Last week former president Nicolas Sarkozy was unexpectedly knocked out of the Republican primary.
Today French Voters Pick Centre-Right Presidential Candidate whose winner will likely face Marine le Pen in round two of the elections next year.
French voters headed to the polls on Sunday in a primary run-off contest predicted to give François Fillon the centre-right nomination and a good chance of becoming president of France next year.
Mr Fillon, the former prime minister who unexpectedly surged to pole position with 44 per cent of the votes in a first round last Sunday, is facing Alain Juppé, the longstanding favourite who has come second with 28 per cent.
Estimates suggested turnout is higher in today’s run-off than in the first round, with 2.93m casting their votes by 5pm, up from 2.81m at the same point last week.
Whoever wins the nomination for the centre-right will be well placed to win the 2017 presidential election. Surveys suggest that François Hollande, the deeply unpopular socialist president who is expected to declare his candidacy next month, would fail to qualify for the second round of the run-off in May. Mr Fillon would face Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front leader, in the second round and be favourite to defeat her.
Voting Odds
On Wednesday, the betting odds on Bovada looked like this.
If, one believed that the race would come down to Fillon vs. Le Pen, there was a play to guarantee a win.
The largest bet Bovada would accept on any candidate was a measly $37.50, which I find absurd. Anyway, I booked the above bet. If Fillon is knocked out today I can still win if le Pen wins next year.
Otherwise my $50 total bet will return $51.43 if Fillon wins and $60.00 if le Pen wins.
One could have gotten nice odds on Fillon before round one in the primaries.
There is a chance some other candidate than le Pen squares off against the winner of the Republican primary but that seems unlikely at the moment.
Will Hollande Run?
The socialists still have their primary coming up. Hollande has not decided if he will run. The announced candidates are former economic minister Arnaud Montebourg, Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, and Benoît Hamon. Incumbent prime minister Manuel Valls may also throw his hat into the ring.
French Presidential Election Roundup
Emmanuel Macron, who recently resigned as Hollande’s Minister of Economy will represent a new part he started “En Marche!”.
There are other minor parties including the Greens, Democratic movement, and Left Party (Parti de Gauche), none of which has a chance, but all will get on the ballot for Round One of the election.
Assuming no candidate gets 50% of the vote in round one of the election, the top two candidates will square off.
At the moment that would appear to be le Pen and Fillon. If Alain Juppé wins today the most likely outcome would be le Pen and Juppé.
Fillon is a strong free market advocate who seeks to shrink government. Fillon also wants better relations with Russia. Le Pen is anti-immigration, anti-EU, and anti-euro.
Should Fillon win today, the socialists will have a difficult choice.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Fillon will most likely win.
Sarkozy told his supporters to vote for Fillon.
Juppe is softy-softy and getting him as president would be Hollande part 2 in practice.
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According to reports muslims have activated to vote for Juppe in France because he is an appeaser and will act like previous presidents always giving into demands and not doing anything about ghettoization and radicalization and mass school dropouts and mass uneployment of muslims in France and still letting the move to welfare immigration continue which now comes to France through french muslims marrying muslims from their home countries.
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The only hope for Europe is to westernize all european muslims by stopping family re-unification movement COMPLETELY for new marriages so that in the future marriages consist of two at least slightly westernized muslims instead of the current model where parents arrange marriages with men and women from the old homeland and this causes backwards interpretation of islam to continue to spread with western muslim women getting a backwards muslim husband from back home to boss them around with the husband having a low chance to succeed in a western society because of attitude and low schooling and for western muslim men the preference is to get a subservient virgin woman from back home to marry who does not know the society, the laws, has low education and is totally in control of islam and has been taught to treat her husband like a master serving a slave by her mother and father.
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It seems Juppe already conceded despite not all the votes being counted.
Partial results based on half the primaries’ polling stations showed Fillon winning by a wide margin and Juppe conceded,
The french president will be either Fillon or Le Pen.
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Hopefully Le Pen because although Fillon speaks better and more convincingly than Sarkozy about being strict regarding immigration the precedent Sarkozy set was tough talk but no concrete achievements.
Many fear Fillon would be the same.