HOLLANDE STEALS POLL MARCH ON SARKOZY / THE FINANCIAL TIMES ( HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING )

.
Last updated:April 23, 2012 8:17 am
.
Hollande steals poll march on Sarkozy
.
By Tom Burgis, Hugh Carnegy and James Boxell in Paris, and Scheherazade Daneshkhu in Tulle

.

©Getty

François Hollande has taken a narrow lead in the first round of France’s presidential elections, setting up a run-off with Nicolas Sarkozy after a vote that saw one in five ballots go to the far right National Front.



Following a bitter campaign marked by opposing visions of how to steer France’s debt-laden economy through the eurozone crisis, the Socialist challenger won 28.6 per cent of the votes, with 99 per cent counted, according to the interior ministry on Sunday evening.

 

The centre-right Mr Sarkozy, who is seeking to avoid adding his name to the string of European incumbents swept aside since the start of the sovereign debt crisis, secured 27.1 per cent support in a first-round election with a turnout of more than 80 per cent.

.

But the shock of the night was a record 18 per cent performance by the National Front’s Marine Le Pen, who outdid pollsters’ predictions after capitalising on widespread French discontent with the mainstream political elite.


.Both Mr Sarkozy’s and Mr Hollande’s results-night gatherings broke into choruses of “We will win” when the tallies were announced, underscoring how much remains to play for in a race where almost half of those who voted cast their ballots for neither frontrunner.


.
The victor in a May 6 run-off will take the helm of the world’s fifth-largest economy, where one in 10 workers is unemployed and whose fiscal health is the subject of increasing concern in financial markets.


.
The jubilation in the Hollande camp at coming first was tempered by the National Front’s performance. Mr Hollande said Ms Le Pen’s surprise score was “ a new signal” that reflected popular anger and frustration.


.
One person in the Hollande camp at his Tulle constituency in south central France said: “It’s not good news but Le Pen voters won’t necessarily vote for Sarkozy in the second round and her high score can also be regarded as a protest against Sarkozy.”



.
Mr Sarkozy’s failure to come top in the first round is a blow to his efforts to inject some momentum into a campaign weighed down by the lowest end-of-term ratings of any president since the 1950s.


.
But one Sarkozy supporter at his campaign headquarters in Paris said the combined vote for Mr Sarkozy and Ms Le Pen meant it had been “a victory for the right in France”.



-
Mr Sarkozy said he recognised voters’ concerns about jobs and immigration – “the concern of our compatriots to preserve their way of life”, he told supporters at his campaign headquarters in Paris.


.
Ms Le Pen has already drawn Mr Sarkozy to the right with her broadsides against immigration. Like her counterpart on the far left, she has also tapped a lack of enthusiasm for the two leading contenders, whom she dubbed “Siamese twins”.



.
She comfortably saw off a challenge for third place from Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Left Front. His oratory and anger drew impassioned crowds to his rallies. His 11 per cent was lower than many of his supporters had expected but they will still hope he can pull the less radical Mr Hollande to the left in exchange for second-round support.



.
The 9.1 per cent garnered by François Bayrou, a centrist, could yet make him the kingmaker.


.
An Ipsos poll on Sunday night showed Mr Hollande’s lead over Mr Sarkozy for the second round narrowing to eight points from 12 points on Friday. The poll suggested that almost all those who voted for Mr Mélenchon would shift their support to Mr Hollande in the second round.



A handful of Le Pen supporters would do likewise, while 60 per cent said they would back Mr Sarkozy. More than a fifth of her backers – a potentially critical swing vote sector worth about 4 percentage points in the run-off – told the pollsters they had yet to decide whom to back.

Online leaks leave French election law looking like a pudding

It looked for all the world like banal internet chatter about football, designer watches and desserts.



But the messages that pinged between Twitter accounts in France and beyond on Sunday were in fact deploying a secret code designed to circumvent a ban on broadcasting results from the presidential election before polling stations closed 8pm.


Nicolas Sarkozy’s taste for the finer things of life earned him the moniker “Rolex”. One message – “Netherlands-Hungary qualify for return leg” – tipped off readers in the know that Mr Sarkozy and François Hollande had made it through to the run-off with a reference to the homeland of the president’s father and a play on the surname of his Socialist challenger. Mr Hollande also suffered the indignity of being encoded as “Flanby”, a reference to the caramel pudding that, so his critics have it, shares its soft centre with France’s would-be ruler.


French prosecutors had warned that anyone found publicly disseminating leaked results or exit polls would face the full force of a 1977 law banning their disclosure before all voters have cast their ballots. In the age of Twitter, however, the arm of the law may prove too short to administer the threatened €75,000 fines for offenders.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.