French press review 15 April 2017

Another opinion poll suggesting, once again, that opinion polls aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Four candidates remain neck-and-neck as we head into the final week of a campaign which has left most voters confused and disillusioned. And many remain undecided.

With just eight days to go to voting in the first round, Le Monde's latest opinion poll on the presidential battle offers surprisingly few surprises . . .

Socialist Benoît Hamon seems to have dropped back definitively among the also-rans, and the gap continues to narrow between the big four. Less than three percentage points separate Le Pen, Fillon, Macron and Mélenchon. And, as we keep reminding you, if opinion polls don't mean much at the best of times, a difference of four percent or less means nothing at all. So the top four are all well placed to make it into the second round. But there's only room for two. So, it's likely to be close.

Those questioned say they don't really think much will change for the country, or for themselves personally, whoever eventually wins.

But the French electorate remains, broadly, interested by the campaign and, also broadly, undecided. Sixty-six percent of those questioned by Le Monde say they still don't know for whom they will vote in the first round. And a great many (nearly 33 percent) wonder if they'll even bother to vote at all.

Campaign ends in voter confusion, disillusionment

Right-wing daily Le Figaro says most voters are disappointed as the presidential campaign comes to an end. Not because it's coming to an end, but because they feel they have learned more about the personalities of the candidates than about the policies they propose to implement.

Only 27 percent of voters blame the media. Except, that is, for supporters of François Fillon . . . THEY are 70 percent sure that journalists mistreated their man, and that's why the campaign has been so flat and flabby. Not even enthusiasts of Marine Le Pen's far-right campaign are so anti-media, with 43 percent of her supporters feeling that Marine was in general well treated by the press. Even those who plan to vote for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who described the press corps as a bunch of "hyenas," feel that their man got a fair shake, with 55 percent of supporters of the hard man on the hard left feeling the coverage was correct.

And, despite all the hot air, scandals, the millions of flyers, words, handshakes and false smiles involved in the campaign, Le Figaro says 60 percent of voters feel they learned nothing that will help them when it comes to the moment of voting.

Le Figaro says nearly one-third of voters have still not made up their minds.

Benoît Hamon believes he is the man of the future

Left-leaning Libération gives the front-page honours, perhaps surprisingly, to Benoît Hamon, the Socialist candidate whose campaign has been hampered by divisions within his own camp, by the failure to seal a pact with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, by the success of his former government colleague, now centrist contender, Emmanuel Macron.

Hamon thinks he still has a chance, that this week will be decisive, and that an ecologically sound and socially serious France depends on the outcome. While the polls and the analysts write him off, Hamon says he is the man of the future.

Trump enters the geopolitical arena with a very big bang

How worried should we be about US President Trump's new-found capacity to bomb the be-jaysus out of all and sundry, without even pretending to act diplomatically?

Le Monde has been reading the American press in the wake of this week's bombing of Afghanistan. No one seems particularly worried.

The site Politico asks what did you expect? Trump's defence minister and his national security advisor are both soldiers. Soldiers bomb people.

But the choice of weapon used in Afghanistan is reassuring, according to an expert interviewed by the site Vox. You can't drop a MOAB on North Korea or Iran because the bomb is so big it has to be carried in a cargo plane, and would be useless against even a low-grade missile defence system. Thus it is nonsense to say that the Afghan blast was a warning to Teheran or Pyongyang.

We just have to hope that the nervous men in those two capitals understand all that.