Posted on 03/21/2007 6:06:38 PM PDT by Cincinna
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Nicolas Sarkozy remains the most popular candidate in the French presidential race, according to a poll by Louis-Harris released by RMC. 29 per cent of respondents would vote for the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) contender in next month’s ballot.
Ségolène Royal of the Socialist Party (PS) is second with 26 per cent, followed by Union for French Democracy (UDF) leader François Bayrou with 22 per cent, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front (FN) with 12.5 per cent.
Support is lower for Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) member Olivier Besancenot, Marie-George Buffet of the French Communist Party (PCF), farmer-activist José Bové, Movement for France (MPF) leader Philippe de Villiers, Arlette Laguiller of Workers’ Struggle (LO), Dominique Voynet of the Greens (Verts), and Frédéric Nihous of Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Traditions (CPNT).
Sarkozy currently serves as France’s interior minister. Royal is the leader of the regional government of Poitou-Charentes. In a prospective run-off scenario, Sarkozy holds a four-point advantage over Royal. In addition, Bayrou leads Sarkozy by six points.
Yesterday, French president Jacques Chirac endorsed Sarkozy, declaring, "Five years ago, I called for the creation of the UMP to allow France to pursue a rigorous policy of modernization. In all its diversity, this political movement chose to support the candidacy of Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election, because of his qualities. Naturally, I will therefore bring him my vote and my support."
The UMP’s Chirac won the presidential ballot in 1995, and was re-elected in a run-off over Le Pen in May 2002. The next election is scheduled for Apr. 22. If no candidate garners more than 50 per cent of all cast ballots, a run-off would take place on May 6.
Polling Data
Which candidate would you support in the first round of the presidential election?
Mar. 17
Mar. 10
Mar. 3
Nicolas Sarkozy
29%
28%
28%
Ségolène Royal
26%
26%
27%
François Bayrou
22%
22%
20%
Jean-Marie Le Pen
12.5%
13.5%
14%
Olivier Besancenot
2.5%
2%
1.5%
Marie-George Buffet
2%
2.5%
2.5%
José Bové
1.5%
1.5%
2%
Philippe de Villiers
1.5%
1.5%
1%
Arlette Laguiller
1%
2%
2%
Dominique Voynet
1%
1%
1%
Frédéric Nihous
1%
--
0.5%
Run-Off Scenarios
Sarkozy v. Royal
Mar. 17
Mar. 10
Mar. 3
Nicolas Sarkozy
52%
52%
52%
Ségolène Royal
48%
48%
48%
Sarkozy v. Bayrou
Mar. 17
Mar. 10
François Bayrou
57%
55%
Nicolas Sarkozy
43%
45%
Source: Louis-Harris / RMC Methodology: Interviews with 1,003 French adults, conducted on Mar. 16 and Mar. 17, 2007. No margin of error was provided.
Most polls are showing the same result. The support for Sarko is steady, and increasing slightly, while the support for Royal has leveled out to its lower levels. Support for Bayrou seems to have peaked, peaked much to soon,IMHO.
The Far Left kook candidates , Communist, Trotskyist,Green,and worse, seem to be gaining slightly. The figures on le Pen show he is slowly dropping, but my guess is that is the most unreliable of all the figures, as people are not likely to openly express support to pollsters in a face to face or phone interview.
Please let me know if you want to join or be taken off this French Election (((PING))) List.
I bet they all have their concession speaches perfected.
Mon Dieu! A decade of Chirac finally seems to have knocked some sense into peoples' heads. If the lefty candidates are gaining, I take it that helps Bayrou more than Sarkozy? Either one will be a welcome change if it helps improve Franco-American relations.
Mon Dieu! A decade of Chirac finally seems to have knocked some sense into peoples' heads. If the lefty candidates are gaining, I take it that helps Bayrou more than Sarkozy? Either one will be a welcome change if it helps improve Franco-American relations.
The possibility of strategic behavior in this election is very high.
