It is Sarkozy against Royal
We know now who will be in the race for the second round of the French presidential elections: Sarkozy got around 30% of the votes, Royal around 25%. Those results need to be refined and the exact figures will be known around midnight European time today.
To be noted at this stage :
- the fall of the extreme right, whose candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen “only” got 11,5% of the votes, compared to the 19% he got in the 2002 presidential elections first round. The guy seemed pretty angry tonight..
- the very high level of participation : almost 80% of the electorate showed up (and you could physically feel it today in Paris, voting places being full of people), around 15% more than in the 2002 election first round. This is good news : people did not want to see 2002 happen again (low level of participation always favour the extremes), and they really expressed their willingness to see things “changing”, one way or an other. Interesting to see how the French can be at the same time so disappointed by politics and willing to participate and vote so massively.
- the centrist candidate, Bayrou, got 18% of the votes, where he only got around 6,8% in 2002: he and his voters will have to decide how to split their votes between Sarkozy and Royal, which will produce an interesting “dance” from now on until the second round, May 6th…
- extreme-left is very low despite (or because) its high number of candidates. These candidates proved unable to capitalize on their “success” when they called for a “no” vote to the European constitutional treaty in 2005. Two of them already said they would give their voice to Royal in the second run, but this does not represent much.
Too early to make any prediction, but it seems difficult to think that Royal has enough of a “voting” reserve to beat Sarkozy on May 6th. Again, everything can happen, and let’s first observe how Bayrou’s electorate is going to play into this. Looking at the results, many of us thought Chirac was probably feeling very lonely tonight:he only got around 19% of the votes in the 2002 first round, and here is Sarkozy, someone he did not really support in the current race, getting 30%..