French Presidential Election 22 April 2007 Thread

[Verily]

Has anyone done any head to head polling of Le Pen against either Sarkozy or Royal in case he should make it to the second round unexpectedly once more?

Sarkozy/Royal wins by an immense margin (probably more immense if it's Sarkozy than if it's Royal). Why poll a foregone conclusion?

[Verily]

A lot of good news for Bayrou. I'm still plugging for a Bayrou-Sarkozy runoff.

[Verily]

sofres poll

01/31-02/01 (last 02/17-18)

Laguiller: 3% (+1)
Besancenot: 2,5% (-0,5)
Buffet: 2,5% (-0,5)
Bové: 4%

Royal: 28% (-3)

Voynet: 1,5% (-0,5)

Le page: 0,5% (=)

Bayrou: 13% (+4)

Sarkozy: 32% (-3)

Dupont-aignan: 0,5% (=)

De Villiers: 2% (+1)

Le Pen: 12,5% (-0,5)

Did not express: 19% (-4)

Royal: 47% (-1)
Sarkozy: 53% (+3)

Did not express: 20% (-2)

 

I recently read (in the International Herald Tribune) Royal's programme.

I was stunned! 

Most socialist parties in Europe (from what I have seen) have come to understand that too much socialism kills an economy.

Is here pronouncement going over well in France?

Royal's policies are much more moderate than the usual fare offered up by the French Socialists. I'm afraid you'd probably consider Sarkozy a socialist, too.

[Verily]

Go go Bayrou! (The man with "the charisma of a coffee table", but the only good choice for France.)

[Verily]

Le Pen is no longer the dark horse; Sarkozy's rhetoric prevents any serious contention by him. Royal may do poorly in the first round and may even lose out to Bayrou, but she won't lose out to Le Pen.

[Verily]

Le Pen was an outsider in 2002; I'm sure many people were unwilling to admit to voting for him. Sure, he'll still be underestimated slightly in the polls, but the fact that he made it to the second round last time means a lot fewer people will be unwilling to admit that he's their first preference: maybe +3 to his total, at most.

Frankly, rhetoric is what politicians need. If the people hear that Sarkozy is going to fix all the same things as Le Pen, and he's the candidate of the more established party, they'll vote for Sarkozy. It doesn't matter if Sarkozy's actual policies don't reflect his rhetoric very well; I can't say whether they do or do not. What matters is the impression that Sarkozy gives of himself and that the media gives of him, the impression that Sarkozy is extremely tough on crime and immigration.

[Verily]

Just my 2 cents: polls show that Sarkozy beats easily Royal at second turn. But bayrou does the same with Sarkozy. Royal voters will vote bayrou to avoid Sarkozy?

I'm not sure why you're surprised. Obviously some socialist voters wouldn't vote at all, but most of them would vote for the centrist over the rightist.

[Verily]

I think maybe so. There seems to be some indication that many socialists (and center-left voters) are frustrated with Royal's gaffes and favorably impressed by Bayrou's policies to the point at which Bayrou is now drawing equally from right and left, an impressive feat for someone until recently considered center-right.

[Verily]

Bayrou hits 20% in new poll. Still looking for the rest of the poll.

EDIT: ah here we go

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/05032007/323/france-s-bayrou-confirmed-third-man-new-polls.html

Is Bayrou the nearest thing this race has to a centrist? If so, should Royal flounder any further, I'd prefer him to Sarkozy, who I wish was in Royal's position as of now

Dave

Yes, Bayrou is a centrist. He's the candidate for the UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Française), which is a centrist, formerly center-right, party. Bayrou in particular has been adamantly opposed to most of Chirac's policies without actually moving to the left (the party is divided into Bayrou's centrist faction and a smaller, center-right, pro-Chirac faction). The party is also notably strongly Europhile, far more so than any party in Britain, even the Lib Dems.

The UDF shares many traits in common with the Liberal Democrats, in fact.



