French Election: A win for pollsters; good for euro

After being hammered in 2016 for their failure to accurately predict both Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the pollsters, especially in the European continent are having a great time today as it increasingly looking like that they correctly predicted the French election, the most vital of all elections in 2017.

The last Elabe poll predicted that the Centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron will receive 24 percent of the votes in round one, followed by 21.8 percent for Marine Le Pen, 19.9 percent for François Fillon, and 19.3 percent for Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Today, after the election, preliminary assessments are suggesting that Macron is set to receive 23.8 percent of the votes, followed by 21.6 percent for Marine Le Pen, 20 percent for Mr. Fillon and 19.5 percent for Jen-Luc Mélenchon.

This victory for the pollsters is particularly good for the euro as almost all the pollsters are predicting a decisive victory for Emmanuel Macron in the second round when he is expected to beat Madame Le pen by 62-38 percent. A win for the pollsters was very important in restoring credibility to them and for the euro because Emmanuel Macron’s path to the Presidency isn’t looking an easy one with more than 41 percent people voting against the European Union.

The single currency gave up some of its gains but is still up around 1.4 percent for the day so far, trading at 1.0865.