French presidential election preview

France holds its presidential election on April 22 and May 6, 2012, the ninth in the history of the Fifth Republic. A double-digit number of candidates will enter the first round (twelve entered in 2007; French Wikipedia names seventeen potential contenders this time around), with the top two advancing to the second round, held a fortnight later. (No second round would be necessary if a candidate won a first-round majority, but this has never happened.) Typically, the second round will involve a Gaullist and a Socialist, although the neo-fascist National Front made it into second place in 2002, and could conceivably do so again this time.

Incumbent President Nicholas Sarkozy (of the [Gaullist] Union for a Popular Majority) faces an uphill battle in his re-election bid. The three polls taken so far this month (merci beaucoup, Wikipedia) give him between 24.5% and 26% of the first-round vote. His Socialist challenger, François Hollande (former party president and former partner of the party’s 2007 candidate, Ségolène Royal), attracts between 31.5% and 35% in the first round, and between 57% and 60% in a second round battle against Sarkozy. Earlier in the year, it looked as if Dominique Strauss-Kahn was the only potential Socialist nominee who could defeat Sarkozy, the sitting President has become increasingly unpopular and now looks to be gone.

Sarkozy also faces the prospect of finishing third behind the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, but the latest poll shows an increase in his first round vote at the expense of hers. She has fallen back, and could even finish fourth, as François Bayrou of the centrist Democratic Movement appears to be catching up to her. Also in the running, and polling in the single digits, are the candidate of the Left Front (Jean-Luc Mélenchon), a Green (Eva Joly), a Christian democrat with a social conservative streak (Christine Boutin), a Gaullist eurosceptic (Nicolas Dupont-Aignan), a former defence minister whose centrist party has split with Sarkozy’s coalition (Hervé Morin), a former prime minister trying to regain his former relevance (Dominique de Villepin), a left-wing eurosceptic (Jean-Pierre Chevènement), a Trotskyist (Nathalie Arthaud), a centrist green (Corinne Lepage), and an anti-globalisation leftist (Philippe Poutou).

Sarkozy appears to be caught between a centre-right which no longer trusts him, and a far right which found him not to be as sympathetic to their cause as they had hoped. His parliamentary majority has been weakened by the defection of centrist and centre-right parties such as Nouveau Centre (Hervé Morin’s party) and the Parti Radical, while some traditional Gaullists have rallied behind Dominique de Villepin’s candidacy. His government has been beset by scandals (the latest one involving arms sales to Pakistan), and it looks like many voters who supported him the last time will desert him, some going directly to Hollande, while others go to Villepin, Boutin, Morin, or Bayrou in the first round before backing Hollande in the second round.

The next five months will be interesting to watch. Sarkozy has some ground to make up on Hollande, while Le Pen and Bayrou both threaten to make the second round. (Le Pen would certainly lose, while Bayrou could unite the centre and right against the left to win easily…or the centre and left against the right to win easily.) I’m hoping that Hollande wins, and that Bayrou and Morin do well, but I suspect that the margin between Hollande and Sarkozy will narrow between now and then.