Can Le Pen eat into the rightist vote?

The above story shows what could be the final attack by the far-right Le Pen and on Nicolas Sarkozy as France prepares for the first round of voting on Sunday.

For if the FN leader is to do as well as he did last time and get into the final run off he has to take votes from the front-runner who continues to hold up reasonably well in the polls. This is a tough hard fight.

For Sego Royal the Le Pen move might help her to prevent the splintering of the left vote that caused her predecessor in 2002 to fail to make it into the top two run-off positions.

In the betting Nicolas Sarkozy has tightened a touch to 0.53/1 while royal has moved to 3.2/1. I still think that this is closer than the betting odds suggest and that there’s value in Royal.

If you think that she is now a certainty to reach the final two then then Spreadfair spread market is giving the closest thing to a free bet that there is

Under the terms of this market ten points is allocated to the runner-up in the election and 25 points to the winner. The current Royal price is 10.4. So assuming she is still there for the final your maximum loss on a £10 stake would be £4. If she ends up as winner you would get £150. Her price, anyway, will soar if she does come second on Sunday so you will be able to get out then.

PBC French Election Competition: This contest, organised by Paul Maggs with advice from Chris from Paris, will be published later in the day. Please use this thread for the discussion and that thread for entries.

Pictures from Tuesday’s PBC Party. I am hoping to get enough material to publish an article later in the day.

Mike Smithson