FRANCE/FILE: Reuters analyst says final leg of Presidential election is a tortoise and the hare race between left and right parties

Record ID: 346538

  • Title: FRANCE/FILE: Reuters analyst says final leg of Presidential election is a tortoise and the hare race between left and right parties
  • Date: 10th April 2012
  • Summary: MELENCHON ADDRESSING CROWD OF SUPPORTERS SUPPORTERS LISTENING TO MELENCHON
  • Embargoed: 25th April 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA9UYA2HRVAN0Y4PCQ0WTXXM8HA
  • Story Text: The race for the French presidency enters the final run this week with the opening of official campaigning -- although not all voters are expected to participate as enthusiastically as one man in the north of the country, Alain Rocher, who has plastered his house with posters of Socialist candidate Francois Hollande.
    Rocher said he wanted to do something that people would notice and bolster support for his candidate, who has been campaigning relentlessly for the last six months to unseat President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of France's most unpopular presidents on record with a 30 percent rating at the start of the year but which then surged to a two year high in recent weeks.
    Officially, campaigning begins on Monday (April 9). But the leading candidates have been on the campaign trail for three months and more.
    Opinion polls have Hollande and Sarkozy running neck and neck in the first round of voting on April 22, with some giving Sarkozy a slight lead over his Socialist challenger. But for the moment, all the polls forecast that Hollande will win the second round by a margin of at least 53 percent.
    For Sarkozy, the challenge is immense, as a president of such unpopularity has never gone on to win a second mandate.
    But his aggressive, energetic style and progress so far mean that although Sarkozy may be down, he's certainly not out with some predicting a 'record comeback'.
    "It's been a bit of a race of the tortoise and the hare with Sarkozy absolutely running to catch up, sometimes appearing to run in several directions at once, and Francois Hollande plodding along slowly towards the finishing line," said Reuters' European Affairs Editor Paul Taylor.
    There was an unexpected twist to the campaign two weeks ago, when an al-Qaeda-inspired gunman shot seven people in three attacks, his own life ending under a hail of police bullets after a 30-hour standoff.
    Commentators say that left Sarkozy's image greatly enhanced with the voters and allowed him to counter the threat posed by Marine Le Pen, the head of the far-right National Front, for whom security and immigration are natural electoral hunting ground.
    But Sarkozy still remains vulnerable to Hollande's attacks on his economic record.
    Hollande accuses Sarkozy of favouring the rich and not doing enough to cut unemployment, while Sarkozy says Hollande will reduce France to the level of Greece if he wins the election and tries to boost growth through more spending.
    One of the surprises of the campaign has been the rise of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the hard-left candidate who could now come third.
    Analysts say this could work to the advantage of Hollande.
    "Jean-Luc Melenchon so far, I think, has probably on balance been good for Hollande because he's mobilised a lot of voters, young people, working class people, people who might well have abstained, people who are nostalgic for the barricades and so on, he's rallied them all together. And those people, all the polls show, will vote, 80 to 90 percent of them will vote for Hollande in the run-off so, so far it's been good," Reuters' Paul Taylor says.
    The verdict will come in two weeks' time when 43 million voters go to the polls to cast their votes.
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