Marine Le Pen might be 7/1 to be the next French President but that's not stopped the masses backing her.
The former leader of France’s far right National Front party is one of two candidates battling it out to be named the country’s new president. Just under two weeks ago, the French public took to the polls for the first round of voting for the French election. Votes whittled down the contenders, and as nobody won the majority vote it left two players remaining, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron.
Since that first round of votes, Marine Le Pen has stepped away from her party, when she rather surprisingly announced she would temporally step down as leader of the National Front on 24th April. Le Pen, born in 1968, took the helm of the party after her father, and party founder, Jean Marie Le Pen stepped down five years ago. Her decision to distance herself from the party has been questioned by many, but seemed to have a positive effect on Le Pen’s chances. In the following 24-hours following the announcement she was cut to 4/1, and accounted for 68% of all bets on the next Prime Minister market.
Support for Le Pen in #frenchelectionhttps://t.co/pOyllmWf7B
— Oddschecker (@Oddschecker) April 26, 2017
Despite her popularity within sections of the French electorate, many people fear the impact the far-right leader will have on France if she’s given control of the country. Her policies include; lowering taxes for the working class, cutting migration, tightening immigration laws and a possible Frexit. The far-right nature of Le Pen has led her to being regularly compared to current US President Donald Trump.
Trump himself has been one of two major political betting shocks in the last couple of years, the other being Brexit. Even though the odds of another upset are a lot steeper, surprisingly a lot more people are backing another shock result in the French Election than in the US last year.
Following the first round of voting for the French election on the 23rd April, Marine Le Pen has accounted for a massive 68% of bets on the next President market. This percentage is considerably greater to the number backing either Trump or Leave in the two weeks prior to those particular public votes. Just over 59% of bets placed via Oddschecker (two weeks prior) on the US Election were on Trump being victorious, compared to the 35% placed on Hilary Clinton. As for the EU Referendum, only 44% of bets placed on the market (two weeks prior) were on Britain to leave the European Union.
In both the US Election and EU Referendum, the favourite in the market (Hilary Clinton and Stay respectively) had received the most support in terms of stakes placed. Which implies the more recreational punters were chasing the longer odds therefore backing radical change, whereas the professional, bigger staking gamblers saw the short price as an easy way to make money. This, somewhat surprisingly, isn’t the case for the French Election though with Marine Le Pen holding 56% of all money staked on the French Election in the last two weeks.
