French newspaper has a radical idea after polls failed to predict Trump

One of the biggest shocks of 2016 was the failure of opinion polls to predict the Brexit referendum results and the victory of Donald Trump at the U.S. elections.

For this reason, one of France's most popular newspapers has taken a radical stance: stop commissioning opinion polls altogether ahead of this year's presidential election and focus instead on proximity and on-the-ground reporting.

Stéphane Albouy, who heads Le Parisien, said he wanted his journalists to return to "our essence, the core of our profession: the field and the reportage" by talking to people about their fears and expectations.

"It is not a question of defying the pollsters so much as experimenting with a different way of working ahead of the elections,” he said. "But we want to avoid giving the sort of commentary that accompanies a horse race, always focusing on who is in the lead."

Albouy added that he wouldn't forbid reporters commenting on polls commissioned by others. But stressed that he wants to concentrate, in depth, on the candidates and their manifestos, by sending reporters to talk to people outside factories, bars and popular neighbourhoods:

“It is about detecting what we call today the weak signals. We will spend time with people, talk with them," he told told France Inter radio. "What does it cost, beside energy, time and a bit of money, to pass some time at the exits of factories, popular neighborhoods, et cetera? To take time to talk with people. That is, in the end, our job.”

Polls commissioned by Le Parisien and its sister title, Aujourd'hui, cost a couple dozen million euros. But Albouy said the new policy had nothing to do with cutting costs as the newspaper will spend even more to send people out on the field.

The French presidential elections will run in two legs, in April and May. The far-right leader of the Front National party, Marine Le Pen, will almost certainly make it to the second round. She runs on a populist, anti-migrant and anti-EU agenda which has echoes of Britain's UK Independence Party (Ukip), the biggest Leave campaigner during the EU referendum.