Okay everyone, best guesses? I'm thinking it will be more of a blowout than expected; I'll go with 66/34 Macron. The data from the regional elections 18 months ago, at the height of the migrant crisis, makes me think that French voters for mainstream parties really do just virtually all plug their noses and all vote for whoever is not FN during the second round of any given election. I'm sure the blank+abstention rate will be higher than usual, but not by enough to matter. I think that any herding effect is much more likely to be biased against Macron rather than for him; it would go the other way if this election were close, but total blowouts don't deliver the same coverage and the narrative the world media have been spinning since Trump has tended to overestimate right-wing populists.
In reality, the only real way right-wing populists end up in power in developed countries is by forming alliances with the mainstream right, most effectively by taking over the mainstream right party rather than by functioning as a third party in coalition*. Sometimes they do it in a competent, methodical way like Orban, and sometimes they do it in a cartoonishly inept way like Trump. People with far-right/RWP views are a solid 25% or so in most countries, but they tend to hit a wall once they get much above that level and need support by mainstream right people (e.g. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for Brexit, or the whole GOP starting with Christie and ending with Ryan for Trump) who collude with them to further their own careers.
*Hitler might seem like an exception, but he never got close to a majority (best free-election result was 37% in Feb 1932) and had to rely on being appointed by an executive president to form a minority government, and then use the very large number of SA and other thugs who dwarfed the real army. Still, even under the repression in place by March 1933, he ended up with 44% of the vote and quite a bit shy of a parliamentary majority. He had to get even more repressive than that in order to intimidate all of the centrists into supporting the Enabling Act and ending all semblance of democracy.
In reality, the only real way right-wing populists end up in power in developed countries is by forming alliances with the mainstream right, most effectively by taking over the mainstream right party rather than by functioning as a third party in coalition*. Sometimes they do it in a competent, methodical way like Orban, and sometimes they do it in a cartoonishly inept way like Trump. People with far-right/RWP views are a solid 25% or so in most countries, but they tend to hit a wall once they get much above that level and need support by mainstream right people (e.g. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove for Brexit, or the whole GOP starting with Christie and ending with Ryan for Trump) who collude with them to further their own careers.
*Hitler might seem like an exception, but he never got close to a majority (best free-election result was 37% in Feb 1932) and had to rely on being appointed by an executive president to form a minority government, and then use the very large number of SA and other thugs who dwarfed the real army. Still, even under the repression in place by March 1933, he ended up with 44% of the vote and quite a bit shy of a parliamentary majority. He had to get even more repressive than that in order to intimidate all of the centrists into supporting the Enabling Act and ending all semblance of democracy.
