The first round saw Sarkozy and Royal win, so now the second is just between them. Presumably, rightist voters will support Sarkozy and leftist voters will support Royal, that just leaves the votes from those that voted for Bayrou, the centrist candidate, up in the air. The prediction is that Bayrou supporters will split 50/50. So using this information, I predicted what the result of the French election might be.
The support of the combined right-wing parties was 43.85% in the first round.
The support of the combined left-wing parties was 36.44% in the first round.
So Bayrou supporters splitting 50/50 gives Sarkozy the presidency.
Just for fun, I made a map of what the predicted election map would be with these assumptions. Red and Pink are for Royal and Blue and Light Blue are for Sarkozy.
What I find interesting is that it is pretty much the same as the map of the first round of voting, as only in two departments did the other ten candidates act as spoilers, one of which Bayrou won in the first round. Not that it really matters as the winner is based on total votes not by how many departments are won.
Leaving some room for error, the Pink and Light Blue departments are ones that respectively favor Royal and Sarkozy by a margin of less than 5%, and could go either way. In fact it seems likely that Royal may fair better than predicted. Although Bayrou will not endorse either candidate, he has been more harsh of Sarkozy. Also Le Pen has asked his supporters, who will likely vote for Sarkozy, to abstain.
Just for fun, I made another map in which Bayrou beats Royal in the first round. The required 5% boost in support of Bayrou only gives him nine departments though. Bayrou departments are Green.
If Bayrou made it to the second round, he would very likely win as he would get most of the leftist votes in addition to those of his own supporters.
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