French President Nicolas Sarkozy did poorly in last weekend's elections, perhaps leaving the path clear for socialist challenger François Hollande, writes David Tresilian in Paris As French voters digested the results of the first round of the country's presidential elections last weekend, the question for many was what the historically unparalleled result achieved by the extreme-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen indicated for France's political future. The scores of the two main candidates in the elections, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist challenger François Hollande, held few surprises and reflected the opinion polls that had been appearing in the French press almost up until the eve of last Sunday's elections. However, Le Pen's share of 18.03 per cent of the vote was better than she had scored in many of the opinion polls, and it confirmed the Front National's position as the third most important French political party after Sarkozy's ruling UMP and Hollande's Socialist Party. In an opinion poll published in the French newspaper Le Monde last Friday on the eve of the elections, Hollande was given 29 per cent of the vote, Sarkozy 25.5 per cent and Le Pen 16 per cent, with other candidates such as the extreme-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and centrist candidate François Bayrou being given 14 and 10 per cent, respectively. When the final results were published on Monday, Hollande had scored 28.63 per cent of the vote, almost exactly in line with the poll's predictions, with Sarkozy being on 27.06 per cent, Le Pen on 18.03 per cent and Mélenchon and Bayrou on 11.14 per cent and 9.10 per cent, respectively. As French commentators immediately pointed out, Sunday's vote was the first in the history of the French fifth republic in which an incumbent president has lost in the first round of the elections. Only Valéry Giscard d'Estaing failed to be elected for a second term in office as president in 1981, when he lost to challenger François Mitterand, and even Giscard d'Estaing managed to win in the elections' first round. The same opinion polls that predicted a Hollande win in the first round of the elections have also predicted his victory in the run-offs on 6 May, when the identity of the next French president will be decided. According to polls taken immediately before last weekend's vote, should run-off elections be held between Sarkozy and Hollande, those questioned would come out clearly in favour of Hollande, giving him 56 per cent of the vote, with Sarkozy well behind on 44 per cent. However, while Hollande described himself as the "best placed" candidate to become the country's next president in the run-off elections after last weekend's victory in the first round, commentators in the Sarkozy camp have been keen to emphasise that the final result has not yet been decided and a Hollande victory may not be inevitable. Looked at from the perspective of the country's larger left-right divide, Hollande's 28.63 per cent of the vote together with Mélenchon's 11.14 per cent and the votes of the other less important left-wing candidates give the left 43.76 per cent of the vote in the polls, less than the 48.89 per cent achieved by the right. Should those voters who voted Front National in last weekend's elections decide to vote for Sarkozy in the second round on 6 May, then Sarkozy could still win a second term in office even after losing the first round. Should they refuse to vote for Sarkozy, either abstaining or voting for Hollande, then Hollande's victory would be more assured. As a result, commentators in the French press this week have been speculating as to what the second round of the elections may hold as a result of the extreme right's success in the first round, despite the opinion polls which have long awarded victory to Hollande. According to the French newspaper Le Monde on Monday, though the left-right balance is not in Hollande's favour and a majority of Front National voters are likely to vote for Sarkozy in the second round, "the progress made by the Front National does not increase Sarkozy's chances of winning on 6 May." This is so, the paper said, because it will give rise to greater mobilisation in Hollande's favour, not least to try to prevent the re-election of a president who will owe his position to the explicit support of the Front National. Moreover, many Front National voters do not like Sarkozy or his ruling UMP, seeing both as part of the "establishment" vociferously criticised by Le Pen in her campaign speeches, though it is possible that they dislike Hollande and the Socialist Party more. Spokesmen from the Sarkozy camp quoted in the same newspaper claimed that the elections had shown that "France was now more to the right than ever," despite Sunday's personal setback for the centre-right president. "The vast majority of those who voted for the Front National in the first round are going to vote for Sarkozy in the second," the spokesmen said. Sarkozy himself has also seemed to be attached to this idea, and in his speech accepting defeat in the first round on Sunday night he made what French commentators have been calling a gesture to the Front National. "I understand the anxieties and suffering that French people are facing," Sarkozy said, adding that these had to do with "the country's borders, the loss of jobs abroad, immigration, the need to emphasise the value of work and issues of security," all traditionally Front National issues. Sarkozy has stepped up his campaign against Hollande, challenging him to three televised debates before the second round in the elections, presumably in the belief that his aggressive debating style will overshadow Hollande's more consensual manner. He has also emphasised what the Sarkozy campaign has identified as Hollande's weaknesses, among them the Socialist Party candidate's lack of experience in government ê" he has never held office as a minister ê" and the Party's vulnerability on charges of possible economic mismanagement. "You want the left in office? You'll have a situation [in France] like that in Greece or Spain," Sarkozy said. Reactions in the Socialist Party itself have mixed delight at the prospect of a left-wing president after 17 years of centre-right rule with bemusement that this president should be Hollande. Not seen as a charismatic figure even by left-wing voters, Hollande was long overlooked by many in the Socialist Party, only reinventing himself as the leading candidate in the elections after the eclipse of the former French finance minister and managing director of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a scandal last year. Had Strauss-Kahn not been arrested in the Sofitel Hotel in New York in May last year on allegations of sexual harassment, it would likely have been Strauss-Kahn, and not Hollande, who would be facing the French electorate as the Socialist Party candidate in the presidential elections. Hollande has "gained new glasses, better suits, and done something to his hair," since last year's Socialist Party primaries, Le Monde commented in an article on Monday, and he has also gained a coherent political programme. But there is still the suspicion that his success has had "as much to do with luck as it has with destiny," the paper quoted one Party figure as saying. If the opinion polls are to be believed, Sarkozy will suffer a punishing defeat on 6 May, and Hollande will be elected with some 56 per cent of the vote. If this were to happen, it would be the left's best-ever result in any French presidential election, beating the 54.02 per cent achieved by Mitterand in the second round of the 1988 elections. According to an editorial in Le Monde commenting on the results earlier this week, the first round of the elections was a referendum on Sarkozy's performance as president, showing that he had "neither managed to get the vote he got in 2007 nor come out ahead in the first round of voting." "Like the peoples of the Arab world, the French have put their head of state out to grass in polite but no uncertain terms," the paper said.
