Segolene and reading polls

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I'm just including this fascinating snippet from the Guardian on the first round of the French presidential election for the record. On Monday we'll see if the defacing of posters or the university poll had given us a winner which the normal polls found impossible.

These offbeat things can often be uncannily accurate. Take, for example, the "Halloween mask poll", which always shows who is going to win US presidential elections. It appears that the candidate that sells the most masks for trick or treating is always elected.

The Halloween mask poll had Bush getting re-elected as early as September 2004. So if these French versions pick the winner we can continues this thread on Monday. DS

Floating voters the key as campaigning closes in France - Guardian
Abstract: Mr Sarkozy's election team is said to have been rattled by hints that his campaign posters were being destroyed more than those of other candidates - and worse, defaced with Hitler mustaches. Concerns about the reliability of polling figures were heightened last night when a survey at the respected Paris Institute for Political Studies predicted a first-round victory for Ms Royal. The 1,000 students who took part in the mock vote gave her 39.8 %, Mr Bayrou 26.6 %, Mr Sarkozy 18.7 % and Mr Le Pen 4.8 %. A college spokesman, Hervé Marro, denied that those at the university, a hothouse for many of France's future leaders, were traditionally leftwing. "Not at all. There are a lot of students at Sciences Po who normally support the right, which is why the result was such a surprise," he told the Guardian. "Additionally, a lot of the left-leaning students are not those who support Ségolène Royal." He added: "The big problem with all polls is that saying you are going to vote for a candidate and actually doing so are two very different things." READ IT ALL