Elysée | The first-round results

Round one to Hollande

A victory for François Hollande, but the big winner of the night is Marine Le Pen

By S.P. | PARIS

FRENCH voters have today put François Hollande, the Socialist candidate, firmly in the lead in the first round of the country's presidential election. With 28.4% of the vote, according to exit polls released at 8pm, Mr Hollande looks extremely well placed to go on to win the presidency in the run-off vote on May 6th.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Gaullist incumbent, secured 25.5% of the vote, according to the exit polling, so will face Mr Hollande in the second round. His first-round defeat does not mean victory is impossible. In the eight previous presidential elections under the Fifth Republic, going back to 1965, three of the eventual victors came second in the first round.

Mr Sarkozy is a formidable political performer, which could help him in the televised face-to-face debates over the next two weeks. His team is also hoping that the second-round campaign, when voters will be able to compare just the two rivals without the distraction of the other candidates, will expose Mr Hollande's inexperience.

But momentum is now very much on Mr Hollande's side. Second-round polls have consistently made him the winner, by a margin of anything from six to 16 percentage points. No candidate has come back from as far behind in the polls as Mr Sarkozy is and gone on to win the presidency.


The voting today suggests that the French really do want change, and have had enough of the erratic Mr Sarkozy. Turnout was not as high as in 2007, when Mr Sarkozy defeated the Socialist Ségolène Royal, but in line with the recent average; there were plenty of queues at polling stations, despite this election falling in the middle of the school holidays.

On the far left, 11.7% voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a Communist-backed firebrand who has stirred crowds with his talk of a civil insurrection. This is a disappointing result for Mr Mélenchon after his strong campaign and polling scores. Most of his voters will now swing behind Mr Hollande.

The same will not necessarily apply to those who backed Marine Le Pen, of the far-right National Front, who secured a remarkable 20%, more than any first-round poll had predicted. This puts her in third place, although she took a higher proportion of the vote than her father, Jean-Marie, did in 2002 when he got into the run-off in 2002, against Jacques Chirac, with 16.9%. This poll [PDF] by TNS-Sofres, suggest that 40% of Ms Le Pen's voters will now back Mr Sarkozy; but 27% will go for Mr Hollande.

It says something about the state of denial in France that the one candidate, the centrist François Bayrou, who warned voters that they were in for some tough choices and hard times, took a miserable fifth place. His score of 9% is less than half his achievement in 2007, when he managed 18.57%. His is a message, it seems, that the French just don't want to hear.

Mr Bayrou will not, however, now disappear from view. The challenge for each of the remaining candidates over the next two weeks will be to try to court the centrist vote with reasonable talk about budgetary discipline and competitiveness. Whether they will be able to do credibly, however, after the first-round campaign, is another matter.

(Photo credit: AFP)

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