After months of campaigning and thundering rhetoric, the French presidential elections finally get underway this coming Sunday with the first round of voting in what is a two-round poll. The two candidates who emerge with the highest scores on April 22nd will go on to a final play-off in the second round held two weeks later, on May 6th. The result of the approaching first round is far from decided in advance, while the stakes, amid a severe economic crisis, have never been greater. This simple guide, with a Q&A introduction followed by a more detailed summary, explains how the presidential election system works, who the candidates are, the issues of debate and the factors at play for the outcome of the voting on Sunday.
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- How often are presidential elections held?
The presidential elections are held once every five years. Previously – until 2002 – the presidential term was seven years.
- How are the elections organized?
The elections are held in two rounds, separated by two weeks. According to a strict calendar, the first round is held on the third Sunday of April and the second round on the first Sunday in May. This year, the first round is held on April 22nd, and the second on May 6th.
- Why are there two rounds?
The first round is an eliminatory poll, in which all the candidates stand. Only the two who attract the largest number of votes will emerge as candidates for the final, second round play-off a fortnight later.
- How many candidates are there?
This year, there are ten candidates standing in the first round, three of them women. They are: incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, candidate for the ruling UMP conservative-right party; François Hollande, candidate for the Socialist Party, the main opposition group; François Bayrou, candidate for the centre-right MoDem party; Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate for the radical-left Front de Gauche alliance; Marine Le Pen, candidate for the far-right Front National party; Eva Joly, candidate for the green party EELV; Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, candidate for the Gaullist, conservative right Debout la République party; Philippe Poutou, candidate for the far-left NPA party; Nathalie Arthaud, for the far-left Lutte Ouvrière party and Jacques Cheminade, candidate for the maverick right party, Solidarité et Progrès.
- When will the result be known?
The polling stations close at 8p.m. in major cities, and 6p.m. elsewhere (except in very rare cases, such as the town of Rennes, where they close at 7p.m.). Under French law, the result of exit polls, which are traditionally accurate, can only be revealed after 8p.m., and these are announced across the media immediately. However, this year some media organizations in France have said they will reveal exit poll findings from 6p.m, along with other media in French-speaking European countries (notably Belgium). The one uncertainty is if the result is a very close call, in which case the final tally will only be clear late Sunday evening.
- How many people vote?
There are just more than 46 million people registered to vote in this year’s elections, out of a total population of 65.3 million. However, the number of predicted abstentions will most likely reduce the number of those who do cast their vote by several million.
- Who can vote?
Only those with French nationality aged 18 or more can take part (as opposed to municipal elections in which EU member-state nationals resident in France can vote).
See 'The issues at stake', page two.
The issues at stake:
The French president is, unlike heads of state in a number of other European countries, the country’s most powerful political figure, and the elections are therefore a crucial event.
The economic crisis, the most severe of any in the life of the constitution of the Fifth Republic, created in 1958, has dominated the election campaign, with rising unemployment now hovering at around 10%, industrial output down -1.2%, and great uncertainty about the economic and social future.
Employment, de-industrialisation and delocalisations, wages and purchasing power, the future of the welfare system and public services, and taming the excesses of the world of finance have figured highest on the agenda. Many of these have come under the umbrella of debate over the government’s austerity programme, the introduction of a fairer tax system and the size of the public service payroll.
Secondary to these, the mainstream- and far-right have brought the toughening of immigration controls into the debate, along with a thinly-disguised stigmatization of the Muslim community, while candidates of all sides have made an issue of reducing the power of the EU to impose (chiefly economic) policies at home.
Alongside these, the successive corruption scandals under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, notably the Karachi and Bettencourt affairs, now the subject of numerous judicial investigations, weigh heavily on his personal popularity – which opinion polls have recorded as the historical lowest of any president seeking re-election.
Since Jacques Chirac’s election in 1995, when he succeeded socialist president François Mitterrand, the French presidency has been occupied by members of the conservative-right (now the UMP party, formerly the RPR). Chirac served two terms of office, and was succeeded in 2007 by Nicolas Sarkozy, who is now seeking re-election for a second term.
This year, the Socialist Party (PS) appears closer to regaining the presidency than it ever has been in the intervening 17 years. Its candidate, François Hollande, has for months held a consistent lead in opinion poll surveys over his principle rival, Nicolas Sarkozy.
However, the first round of the elections, from which just the two candidates with the highest number of votes emerge for the play-off, has the potential to upset both candidates. While Hollande and Sarkozy are the opinion poll front-runners, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and radical-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon are, according to the surveys, barking, if not snapping, at their heals. Both Le Pen and Mélenchon could draw a protest vote from both the Sarkozy and Hollande camps, and the size of that defection will be crucial.
Just behind Le Pen and Mélenchon figures centre-right candidate François Bayrou, who opinion polls have regularly credited with more than 10% of voting intentions. If those predictions are accurate, the first round will see five candidates score above 10% of the vote for the first time in France’s presidential elections.
But political predictions, and opinion polls, are anything but a precise science, and many have high in mind the shock outcome of the 2002 elections when, against almost every forecast, far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine Le Pen’s father) emerged from the first round as one of the final two candidates – along with Jacques Chirac – qualified for the second-round play-off. In that first round, the vote for then-Socialist Party candidate Lionel Jospin, who opinion polls had tipped would win through alongside Chirac, was depleted by a protest vote for more radical candidates on the Left, leaving Le Pen higher than any of them.
That caused a political earthquake for the Left, and cost the minor left-wing and Green candidates dearly in first round-voting in 2007. This time around, however, the fear among voters of the Left of losing any candidate to fight the second round is counter-balanced by a current of support for policies that offer a radical shift in economic and social priorities.
Another key factor will be the number of abstentions which, again, threaten the leading candidates, amid a perception among many that neither of the mainstream parties of the Right and Left offer significantly different economic policies. Adding to the resignation is a palpable fatigue among part of Sarkozy’s core electorate, tired of the numerous scandals under his presidency and knee-jerk policy decisions, and a lack of excitement among a portion of the socialist electorate for Hollande, who some view as a soft and uncharismatic figure unlikely to herald any innovating policy changes.
Thus, despite the safest money being on a Hollande versus Sarkozy contest in the second round, the combined factors of abstentions and a protest swing of votes to secondary candidates could yet upset the apple cart. The one result that almost every seasoned observer, expert political pundit and opinion poll organization agree on is that if Hollande and Sarkozy do emerge as the victors on Sunday, it will be Hollande who will win the final round on May 6th.