Since the 2012 presidential election, the hashtag #RadioLondres has been used on Twitter to comment on polls released abroad before the release of official results. On April 10, 2022, it unfortunately seems very unreliable to us.
“It will be 27 degrees in the Netherlands and 25 degrees in Hungary”, “For the aperitif at 8:00 p.m., prefer a young rum around 63° rather than an old vodka at 37°”… In 2012 and 2017, the hashtag #RadioLondres made following the presidential election more fun. Since it is forbidden to publish polls or results before 8 p.m., under penalty of having to pay a fine of 75,000 euros, Internet users have fun commenting on the polls of the day carried out by foreign media with hidden messages, voluntarily ironic.
Are these polls less reliable in 2022 than in other years? That’s not really the question. What is certain is that in 10 years, the hashtag #RadioLondres has lost its splendor. Formerly used by everyone with a lot of humor, without taking into account everyone’s political opinion, it has now become the playground of activists who try to influence the undecided or make jokes among themselves.
Zemmour activists invade the hashtag
On Saturday April 9, on the eve of the first round of the presidential election, the hashtag #RadioLondres was very popular on Twitter. Sunday, April 10, election day, it no longer appears in France trends. How can this phenomenon be explained, when the presidential election is taking place today?
When we search #RadioLondres manually, we find that almost all the tweets, published between Friday and Saturday, claim that Eric Zemmour would be the surprise of the election. Most of these accounts are tagged Reclaim! and do not base their information on any source. Between that and the risk of other activists inventing figures, #RadioLondres no longer has an ounce of reliability.
This is not the first time that Eric Zemmour’s activists have used social networks to influence the campaign. A few days ago, Numerama revealed the existence of a tool to find the candidate who suits us best… designed by Eric Zemmour’s teams. If today’s polls do exist, you won’t find them on #RadioLondres.