I have suspected all along that these elections will be very close, so close that they are likely to be decided in the DOM, and these numbers make me think that is more true than ever. Segolene Royale continues to do well there, better than in France, although in Guadeloupe a runoff between her and Sarkozy shows a 50/50 result. Bayrou has only just started his breakthrough in the DOM, moving up about 5 percentage points in the latest time period.
This will be very interesting.
The socialist, Ségolène Royal, just needs to do what the socialists (Democrats) here in the US do: promise more "free stuff" to the lazy bums and parasites who constitute the "base".
Appreciated.
If you want on or off the list, go to the link for instructions. Otherwise, it won't be guaranteed that you will be put on or taken off (it still won't be 100% guaranteed, anyway, but will be much more highly probable).
I just hope it improves Franco-American SpaghettiOs.
I would think one big risk for Sarkozy is if runoff polls show him losing to Royale at the end by a clear margin. That might cause some of his voters to defect to Bayrou no?
Sure, but I don't think that is going to happen.
Sarkozy is the strongest single candidate. Royal and Bayrou have never caught him, and I don't see either one catching him in the first round. The UMP is bigger than the UDF or the Socialists, and the presence of the smaller parties and candidates fractionates the "fringe" of the electorate. I doubt that any UMP are going to vote UDF.
Royal's problem is that she's a weak candidate. Her gaffes have not just been trumped up. They've been really embarrassing. The comment, to a radio commentator who spoofed her pretending to be the Premier of Quebec, that 'most French don't say it, but think that Corsica should be let go' was bizarre. It's not true. It's not even a little bit true. "Most" French? Elle delire. That she said this "in confidence" on live Canadian radio was worse. The whole thing was a horrible gaffe, and just plain weird. Then her visible discomfort with military issues and hapless answer that France has "one" nuclear submarine played to all of her weaknesses. It's too bad, in a sense, that she wasn't a stronger candidate, but she's not. I don't think that there is any way that she can actually pass Sarkozy in the first round. In the second round, she's toast, because the UDF will vote for Sarkozy.
The real question, then, is how many of the fractionated fringe will dislike the idea of Sarkozy and more of the same UMP doldrums to leave aside their favored fringe candidates and vote strategically for Bayrou (or perhaps Royal). Bayrou is likely to pick up more of that than Royal, because the hard right fringe is bigger than the hard left. But will they really vote for a milquetoast like Bayrou when they can, instead, vote for their own favored spiny crab of a candidate? Of course not. Fringe fanatics vote fringe fanatic in the first tour. It's one of the things that has given the UMP/RPR and Socialists a lock on power for so long. So, the real transition question is whether Socialists, seeing Royal listing badly and knowing she will lose to Sarkozy, will decide that the center right of the UDF is preferable to more UMP lock on power. Especially given that Bayrou has hinted at a Socialist PM for the centrist unity government he will have to construct. The answer to this is unknown and unknowable, until the election.
If Bayrou makes it to the final, he'll beat Sarkozy, because the whole Socialist bloc will transfer its vote to him, as will the rest of the fringe left, and quite a bit of the fringe right. Le Pen followers will not vote for Sarkozy's Affirmative Action proposal. Bayrou won't touch positive discrimination. So, if Bayrou can find the votes in the first tour, he can win the presidency...but can he?
Unknown.
I think there's another piece here, and that is the possibility that the French polling is overlooking the overseas departments and overseas French, which have among them about 3 million people, and which in a deadlocked election in the metropole will have a heavy say in the outcome. The DOM are not politically jiggered the same as the metropole. They are more pro-Socialist. And most of the French overseas are in places like New York and California. Royal could end up finishing stronger than expected because of the overseas vote. In a tight race, that could put her over the top.
Anyway, I want it to be Bayrou, although I acknowledge that it is going to be tough for him to find the votes.
OK, but the last runoff poll I remember, had Royale beating Sardozy by 4% or something.
The interactive site at le Monde shows all the major polls since November 2006, both 1st and 2nd round.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/vi/0,47-0@2-823448,54-848463,0.html
Cincinna's right, Torie, all the latest polls show Sarkozy a few points ahead, with Royal in second position and Bayrou having closed the gap to a couple of points behind Royal. The runoff polls show Royal losing to Sarkozy. Nobody has polled a Royal v. Bayrou run.
