Popularity contest

Please look at yesterday's much more joyful backblip!

Judging by the state of the posters on the official boards outside the mairie, Macron and Hidalgo were mal placés ... Zemmour suffered mild vandalism, and Marine Présidente (she tries to avoid using her dad's name nowadays) was immaculate. As was Fabien Roussel, communist, but that's to be expected here.

Voted this morning ... then tuned in for the results this evening (we could have gone to the count in the village but couldn't face it). They were better than we thought they might be -- sighs of relief, till the projections for round 2 suggested Macron 51%, Le Pen 49%, within the margin of error. I hope we don't have to leave the country. 

It's quite shocking that the two formerly mainstream left and right parties got so few votes that they both failed to meet the threshold for having campaign costs reimbursed. The communist candidate beat Anne Hidalgo (mayor of Paris and official Socialist Party candidate) for heaven's sake!

My only other thought, after watching the candidate speeches after the results -- I can't stand the egotistical Jean-Luc Mélenchon and couldn't bring myself to vote for him, but as a speaker he blows all the others out of the water. Except for no-hoper Jean Lassalle -- do click on the link if your French is good, because he's hilarious.