for my instance brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings: 🇫🇷 Corrigez moi si je dis des conneries dessous

🇺🇸 Hey welcome, I don't know where to start so instead I'll just share random thoughts

• don't hesitate to ask your french inlaws and partner about it, french people are very varied so the more perspectives you get the better, it's possible they do not share the same views as our instance members (we lean quite fairly left and are for the most part LFI/Mélenchon sympathisers)
• we love to discuss politics while eating (but first we must discuss unrelated foods and cooking methods while eating), bonus if you have a racist uncle that starts yapping after too many drinks at 4pm (and you haven't even eaten dessert yet) you're as close to the french sunday lunch experience as possible)
• Mélenchon's strategy is "conflictuality" as in no compromises on their political stances, clear guidelines and program to apply and no giving up on any part of it, very smart analysis of the power (im)balance between classes and the political issues and strategies that can arise from it, and embraced strategy of breaking from the current status quo
• This strategy works very well with lower class and young people who also happen to vote a lot less (retired people vote A LOT so right wing parties appeal to them), so there's a huge "reservoir" of ballots available for the taken to turn elections around BUT Mélenchon's party La France Insoumise (LFI) also gathers most of the votes from highly educated people
• each of Mélenchon's campaigns have been underrated by polls and mainsteam (billionnaire owned) media, you can theorize (but not prove it) that its manufactured so they'd rather not have a candidate be too popular and heard by people, he threatens their bourgeois status
• yet he has consistently overperformed compared to polls, for 2027, he is currently already polled at ~20% for the first round, at a similar time (late october) in other elections, he was polled at ~10% (2021, got 21,9% in 2022), ~12% (2016, got 19,5% in 2017), ~7% (2011, got 11% in 2012), there's a huge distrust in poll results because they seem to be very flawed and used influence public opinion
• imagine if Mamdani (elected at 50,78%, polled between 45% and 50% from October to December) was instead polled at ~30% throughout the campaign and still won at 51%, this would be a huge failure from poll institutes, this is the current state of things in france
• this gigantic article (you gotta use a translator sorry) goes in depth why Mélenchon is going to win despite the polls https://blogs.mediapart.fr/eliot-thibault/blog/011126/pourquoi-melenchon-va-faire-25-et-sera-au-2nd-tour you can also translate this series of tweets from september https://nitter.mizuki.st/badmulch/status/2103042887688896582#m

Then there was the student and union protests. Are these helping bring awareness to the other parties to get their shit together?

I'd personally say not really, LFI / Mélenchon have always been listening to those, and are encouraging students (and protesters in general) to voice their concerns because they believe a change in the status quo will not only happen with their election, they need a general protest / strike for things to change (he said in a meeting it would be a failure if there's no general protest / strike after he gets elected)

The students and protesters have been met with insane disdain from the government and right wing parties imo, most of them (including mainstream medias) are focusing on rioters, minimizing police brutality (there's never been so many people arrested in a protest, and they were in majority minors)

Anyway don't hesitate if you have specific questions