The First Round of the 2012 French Presidential Elections

So, I spoke in yesterday's blog about my personal experience last weekend in participating in the first round of this year's French Presidential election, but did not talk about the election results themselves.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the sitting President of the French Republic, received a good news/bad news kind of thing for his chances. He managed to get to the second round, but he did so by coming in second to one of his competitors in the first round – the first incumbent to place so low.

There are a variety of reasons for this, of course. The economy is bad, and people are suffering. Yes, this is not unique to France, as the economy has been more than a little sluggish seemingly the world over for a few years now. But in France, what has irritated people has been, in large part, Sarkozy's attitude and his overall personality. He is a wealthy guy, perhaps a little flashy, with a celebrity wife, and some sex scandals, and he appears to relish his fame. It is a bit similar to a few years ago in the United States, when George Bush was President, and for many people, his mannerisms and everything about him proved irksome to many people.

The man who won the first round, and who is also projected to be the winner in the second round next weekend, is François Hollande, a more or less centrist-left candidate (of the Socialist party). He is not the most exciting man, and does not exactly have an electrifying personality or presence when he gives addresses. Yet, he seems poised to become the first leftist President that France has had in seventeen years, since Francois Mitterand. It remains to be seen whether or not he will actually manage to do it, but his chances are looking promising.

The two official winners were not the only story and, in fact, perhaps not even the main story regarding this first round of the French Presidential election. Perhaps more shocking was the emergence of Marine Le Pen as an evidently serious candidate. She is the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the controversial founder and long time leader of the extreme right Front National. Jean-Marie has long been a controversial, and largely discredited, presence in French politics, infamous for strange incidents, like when he declared the Holocaust to have been a detail of history. His political stance was long regarded as not just anti-immigration, but outright xenophobic and racist. Yet, in 2002, he shocked France, and indeed the world, by managing to win enough votes in the first round of the Presidential elections to be the official opposition to Chirac in the second round. He lost the general election in a landslide, yet the fact that he made it so far raised some eyebrows, especially when coupled with the success of other extreme right candidates, most notably Jörg Haider in Austria.

Now, Marine has brought a new, and perhaps seemingly friendlier, less controversial face to the Front National. Their ideas are largely the same, but the language employed is different, the rhetoric perhaps somewhat toned down. She is still the face of extreme right wing politics in France, and she spent much of the past year not only trying to build credibility to the movement she now fronts, but also to be officially recognized as a contender in the French Presidential elections. She was successful and, ultimately, garnered 18% of the vote – a record high for the party. Like her father did ten years ago, her success on the national scale has raised more than a few eyebrows, and seems to prove that she is a factor in national politics.

As such, now Sarkozy, desperate for reelection, has started to pander to this extremist wing, claiming now that they have legitimacy, and that he would, in essence, address their concerns, and listen to them. Marine responded with scorn and ridicule, while many critics to the left were shocked and appalled that Sarkozy would so transparently bend to the far right.

They are now done with almost a full week of campaigning, and there is one week left until the decisive second round now. Sarko, as he is often referred to, is getting increasingly desperate, and it remains to be seen whether his recent action will either hurt or help his chances, or whether instead, perhaps, it will hardly make any difference. Stay tuned until next weekend!