French president François Hollande would lose election next year no matter who his opponents were, a poll showed on Monday, with poor ratings prompting his socialist party's top official to warn that the French left risks being annihilated, reports Reuters.
Hollande, who took office in 2012, told voters in a primetime TV show last week that his policies were paying off and things were getting better. He said he would decide at year-end whether to run again for a second term in next year's presidential election.
But polls published on Monday and over the weekend showed voters were not convinced and his already faltering re-election prospects were looking even worse.
A TNS Sofres One Point poll showed the far-right National Front and the center-right Les Républicains would get the only two spots available in the election's second round, even if Les Républicains put up a little-known candidate.
When tested against Les Républicains's front-runner, former prime minister Alain Juppé, or against ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande's predicted score in the first round was 5 to 7 points lower than in a similar poll in December.
To make things worse, the poll showed that candidates from smaller parties, further left, would get more votes all together than Hollande.
"If the Left does not get its acts together it will be atomized and marginalized for 20 years," Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadélis told LCI television.
The 61-year-old Hollande has been dogged by poor popularity ratings since soon after his election because of his failure to deliver on a promise to bring down unemployment.
His ratings slumped further over labor reform plans and botched anti-terrorism laws, both of which angered left-wing voters.