As the French presidential campaign of François Fillon implodes, the Socialist Party’s candidate is slowing emerging as an unlikely contender, reports Bloomberg.
Benoît Hamon was given little chance of ever being France’s next president when he won the primary of a deeply divided Socialist party. But since his victory last Sunday, the 49-year-old former education minister, whose signature issue is a basic universal income, has jumped in polls.
The socialist candidate’s surge is the latest twist in an election that has seen President François Hollande become the first sitting French president not to seek a second mandate because of record unpopularity and ended the career of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy. So far Hamon has succeeded thanks to former Hollande voters and backers of far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. His challenge will now be to reach beyond that, analysts said.
“Hamon is surfing on the momentum of the primary,” said Yves-Marie Cann, a pollster at Elabe in Paris. “He has managed to win the support of former Hollande voters who were disappointed with Hollande but who until now were tempted to vote for Melenchon. The hardest task may be ahead of him: expanding on that base.”
Wednesday’s daily tracking poll by Ifop showed him with 18 percent of voting intentions in the April 23 first round. While that puts him in fourth place, it’s more than double what he was credited with before the primary and places him within striking distance of taking the second place spot that would qualify for the May 7 run-off.
The poll had National Front candidate Marine Le Pen on 24 percent, Republican François Fillon second with 21 percent, and independent Emmanuel Macron third with 20 percent.