France voted on 22 April. Results are without surprise with the two favourites sent to the run-off. A massive participation characterises this election, as well as the emergence of a strong third party, and a Pyrrhic victory of the far-right.

Results without surprises

Frenchmen voted massively on 22 April with only 15.40% abstentions. Two factors explain this high participation. First, the stakes of the election and the fact that France is not feeling well. This message has been used and abused by the main candidates, who also exaggerated in their rhetoric “the state we’re in”, in order to give a feeling of urgency and importance. Second, the “21 April effect”, referring to 21 April 2002, when the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen was catapulted to the run-off disqualifying the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin: a trauma for France, of which the population clearly did not want to see the sequel.

The results were not a surprise, as they confirm more or less the opinion polls with the conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) ahead of the first round, with 31.11%, followed by the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal (PS) with 25.83%, and the centre-right candidate François Bayrou with 18.55%. The results were only a little clearer than the tight run-off announced by the opinion polls shortly before the Election Day.

The “22 April effect”

Many commentators and politicians referred to a so-called “21 April effect” to explain the results. Not only it provoked a massive participation, unprecedented since 1981, it also provoked a massive “vote utile” (“useful vote”): people voted for the main candidates directly in the first round and not the small ones.

Traditionally the two rounds of the presidential election have been characterised as giving the possibility to “choose in the first round” and “eliminate in the second round”; meaning, one chooses his favourite candidate in the first round, among the small ones, and eliminate the less favourite one in the second round. This led to a multiplication of small candidates, especially in 2002 on the left side. Whereas the right organised itself into a large single party (UMP), that only Bayrou’s centre-right party refused to join, the left remained very divided. This unity on the right and plurality on the left explained why the socialist candidate Jospin did not reach the second round, although the left all together gathered more votes than the right united.

But on this 22 April 2007, the small candidates, mainly from the left, gathered but very few votes, with the exception of the unionist Olivier Besancenot (4.11%). The Greens, the Communists, the Trotskyites, the Alter-globalists gathered each under 2% of the votes. The only small party on the sovereignist right also gathered peanuts, as well as two independent formations.

The emergence of a third party

The run-off will thus be between the two favourites in the opinion polls, Sarkozy and Royal. Bayrou did not manage to impose himself as the alternative to Royal against Sarkozy, as he campaigned for.

However, he managed to create a third party with a comfortable political force, albeit insufficient for the presidency. This third force in the country could be the referee for the run-off, but most importantly could position itself as a powerful coalition party, if Bayrou can materialise his results in the coming national election for the members of the National Assembly 10 and 17 June.

For now, Royal and Sarkozy are luring at Bayrou’s voters and are inviting Bayrou to support explicitly their candidacy. Bayrou declined both invitations, in order to continue his political strategy of positioning his UDF party as a third force in France, already betting on the results of the June legislative election.

His party faces now the dilemma of every centre formation: consolidating its independent identity whilst keeping the possibility to influence politics by entering coalition governments. However, as he made his whole campaigned against Sarkozy, claiming to be beyond the left-right divide, it is great political skill he will need in order to manage an eventual coalition in Sarkozy’s government, if he does not want to turn some of his voters from the left against him. The two personalities are also notoriously on a non-speaking level. By the same token, he will need to swallow his pride to enter a coalition with the left, as he had to face rude charges from Royal. But a vast majority of his voters are from the left and see him as a more credible alternative to a social democratic centre-left than the socialist party, incapable of reforming itself, and with a remaining strong anti-liberal “old left” trend in its apparatus, despite Royal’s efforts.

In order to win you need three things: spin, spin and spin

As it is traditional in France, the two candidates for the run-off will be opposed face to face in a TV debate on 2 May. It will be the first time in this campaign that the candidates oppose each other in a face to face debate. It is a bit of a shame for the democratic process that France did not have the opportunity to evaluate in a live transmitted debate her candidates. This campaign has been marked by an increased control over communication and spin, especially from the side of the two main candidates. An “Americanisation” of the campaign that many complained about in France; primarily the voters, who were expecting more substance and depth.

The “scandal” of spin arrived when a private and independent economic and statistical institute, L’institut de l’entreprise, published its evaluation of the “real” costs of the candidates’ programmes last February. It showed a cost twice superior to the estimations given by the PS and the UMP. Until the end, Sarkozy and Royal continued to add promises without revising the estimated costs of their programme. Only Bayrou kept a low profile on promises, promising only to spare and resolve the budget deficit, and did not change much in his programme until the election.

In order to avoid having to justify the cost of their promises, it seems that Sarkozy and Royal preferred to focus on more “important” themes, i.e. national identity, the flag and singing the Marseillaise as a revival of French national pride.

Le Pen and nationalist rhetoric: a Pyrrhic victory

It is of course great democratic news that Le Pen registered a record low score of 10.51%. Part of it is due to the “21 April effect”, but part is also due to Sarkozy’s rhetoric preaching on the lands of the far-right, as well as Royal’s, riding on his coattails.

What is alarming, and frankly driving to despair, is not the fact that they want to renew a pride in the French nation, but that they are grasping a vision of the nation that is archaic and stereotypical, and that they consider identity as a frozen concept. The nation they refer to is the one of the nineteenth century, with the consequences we know. They are melting cultural identity and politics together exactly like in the old time, privileging an ethnic and cultural idea of belonging to a political organisation. Moreover, they consider national identity as some kind of frozen concept that foreigners have to accept and adapt to, as if cultural identity was not a dynamic process perpetually evolving, as if any national identity has ever been purely “national”.

So, in the end, did Le Pen loose? If he did, surely, this is but a Pyrrhic victory over the far-right. Its rhetoric and semantic have well penetrated French minds over the years, including, apparently, the political elite. Unless, this was again pure spin.

For my part, France remains the country of the Enlightenment and the Revolution, and I prefer to look at the idea of “nation” shed under this light rather than under the one of the nineteenth century. I will therefore delve this summer into the works of great French “philosophes” like Voltaire and Diderot, as well as the ones of heroes of the revolution, long forgotten like the Prussian aristocrat Anacharsis Cloots. A time when the word “nation” did not have ethnic or cultural connotations, but embodied the sum of all men who wanted to be free as opposed to tyranny. A time when nationalism, patriotism and cosmopolitanism where closely entangled.

Bild 1: Ségolène Royal c) Marie-Lan Nguyen
Bild 2: Nicolas Sarkozy c) www.presidencia.gov.ar