Mélenchon “Consults” His Base
France Insoumise voters were asked to express their preference for the second round on the party Web site. 215,292 did so, and 37.65% said they would cast a blank protest ballot, 33.4% vote for Emmanuel Macron, and 28.96% abstain. The results of a similar “consultation” in 2017 were close to identical, yet we know that in that year a substantial number of voters, 23%, describing themselves as “very left-wing” did vote for Le Pen. So Macron cannot take much comfort from this consultation, even though the polls appear to show that he has stopped the hemorrhage and is more likely than not to eke out a narrow victory.