Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was in the tightly clustered top 4 Presidential candidates in the first round of balloting is approaching the question of an endorsement in the runoff is an interesting way, he is asking his supporters to decide.

He will not be endorsing Le Pen, but there is a question of whether to vote at all:

French leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon on Tuesday launched a consultation asking his supporters if they plan to vote for Emmanuel Macron in the second and final round of the presidential election on May 7.

Mélenchon was the only one of the main candidates not to tell his backers to choose Macron rather than the far-right’s Marine Le Pen after the first round of voting on Sunday.
According to the consultation, sent to 450,000 registered supporters of Mélenchon’s “France Untamed” movement, “None of us will vote for the far-right. But does it mean we need to give voting advice?”

They are then given three options: Vote for Macron, spoil the ballot paper or abstain.

………

On the campaign trail, Mélenchon was a vocal critic of Macron, the centrist candidate and former banker, and that has continued since the vote, with the veteran left-winger saying he “will oppose the far-right candidate and the candidate of extreme-finance.”

This is some high class trolling, and I approve.

Adding a bit of a pucker factor for Macron is a good thing.

At worst it’s an annoyance for the candidate about nothing, at best it forces to the candidate to be about something, for a while at least.