Whose picture will appear on French television screens on the evening of May 6, and succeed the outgoing president Jacques Chirac? If France were accustomed to the British betting system, thousands of people would win or lose money on this question.
After months of an informal electoral campaign, the highly controversial Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the Union for a Popular Movement, still seems the favourite to win, although he lost four points in the latest poll available. His decision to put ‘respect for work’ at the heart of his policies, his affirmed toughness against crime, and his willingness to soften the rigid French labour market and implement liberal reforms have all proved popular with the electorate. Opinion polls put him on around 30 per cent of stable expressed voting intentions.
Sarkozy’s victory, however, is far from inevitable. A divisive figure on the French political scene and on the right itself, he is much less popular among women and young people. There is a clear conflict of interests between his responsibilities as an interior minister and his candidacy in the same elections his ministry is organising. His Atlanticism and radical ideas might also play against him, as he is accused of trying to gather support from some on the extreme right.
This is something that Sarkozy’s main contender so far, the Socialist party’s candidate Ségolène Royal, could exploit. But following a supposedly irresistible and internationally praised ascension, Royal entered a ‘listening phase’, made some controversial remarks on French foreign policy, and saw her poll ratings decline. The recent publication of her ‘Presidencial pact’ – the outcome of weeks of participative democracy – has stabilised her support at around 25 per cent of voting intentions. But from being considered as modern and a potential source of renewal for the French Socialists, Royal is now more often accused of being incompetent and having a simplistic approach to politics.
However, Royal’s strengths should not be underestimated. Strategically, she has avoided reproducing the fatal mistake of the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in 2002: trying to win the first round of the presidential election with centrist proposals. Her clearly left-wing political offer can now be opposed to Sarkozy’s, who monopolised the media with his proposals during Royal’s ‘listening phase’. A number of her pact’s 100 policies typically belong to the traditional terrain of the French left: raising the minimum salary up to 1,500 euros per month; guaranteeing the unemployed 90 per cent of their salaries for their first year of unemployment; creating 120,000 social housing flats per year; and making state aid to companies conditional on a commitment not to fire employees when profits are made.
This approach might help her gather some of the more left-wing voters who deserted the Socialists in 2002. This time around, the party is keen to avoid splitting the left-wing vote, which at the last election led to the defeat of Jospin and the accession of the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to the final round. To this end, it is calling on left-wing voters to cast a ‘useful vote’, and is refusing to help smaller left-wing parties’ leaders gather the 500 elected representatives’ signatures they need to be official candidates in the election.
Moreover, Royal has shown an understanding of what the majority of French voters want – a say in the way they are governed, and a more interactive democracy. Her platform, although impractical and sometimes labelled as populist, might be the only way to overcome French citizens’ current lack of trust in their political system. Last but not least, although highly criticised in Parisian circles, Royal is very popular elsewhere. She may yet get a better score than expected in the opinion polls, where she is ranked as second favourite, but is losing against Sarkozy in a theoretical second round of the election.
But, in order to win, Royal will need to convince voters of her competency, and come up with a detailed map of how she can deliver further growth and keep her electoral promises without increasing the French public debt. French voters will want reasons to vote for her, rather than only reasons to vote against Sarkozy.
With radically opposing views on some of the key battlegrounds of the campaign – such as immigration, national identity, labour market reform and the role of the state – Sarkozy and Royal still have one thing in common: they both have to face the problem of the ‘third man’ currently ascending in the polls.
François Bayrou, leader of the centrist party the Union for French Democracy, has successfully positioned
himself over the last few weeks as the only candidate able to transcend the left-right divide that, according to his analysis, French voters are fed up with. Somewhat ironically, he might indeed have transcended it by uniting against him the two mainstream candidates: both Sarkozy and Royal label Bayrou as a false centrist, being clearly right wing and having always been part of the broader right-wing parliamentary coalition.
A closer look at his proposals could well justify this point of view. But Bayrou’s strength may be his
commitment to tackle some of the major French problems by curbing high public debt, reconsidering social charges for companies and reforming the state. His programme appears cheaper and financially more feasible than those of the two mainstream candidates. He could convince the 40 per cent of undecided voters to vote for him in the first round of the presidential election. Determined to appoint a government of coalition if elected, Bayrou has indicated that he could choose a left-wing prime minister in due course.
With around 20 per cent support in the opinion polls, Bayrou would certainly win the second round of the presidential election should he first manage to evict either Royal or Sarkozy. Both the Socialist party and the UMP understand the threat that Bayrou poses to their candidates: his electoral base appears to have widened to include a non-negligible part of both the traditional Socialist and right-wing vote.
But among Bayrou’s weaknesses is the volatility of the interviewees declaring their intention to vote for him. Other polls have shown that while the expressed voting intentions for Sarkozy and Royal are stable and declared definite, Bayrou’s support is less secure. This is mainly because the French are not convinced that a coalition government could actually govern France, especially given the unlikelihood of a majority in parliament for Bayrou’s small political party in June 2007.
One final uncertainty in the 2007 presidential election is the candidacy of Le Pen, the extreme-right leader. Always underestimated in the past, and currently ranked fourth in the race with around 12 per cent of stable support in the opinion polls, Le Pen, although unlikely to make it to the second round of the election, could still weaken Sarkozy to a point beneficial to Bayrou and Royal. And let us not forget that nobody knows at this stage whom the newly registered voters of the French suburbs will vote for.
Whatever the outcome, the election will certainly be unique in the history of the French Fifth Republic. Could it exemplify the French tendency to call for change and reform – as embodied by the new ideas promoted by Royal and Sarkozy – and then refuse it? Between a scary Sarko and a labelled unfit-for-the-job Ségo, could a reassuring Bayrou come through? In the context of supposed electoral disenchantment, much depends on the uncertain impact of the memory of the 2002 election campaign on French voters: the shock of Le Pen’s succession to the final round boosted for months electoral enrolment; and nobody can tell whether these newly registered voters will vote in 2007, and for whom. The result will also depend on the desire for change that a woman president could embody, and on the candidates’ ability to develop policy as much as rhetoric. Opinions polls and actual votes may not tell the same truth.