Add to this the 22 percent of potential voters who did not turn out in the first round and the outcome is uncertain.
“Turnout is important as Le Pen’s best bet to win the election is for voters who did not support Macron in the first round to stay home on Election Day,” Antonio Barroso, managing director at Teneo Intelligence, told CNBC via email.
While turnout would have to be exceptionally low for Le Pen to have a “real shot,” said Barroso, he noted that allegiances do not seem to have moved significantly since the first round.
“Rather, we are seeing an increasing number of Fillon and Melenchon voters that are saying they will stay home on 7 May.”
‘No’ votes could swing it
Indeed, there are a growing number of people campaigning for abstention. In the wake of the first round result, a number of French voters took to Twitter to campaign to boycott the election under the hashtag #SansMoiLe7Mai.
“There is a very big complacency risk in the second round, with voters either not bothering to turn out or spoiling their ballots in protest,” a Eurasia note said earlier this week.
This has also prompted a number of social groups, such as Strasbourg’s Citizen Challenge, to promote voting in areas of the country with particularly low turnout.
“The game is changing,” Edouard Lecerf, global director of political & opinion research at Kantar Public, told CNBC.
“If, for some reason, some of (Macron’s) potential voters (those coming from other first round candidates) prefer not to go and vote (they would not cast a vote for Le Pen)… and if on the contrary, Le Pen gets the largest proportion of those who did not turn out at the first round (22 percent of potential voters) but come to join the game for the second round, the game is changing…”
