French presidential election preview

Upon winning the Republican nomination, Valérie Pécresse surged from 1% to a 25% chance of being elected French president in April, leapfrogging Marine Le Pen into second place in the polls and prediction markets and finding herself as Emmanuel Macron’s biggest obstacle to a second term.

However, there are signs that Le Pen is beginning to consolidate the far-right vote, with the National Rally torchbearer regularly making the run-off in the polls once again and Éric Zemmour polling at his lowest level since he announced his candidacy in November.

That Pécresse remains a 20% chance on Smarkets speaks partly to the fact she runs Macron a lot closer than Le Pen does in run-off polling, but also to a failure of traders to see Pécresse’s temporary polling boost for what it is. Historically, candidates for the two former major parties have received a clear bounce in the polls upon winning their party’s nomination — ranging from +1 (Royal 2007) to +10 (Hamon 2017) — which petered out by the time of the election. Pécresse is already following that trajectory and is now down 1‒2 percentage points on her post-nomination peak.

Modelling the Republican candidate’s poll numbers against historical major party candidates produces a central prediction of just 10% for Pécresse in the first round. A candidate would likely need around double that figure to make the run-off on 23 April.

Pécresse is thus unlikely to even make the second round, let alone win the presidency. Laying her at 5.3 on Smarkets is a good bet, though backing Macron to be re-elected at 1.54 may prove more fruitful. Elsewhere, a Macron-Le Pen top two can still be bought at 2.06, which seems like value to me.

Header image of Valérie Pécresse by Jacques Paquier is licensed under CC BY 2.0