i have not been watching french media and do not have any insight into what it is broadcasting. but, this macron character strikes me as an obvious pinata. i think you should expect a surprise.

i don't think it's going to be le pen, who is going to just get destroyed in the second round, anyways. i'm skeptical about the links between trump and putin, but i am not at all skeptical about russia's support for right-wing nationalists in europe. le pen is legitimately a russian pawn. but, she's more comparable to a rand paul in the united states (in several ways, actually). remember: my analysis is that trump was the choice of the american deep state, and that it was being broadcast over media in the weeks leading up to the election. while i have not been watching french media, i think it is safe to rule out the idea that le pen is the choice of the french military, in whatever limited capacity it is that they operate outside of nato.

i do not think isis is responsible for these attacks. i think the russians are responsible for these attacks. even if this tactic were to work, i would expect the french to rig the election against her. i know - i just walked into a forest of hypotheticals, here. the point is that i don't think she's the deep state candidate, like trump was, and that creates a very different scenario.

but, like i say - maybe somebody that's been watching tv in france has a different perspective.

in a situation like this, you would expect the republican party candidate to walk into the vacuum, which is what fillon initially did. it's time to switch parties, right? but, apparently, he's been hit by a lot of scandal, and that ceded some space to macron. an easy way out of this is for the pollsters to exaggerate the effects of the scandals, but you also need to look at the sources of those scandals to work this out and i just haven't done that research. without doing this research, but not entirely a priori, fillon actually strikes me as the most likely victor.

melenchon appears to be my preferred candidate, but i haven't looked too closely into this, either. there's an angle on this - it's a potential way to avoid a legitimate russian puppet from winning, without sparking a civil war in reaction to vote suppression - but these kinds of candidates are usually public enemy #1. if melenchon is allowed to get to the second round, you should be extra careful in deciphering his past and future statements, and you may find out you were misled. again: i have not been consuming french media. but, he's either a persona non grata to the ruling class, or he's a fraud - and you'll find out by how well he is allowed to perform.

there's way too many permutations, here, to come up with a reasonable prediction on how this works. but, i'd guess that the actual front runner, here, is fillon.