On an Elysian background, a graph gives Marine Le Pen at 50.5% and Emmanuel Macron at 49.5%. A result that circulates a lot on social networks two days before the second round of the presidential election: the posts have been seen more than 2.5 million times on Facebook and shared more than 1,400 times on Twitter. “The polls are rigged, Marine has even more”, comments a user.
The text accompanying this graphic, from the Twitter account Pol. Stat, however, specifies that it is not a survey, but an “estimate based on a methodological study e-score, e-reputation”, published on April 18. This account presents itself as a digital platform bringing together “surveys and polls from the French political world”. And seems very close to the extreme right. Twitter estimates or polls are particularly favorable to Eric Zemmour (given in February at 49.5% against Emmanuel Macron) and, now, to Marine Le Pen.
FAKE OFF
This is not the first time that tools, surveys or estimates have been hijacked on social networks during an election campaign. A fake Swiss poll gave Eric Zemmour the lead in voting intentions before the first round. A smartphone application, Qotmii, measuring “the electoral potential of candidates” from the “noise” on the Internet, was also put forward by supporters of the leader of Reconquest, as shown The world.
Contacted, the Twitter account Pol. Stat did not respond to our questions regarding the methodology applied to arrive at this estimate. Marine Le Pen comes out on top, but on top of what? Voting intentions? Internet buzz? This is not detailed by the account, which is careful not to specify it, leading to confusion in the interpretation of the figures.
Call for “the greatest caution”
In a joint statement on the eve of the first round, the Polling Commission and the National Commission for the Control of the Electoral Campaign called for “the greatest caution” concerning the dissemination of “misleading information misrepresented as polls”. They recalled that a poll is defined as “a statistical survey aimed at giving a quantitative indication, on a given date, of the opinions, wishes, attitudes or behavior of a population by questioning a sample”. Rankings, such as those of Qotmii, can “in no way be qualified as polls”, they added.
“We have a very precise reference system on the polls, precise to 20 minutes the Polling Commission, responsible for controlling the publication and dissemination of electoral polls. An e-score or an e-reputation is the measure of buzz on the Internet. Nobody knows the algorithm which makes it possible to pass from this measure to voting intentions. Care should be taken with these estimates. »
Already, in 2017…
The Survey Commission recalls that during the 2017 presidential campaign, a precedent had already taken place. The Filteris tool, which measured the “numerical weight of the candidates”, gave French Fillon higher than the electoral polls. Parliamentarians The Republicans had used this data to support their candidate at the time.
Finally, if the polls are criticized and can be wrong, the latest surveys give results opposite to this estimate: Emmanuel Macron comes first in the second round with between 53% and 57.5% of voting intentions against Marine The pen.