An article in last week's Economist predicts, with the magazine's usual air of superiority, that popular Front National leader Marine Le Pen will lose the second round of France's presidential election. Oh yes, they admit, she looks almost certain to make it through the first round, on April 23, but all the polls indicate that she will lose in the second round on May 7.
That sounds a lot like the certainty with which the same oracle (and all the lamestream media) predicted the election of Hellery Clinton. We know how that turned out. French sociophysicist Serge Galam knew -- in advance -- and probably made a lot of money on election bets. In his paper The Trump Phenomenon: An Explanation from Sociophysics, he wrote: "The Trump phenomenon...according to a model of opinion dynamics from sociophysics...was in principle predictable from the start."
Now Prof Galam brings his unique analytic method to the French presidential contest. In the final one-on-one match-up, he says, Marine Le Pen could well win. Why? Because the polls are missing a vitally important factor: abstention -- the act of restraining oneself from voting. The Rebel's Alexander Jones explains how it impacts voter turnout for different candidates.
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