The situation is tense and fluid. Royal is weak because she has made gaffes that made her look dumb. She's anything but dumb, but then, Dan Quayle was not dumb either. Once one is identified by the public with being dumb, it's a tough thing to shake, and once the hand-puppets of the news (les Guignols d'Info) have characterized you as a dim-witted, slow talking moron (which they have for Royal), you're toast. The political muppets are sort of like the Saturday Night Live or Tonight Show of France. The jokes do shape opinion. George Bush never said "strategery", for instance. 'Twas Tim Farrell on Saturday Night Live.
Bayrou's not dumb, but he's sort of an affable milquetoast. Sarkozy's a little walking adrenal gland.
They all have their weaknesses, but Royal's really hurt her more. Enough? On verra.
Royale hasn't been ahead in any polling for many months.
I understand your reservation against Affirmative Action proposals, the french opposition to such things have hithero been one of the few things I have liked about them. But I must concede that the french are very unsocially mobile people, so the immigrants have in most cases had trouble moving up the social ladder. But in my opinion that is due to to much socialistic beurocracy and government control of all things, not lack of minorities.
But on the other hand has Sarkozy been having genuine conservative principles when it comes to immigration and adaptation (french-ization) and such, wich helps him with the Le Pen crowd and regular people, isn´t it?
But surely you must overall like Sarkozy better than Bayrou don´t you?
I concede that Bayrou has been a realist in many things and talked straight/bluntly about the inability of the other candidates to implement their electoral policies, wich is refreshing, but I am afraid that with him France will continue to be stuck immobilized.
Ps. I would like to be on the Europle ping list if it is any good.
No I prefer Bayrou over Sarkozy.
First, I think Bayrou's ideas are the better ideas. The UMP enjoys the essentially monarchic system France has adopted every bit as much as the Socialists do. The UDF proposes structural reforms to the institutions of French government which will shift the balances of power and actually make the place more, well, American, in the sense of having government accountable to law.
Sarkozy wants to be a right-wing King, just like Chirac was. Royal wants to be a left-wing King. Kings by the name "President", but Kings nevertheless. Bayrou's and the UDF's ideas, put into practice, would shake the nature of French government to the very foundations.
When you say "socialist", I presume you don't really mean socialist. Socialism is the contriol of the means of production and of the principal sources of the economy by the state. France has only a touch of that (in the form of goldenshares in privatized companies, although this is more than meets the eye). The UDF is more "free business" in that regard than the UMP.
I presume that you mean public pensions, public education and national health insurance as "socialism". That is not socialism. It is necessary public infrastructure, and the government is the best positioned of any actor in the economy to be the primary provider of these services, especially since universality of sevices means, perforce, that there is no profit in the enterprise. You can only wring profit out of an insurance scheme if you either eliminate the very old and sick from it - which leaves them without care - or if you price it so high that people cannot afford it - which leaves them without care. There is no profitable insurance scheme possible that will provide health insurance to 80 year olds and yet be affordable such that ALL 80-year olds can afford it. Nonworking people have very limited budgets, and virtually every 80-year-old has expensive medical problems. Private enterprise cannot cover a large pool of universally sick people needing expensive care and turn a profit, not without massive presmia which would leave such people without care. You either pay for their care out of tax dollars, or they don't have care. The second solution is not Christian, and it's not democratically sustainable either. The state HAS TO provdide the final medical coverage to the aged, because it's a guaranteed expense, forever, without any way to cover everybody and have it profitable. Like national defense, to protect the economy, national health insurance to cover the elderly is a necessary social protection which the state, and only the state, can provide. That is not socialism. It's infrastructure, and all Western countries (including the United States) have it. France has decided that NOBODY should go uninnsured, and has made the system as rational as possible by having everyone pay into it. Nobody is proposing making that go away, and they shouldn't.
So, if that's what you mean by "socialism" (and it is), then I'd have to say I disagree. France needs that and so does the USA.
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