By Michael Streeter and Graham Tearse
Socialist Party candidate François Hollande and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy are the winners of the first round of the French presidential elections held on Sunday, according to initial exit poll figures released after voting ended at 8p.m. Hollande, who took the overall lead, and Sarkozy will now go through to the final play off on May 6th.
The exit polls, traditionally accurate, gave Holland between 27% and 29%, a narrow lead over Sarkozy, standing for re-election as candidate of the ruling UMP party, who garnered between 25% and 27%.
Far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen came in third, with between 18% and 20% of the vote, the highest ever obtained by her Front National party. It was well ahead of the radical-left Front de Gauche candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon with between 10.1% and 11.5%.
Fifth-placed centre-right MoDem candidate François Bayrou scored between 8.5% and 9%.
Among the remaining five candidates, Eva Joly, candidate for the green party EELV, was estimated to have scored around 2.1%; Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, candidate for the Gaullist, conservative right Debout la République party around 1.8%; Philippe Poutou, candidate for the far-left NPA party was at 1.2%; Nathalie Arthaud, for the far-left Lutte Ouvrière party came in at around 0.7% and Jacques Cheminade, candidate for the maverick right party, Solidarité et Progrès, came last with 0.3%.
The estimates are taken from the results of polling stations that closed at 6p.m. Voting in France's major cities continued until 8p.m.
The overall turnout of voters was estimated at 80.3%, compared with 83.77% in the first round in 2007, and well above the 71.6% of the first round in 2002. The interior ministry earlier announced it had reached 70.59% at 5p.m., slightly down on that at the same time in 2007 (73%), but considerably more than that in 2002 (58.45%).
The strength of the turnout on Sunday was generally regarded as being more favourable for the Left, and notably Hollande who spent the last weeks of his campaign warning over the threat of abstentions.
While more accurate figures will be known late Sunday, with the final count known on Monday, the exit poll results suggest a tight contest for the final round on May 6th. However, Hollande’s core support is believed likely to be bolstered more than for Sarkozy by a proportion of the electorate behind Sunday’s eight losing candidates, notably supporters of Mélenchon, Joly and Bayrou. But Hollande now faces a battle over the coming fortnight to fully mobilize his supporters, especially those who on Sunday cast their vote for him more out of desire to see Sarkozy defeated than the Socialist Party candidate elected.
Joly, speaking shortly after the results were announced, has already urged her supporters to cast their votes in the second and final round for Hollande.
Mélenchon, speaking on Sunday evening before several thousand supporters gathered at the Place Stalingrad square in Paris, dismissed any possibility of political negotiations for his support, but clearly called on his electorate to vote against Sarkozy in the second round. “We have the keys to the [next] score," he said. "I call on you to fully assume your responsibilities. There is nothing to negotiate. I call on you to mobilize on May 6th without asking anything [in return] to beat Sarkozy, without any dragging of feet. It is a question of breaking the Sarkozy-Merkel axis.”
Far-left Lutte Ouvrière party candidate, Nathalie Arthaud, commented: "I am not owner of the votes that, in this first round, were cast in my name. In the second round, my electorate will vote according to its conscience.”
With the far-right and far-left candidates unlikely to advise their electorate to vote for either candidate, the attitude of centrist François Bayrou will be significant for both Sarkozy and Hollande. Speaking on Sunday evening, he said he would now begin discussions with both camps. “I will tell them what is essential, in values and action,” he said. “I will listen to their replies and I will take my responsibilities. What is needed for the future, what needs to be urgently built, is a balancing force at the centre. We must also build new institutions which will prevent the explosions that threaten our country.”
He earlier described the success of the Far Right as “grave”, admitting that his own score, almost half of what he obtained in the 2007 first round, was well below his hopes. “France’s sickness is here and is getting worse," said a solemn Bayrou. "And the only path available to get away from will be, one day or another, that which we have put forward to the French people: a new, courageous political [programme], which for once will be supported by [a political] national union.”
Prime Minister François Fillon, speaking from his official office, L’Hôtel Matignon, shortly after the exit poll figures were announced, addressed, without naming them, those who contributed to Marine Le Pen’s historic high score on Sunday. “French men and women, on May 6th you will make a decision. Make it for the republican ideal that we share, make it for France, for its future, for that of your children, make it with the president.”
Le Pen gave no indication to her supporters of how they should vote on May 6th. In a triumphant speech at the Front National headquarters, she was clearly jubilant at the prospect her high score on Sunday offered for her party’s results in the legislative elections to be held in June.
"This first round was not an end in itself, but the beginning of a vast rally of compatriots from the Right, like from the Left, those who love France and defend its identity, those who love the French exception," she said. "Whatever happens over the next 15 days, the battle of France has only just begun. Dear friends, the French, nothing will be the same again.”
Nicolas Sarkozy held a meeting late Sunday evening in Paris at the Mutualité congress hall in the Latin Quarter, where he described the first round result as a “crisis vote”.
“These worries, these sufferings, I know them, I understand them,” he said. He proposed that he and Hollande hold three separate TV debates, as opposed to the traditional one, a suggestion later rejected by Hollande’s camp. “The French have a right to the truth and clarity,” Sarkozy said. “The crucial moment has come. It is about designating he who must protect the French for the five coming years. I have exercised this function for five years, I know the duties. “
“I want to address all of the French people,” he said, in an undisguised appeal to those who voted for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. “I call on all the French who put their love of the country above any partisan consideration to rejoin me.”
Speaking on Sunday evening from his parliamentary constituency in Tulle, in the Corrèze département (county) of south-central France, François Hollande declared: “On May 6th I want victory, a wonderful victory, for France and its future,” he said. “This evening, change is now underway and nothing will stop it. It depends on the French people, and the choice is simple - to continue with policies that have failed with an incumbent who has caused divisions, or to head towards a recovery of France, with justice, with a candidate who will unite.”
Mediapart reporters were present at the different campaign headquarters throughout Sunday evening. At Nicolas Sarkozy’s, an activist with his ruling UMP party, Serge (last name withheld), commented: “I have friends whose hackles are raised by Sarkozy. Some of them reject the man. Many voted Le Pen in order to block Mélenchon." Another, Pierre, said: “I have a friend on the Right. She’s reticent to vote for Sarkozy again […] the media have imposed an anti-Sarkozy [atmosphere] that is based on nothing, bling-bling, the Rolex. All journalist are on the Left […] We’re going in with something of a handicap, but it’s winnable.”
At the Socialist Party campaign base in Paris, the party's Member of Parliament for the capital's 12th arrondissement (district), Sandrine Mazetier, expressed her confidence that Hollande will win the second round play off. “The turnout was good, the total for the Left too,” she said. “Nothing will stop a change, that’s certain.” Predicting that Sarkozy would spend the next fortnight “on far-right themes”, she added: "François Hollande has just one thing to do, which he has done very well since the beginning: hold his course.”