French election turns into a four-way contest, putting pollsters to the test

The four-candidate battle to reach the runoff in France’s presidential election is putting pollsters to the test as never before.

With just a few days to go before Sunday’s first round of voting, every poll for the past month has shown independent Emmanuel Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen taking the top two spots. Macron would then easily win the May 7 runoff, polls show. Yet both front-runners have been steadily slipping over the past two weeks, and Republican Francois Fillon and Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon are now within striking distance.

It’s a challenge for French pollsters, who have a near-perfect record in forecasting the vote share for the top five finishers in the first rounds in 2007 and 2012 and the subsequent runoffs. Until recently, the expectation was that France wouldn’t have an electoral shock like Britain did with Brexit and the US went through with the election of Donald Trump. 

“This situation is totally unprecedented,” said Emmanuel Riviere, managing director of Kantar Public France. “The fact that there are four potential finalists makes the situation very complex.”

French political pollsters are aided by heavier reliance on Internet polling than in the US and the UK. And French elections are simple - one person, one vote, across the nation. The two-round system means a straight face-off between the top two candidates in the runoff, reducing voter options.