This French election is unprecedented in all sorts of ways

THE local co-ordinator, Bruno Studer, turns up on a bicycle, his front basket stuffed with leaflets. On a tree-lined Strasbourg square he, Georges and Florent—a high-school teacher, a medical student and an auditor—huddle over a printout from Google maps. They tick off the streets already trodden, divide up those still to go, and head out for another evening of door-to-door canvassing. With over 3,000 local members, the team has organised 50 political meetings in the area over the past four months, and distributed 150,000 manifestos and flyers. “We’ve shown we can do a lot with very little,” says Mr Studer.