LE PENalt39S performance is key for the second round as the two finalists, Sarkozy and Hollande, have already begun the battle for the second round and not surprisingly, the 18 % voters of Le Pen hold the key for the eventual victor
Incumbent President Nicholas Sarkozy faces an uphill task after being pipped by his main rival Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party, the first time a sitting president has lost in the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
After the first round of voting, the French political debate took a sharp turn towards the right, or far right.
And for a good reason.
The only real surprise of the first round held on Sunday was the share of votes captured by the extreme right- wing party, Le Front National.
In various opinion polls, held in the run up to the vote, the party, which has been led by Marine Le Pen, daughter of the founder of the party, for the past five years, was often hovering below the key 15 percent mark and at times even falling behind the extreme left candidate Jean Luc Melonchon.
However, in the final count, Marine Le Pen led her party to record heights, falling barely short of 18 percent mark, while Melonchon was way behind with 11.11 percent of the votes polled.
In what could be indeed a shocker for the Socialist Party and the other multiple left front candidates, Le Pen got substantial support from the working class in France. In several bastions of the working class throughout the country, she was ahead of all the other candidates.
The performance of Le Pen is key for the second round as the two finalists, President Sarkozy and his challenger Hollande, have already begun the battle for the second round and not surprisingly, the 18 percent voters of Le Pen hold the key to the eventual victor.
These voters would normally fall into the lap of Sarkozys party, UMP, but Marine Le Pen has so far not called for her supporters to vote for either Sarkozy or Hollande, saying that she would announce her next step in a rally in Paris May 1, five days before the second round.
This is a very clever stratagem as both the candidates are keen on taking the maximum number of votes from Le Pen and other candidates and often it helps when they receive formal support.
Marine Le Pen is now clearly eyeing the parliamentary elections slated to be held in early June and anything that she says or does in the run up to the second round would be with the sole objective of bagging the maximum number of parliamentary seats.
While she declares her policy, the two candidates are not wasting any time in trying to woo her voters.
Sarko, Hollande step up battle to woo far right
Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist rival Francois Hollande on Tuesday stepped up their battle for the six million votes that went to the far right in the first round of Frances presidential election. ” Its up to me to convince the National Front ( FN) voters,” Hollande told alt39 Liberationalt39 newspaper, arguing that many of them were in fact left- wing and their support for the antiimmigrant, anti- EU party was a protest vote. Hollande and the right- wing Sarkozy – who beat off eight other candidates in Sundays first round – will now square off in a final round on May 6 that opinion polls say the Socialist will win.
