“The polls are still getting it wrong,” a friend of deeply unpopular French President Francois Hollande said cheerfully on Monday after the latest voting upset to hit pollsters.
Socialist Hollande is weighing whether to make an apparently suicidal run for a second term as president next year in the face of polls that show him unlikely to even reach double figures if he goes ahead as a candidate.
The experience of former prime minister Francois Fillon over the past fortnight offers him food for thought, along with Britain’s vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election – all adding to questions over the accuracy of such surveys.
Fillon raced from behind in the polls and then smashed even the most optimistic projections on Sunday to take pole position for the conservative nomination for the presidential election next May, winning a first-round vote by a 15-percentage-point margin.
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