Former French Minister Accused of Manipulating Poll Results for Paris Election

"Mounir Mahjoubi over-performs in the Paris agglomeration," we can read in the note distributed with the survey paid for by Mahjoubi for the attention of the media. And it’s not a (in the "impartial" sense of the word) political scientist who wrote that. Just people working for Mahjoubi...

Le Parisien explains the thing: "One thousand euros. This is the amount personally disbursed by Mounir Mahjoubi, Secretary of State and candidate for the municipal elections in the capital, to be tested in the IFOP-Paris Match personalities dashboard two weeks ago. For this price, the service did not however provide for accompanying this poll with a comment from the in-house political scientist. No matter, the candidate’s teams in Paris took care of it."

The same media specifies that indirectly Mahjoubi’s teams "scratched" Benjamin Griveaux, his main opponent in this race, by writing for example "Benjamin Griveaux in spectacular progress in rural municipalities". Which seems good but is not in fact, as Le Parisien writes, "not necessarily good news for a Parisian candidate".

As for this poll itself, the French media adds criticisms and states: "the respondents tested in this category resided in their overwhelming majority in the inner suburbs and not in Paris!"