for her.
Before that scandal broke Fillon looked to be in with a very strong chance and the talk in the closing days of the campaign has been of “shy” Fillon supporters understating his polling strength.
In the betting Macron remains the odds-on favourite.
This has been the biggest non UK/US political betting event ever.