Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Assuming that National Front supporters will more likely prefer Nicholas Sarkozy to today’s winner, the Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, a numerical defeat for Sarkozy today (27.9% for Hollande, 26.7% Sarkozy with 75% of the vote counted) may still translate into a victory in July’s runoff.
MSM reporters seem shocked that the National Front did so well. I’m not.
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I’ve had a flurry of email exchanges with my French buddy about the election. He mentioned the strong showing of Le Front National, but he also thinks Hollande is winning this in the run-off. I agree. As in the Clapton/Syreeta song, France is going left ’til someone leads them to the right.
Well, then he’s going to have to pull FN voters away from Sarkozy, I think, which is contrary to current polling.
I guess we’ll just have to see.
I’ll be pleasantly surprised if Sarkozy wins a second term. Not that I think he’s been a great president for France, but I can’t imagine that an all-out socialist president will be better. Unfortunately, le peuple franÁ§ais beg to differ; they want Sarko out. I’ll be morbidly curious to see whether France gives itself a sanity check before the run-off. Meanwhile, Sarko and Hollande have one final debate scheduled. Soyons attentifs.
Both le Pen and Hollande share a visceral dislike of Brussels and all it stands for. Both promised (yeah, yeah, I know!) that if in power they would pull France back from existing entanglements. In other words, as so often, there is very little to chose between extreme Right and extreme Left. I think Hollande will court le Pen, win her and most of her followers and then win the election. At which point, the merde will hit the European fan!
However, as you wiseacres here already know, a politician’s promise is as cheap as yesterday’s fish!
… and less pertinent than yesterday’s fish wrap.
Yes, good points. If the taking-France-back-for -the-French issue can trump ordinary left-right divisions, then that could be Sarkozy’s undoing.