).
He got hit hard by Poutou.
None of the 6 smaller candidates was convincing enough, but they damaged Fillon and Le Pen pretty good (even Asselineau was able to attack Le Pen on her european views
The consensus seems to be that Macron was discreet enough to pass through, and Melenchon confirmed his good first debate.
Rivalry. Plus he wants to focus more on frexit and less on racism, à la Dupont-Aignan.
Yes, but they are low. Lower than Trump and a lot lower than brexit when the US and UK voted.
What scares me the most is this
Fillon is a turd but not nearly as dangerous as MLP. If Macron is on round 2 I'm confident he'll win, but Fillon might need to get some people convinced to go out.
I'm a little fuzzy on the specific reasons why, although some of them do line up with your reasoning obviously, but I do have an unreasonable fear and gut-feel that le pen will get through. And, in general, not talking about people in here specifically, but more broadly, in the social circles around me, there is this notion the le pen has either no chance at all, or only a very, very small chance of getting elected. I'm afraid people take it for granted and don't go vote against her in the 2nd round. They seem to feel it's essentially a given that, in france, in the second round of the presidential election, of course everyone will vote against the fascist, it's a foregone conclusion.
That's pretty much why the French became more attached to the EU after the brexit referendum, mind you.
Both Macron and Le Pen have been going down for the last few days, while Fillon and especially Mélenchon have been raising up. Things may be very disputed, in two weeks.
(Ifop Rolling polls, Macron = pink, Le Pen = dark blue, Fillon = blue, Mélenchon = red)
