French would most like to ‘have a beer’ with Macron

Well over two in five (44%) survey respondents chose Macron as their preferred drinking buddy from a list of 10 politicians, which also included Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, former Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, reported French newspaper Le Figaro.

Philippe came in second place (37%), followed by La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon (28%).

Front National president LePen came next, ahead of former minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem (23%). Next came Hauts-de-France regional president Xavier Bertrand (22%), and former presidential candidate Benoît Hamon (21%), followed by Hidalgo (21%), and UMP member Valérie Pécresse (18%). Leader of les Républicains party, Laurent Wauquiez, came in last place on 17%.

When asked why they chose who they did, over half of respondents (51%) said they wanted to “check how much politicians knew about real people’s lives”.

“Checking their authenticity” came in second place (40%), and one in four (25%) wanted to “talk to them about a subject that was important in their life”.

In a similar question, over half (60%) said that they wanted to know the politician’s “vision for the future”, and 30% wanted to talk about the economy today. Just under a quarter (22%) said they were curious about “the privileges of the political class”.

Some were less serious: A handful (7%) said they would simply want to “get to know the politician better” and “take a selfie”, while a shameless 12% even said they would ask the politician for a “bit of financial help”.

Not everyone was happy to have a drink though: 18% of French people said they “did not wish to have a beer with any political personality”.

The poll was conducted by opinion pollsters Ifop for PR company Coriolink in late December 2017, and included 1,009 French people representative of the population, all aged 18 or over.