The French Presidential Election

Round two, the odds favor Nicolas Sarkozy, but the contest is far from over

 

 

PARIS (By Peter Schrank, Economist) April 26th 2007 — FOR the first time in a quarter-century, the French are heading into a run-off in their presidential election, on May 6th, with a genuine choice between candidates of the left and the right. After a first-round poll marked by the highest turnout since 1974, voters put the centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy in the lead, with 31.2%, followed by the Socialists' Ségolène Royal, who took 25.9%. No sooner had the results been declared than the pair hit the campaign trail again, both trying to seduce the centre.

The results were, as Mr. Sarkozy declared, a “victory for our democracy”. Not only was the turnout huge (84%, against 64% at the 2004 American presidential election), with voters queuing patiently in blazing sunshine across the country; but the election was also impeccably organized, with official results coming only hours after the polls closed. By pushing the far right Jean-Marie Le Pen into fourth place, the voters also put behind them the mortification of 2002, when the National Front leader, to France's shame, got into the run-off.

Two elements stand out in the result. First, it was a resounding vote for the mainstream candidates. The top three — Mr. Sarkozy, Ms Royal and the centrist François Bayrou — bagged 76% between them, compared with 47% for their counterparts (plus a liberal, Alain Madelin) in 2002. Mr. Sarkozy's vote was the highest for a centre-right candidate since 1974, and ten points more than Jacques Chirac ever managed in a first round. Not one of the six candidates to the left of Ms Royal reached the 5% threshold to qualify for full reimbursement of campaign expenses—the communist took only 1.9%. For the 78-year-old Mr. Le Pen, the result was a crushing blow, his worst since 1974, ending what will surely be his final presidential campaign.

In short, this election has put paid to the idea that the French are wedded to Marxist-inspired hard-left idealism or to extremist nationalism. If mainstream politicians are inspiring enough, which in 2002 Mr. Chirac and the Socialist Lionel Jospin were not, and if they are ready to take on taboo questions of national identity, as both Mr. Sarkozy and Ms Royal did, the voters are ready to ditch the folly of the fringes.

Second, Mr. Bayrou's strong showing means that the run-off will now be determined largely by the centre. He failed to get the second-round place he dreamt of, but his 18.6% was still a big jump from the 6.8% he managed in 2002. If voters stick with their first-round choices, each candidate needs a big chunk of Mr. Bayrou's 6.8m voters to secure a majority. The polls are contradictory, but most suggest that the centrist electorate is divided between the two. If Mr. Bayrou's vote splits equally, and all the hard left voters back her, this would still leave Ms Royal with only 45.7%. If Mr. Sarkozy picks up half of the centrist vote, along with, say, 80% of the far right, he already scrapes a majority. It seems to be Mr. Sarkozy's election to lose: Ms Royal's task is by far the harder.

Despite frantic discussions with each side, Mr. Bayrou said this week that he would endorse neither candidate. Indeed, after bitterly attacking both, he said he would build a new centrist party, the Democratic Party, for the parliamentary election in June. His party's 27 deputies are torn. Many were elected on votes from the right, in constituencies where they were unopposed by Mr. Sarkozy's UMP party. If they do not back him in the second round, threatened François Fillon, Mr. Sarkozy's right-hand man and front-runner to be his prime minister, the UMP “will run candidates in all constituencies”.

Whatever centrist politicians decide, it may not sway their voters. Mr. Bayrou drew an eclectic mix of moderate Socialists and Christian Democrats, who are unlikely to follow instructions. As important will be the candidates' performances next week, notably in a two-hour televised debate on May 2nd. In the first round, both candidates spent weeks sedulously cultivating their faithful. The challenge now is to conduct an abrupt about-turn to the centre without losing credibility.

Ms Royal's published program consists of a series of public-spending commitments, including a big subsidised jobs plan, and a promise to raise the minimum wage by 20%. She has given no details on how to pay for this, besides facile pledges to “eliminate waste” and “reorganise the bureaucracy”. This week, however, she was trying to reinvent herself as the face of a modernized centre-left. Having ruled out a first-round deal with Mr. Bayrou because he was a man of the right, she issued a public (but unheeded) call for talks with him. She also posed with Jacques Delors, a moderate former European Commission head whom Mr. Bayrou has praised, and invited Romano Prodi, Italy's centre-left prime minister, to a rally in Lyon. In one speech, she urged her supporters to adopt “new ideas” and to endorse “economic efficiency”. In Montpellier, wearing a tangerine-colored dress that reflected Mr. Bayrou's colours, she urged France to embrace “international competition”.

For his part, Mr. Sarkozy's task is to charm those in the centre who were put off by his relentlessly populist quest for the far right vote in the first round. As a strategy, slogans such as “those who don't love France, don't have to stay” turned out to be highly effective, despite the reservations of some advisers. The geography of Mr. Sarkozy's first-round vote mirrors Mr. Le Pen's in 2002, with high scores in the south and east. Mr. Sarkozy got fully 43.6% in the Mediterranean department of Alpes-Maritimes, for instance, which in 2002 put Mr. Le Pen top, with 26%.

For the second round, however, this leaves Mr. Sarkozy with a daunting job of persuading voters that he is not just a tough guy but also a nice one. Hence his promises this week “to protect” people, and to “unite the French around a new dream”. He even injected a splash of red into his campaign set, doubtless meant as a symbol of openness.

It will be a fierce fight. Although most polls put Mr. Sarkozy ahead, the margin is tight. Ms Royal will be keen to exploit lingering fears about Mr. Sarkozy's divisiveness, however subliminally. Whenever she uses the word “brutal” to talk of Mr. Sarkozy's reform plans, she is hinting as much at his personality as at his half-embrace of free-market reforms. Ms Royal is doubtless right that there is a powerful tout sauf Sarkozy feeling among a sizeable part of the electorate, especially in the troubled banlieues. Under the Fifth Republic, the second round has often been used by voters to eliminate the candidate whom they most dislike. But such a strategy is unlikely to be enough on its own to keep Mr. Sarkozy from victory.