Bayrou's 20% showing may be the beginning of a strong movement of the center-left away from Royal (who will almost certainly lose the second round if not the first) to Bayrou, who would almost certainly win the second round against any challenger but needs to get there first.

[Verily]

SCA survey

Sarkozy 26
Royal 25
Bayrou 24 (!)

Bayrou/Royal top two. 

That's beginning to look a lot more likely. I guess the French agree that Sarkozy comes off as creepy and prefer the politician with "the charisma of a coffee table" (Bayrou). Any of the three combinations seems realistic at this point.

My predictions:

Sarkozy: 52
Royal: 48

Bayrou: 59
Royal: 41

Bayrou: 54
Sarkozy: 46

[Verily]

He'll get the signatures; he's likely just fooling around for symphathy; did it last time round as well.
IIRC one of the far left candidates is having more genuine trouble though.

Besancenot is having trouble. I think a lot of PS mayors are not supporting him to make sure that Royal makes it to the second round.

[Verily]

IFOP

Sarkozy 28%
Bayrou 23%
Royal 23%

Is Bayrou ahead of Royal? Obviously it wouldn't be by a statistically significant amount, but this would still be the first poll with Bayrou in second.

Bayrou's rise might be compared to that of Chevenement in 2002, but Chevenement never came particularly close to the frontrunners; Bayrou is now among them. In any case, Chevenement was still left-wing and drew voters almost exclusively from Jospin.

In any case, Sarkozy's hardline immigration approach will draw voters to him from Le Pen and may guarantee that he makes the second round, but it will also drive the center-right further to Bayrou.

[Verily]

I haven't been to find that IFOP poll anywhere. Could you give a link, afleitch?

[Verily]

If Bayrou is the Condorcet winner, as the polls are now consistently suggesting, then democratic fairness dictates that he should become the next President. It's as simple as that.

Not sure that Bayrou would beat Sarko.

55-45 would be quite a margin for Sarkozy to recover.

[Verily]

The centrists, at least, are rallying behind one candidate. Edouard Fillias, the candidate for the Alternative liberale (one of the statistical noise parties) has withdrawn and endorsed Bayrou.

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/depeches/0,14-0,39-30104084@7-354,0.html

[Verily]

Ipsos also released a poll today:

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15058

Sarkozy: 28.5 (-2.5)
Royal: 24 (-1.5)
Bayrou: 23 (+1.5)
Le Pen: 13.5 (+1)

The others are just noise. FWIW, CSA's poll was an outlier when it came out, so it could just be a correction for Bayrou. Ipsos had been giving Bayrou his lowest numbers, so we shall see.

Also, your assertion that Le Pen is actually at 20% is frankly absurd. Le Pen's vote has been extremely stable for 3 straight elections, always around 15%. The highest he could possibly get is 17% of the vote, and that would involve Sarkozy collapsing.

I suppose I should make a prediction, too:

Sarkozy: 27
Bayrou: 24
Royal: 24 (extremely close, but behind Bayrou)
Le Pen: 16

[Verily]

Interesting. If Bove doesn't make it, will it help Royal make the second round, or will his numbers just collapse into the statistical noise and go to Besancenot or Buffet?

[Verily]

It seems like so far neither Sarkozy and Royal have exactly set the election alight (though Sarkozy seems to be very comparable to Thatcher or GW Bush in that people either love or hate him). I still think Sarkozy will win, but he's going to be a heck of a polarising President and will probably do France more harm than good in the long run.

Of course, you also think Thatcher did more harm than good.

There's a good reason the UK was an economic disaster at the end of the 1980s.

[Verily]

It seems like so far neither Sarkozy and Royal have exactly set the election alight (though Sarkozy seems to be very comparable to Thatcher or GW Bush in that people either love or hate him). I still think Sarkozy will win, but he's going to be a heck of a polarising President and will probably do France more harm than good in the long run.

Of course, you also think Thatcher did more harm than good.

There's a good reason the UK was an economic disaster at the end of the 1980s.

And your UK party is the biggest political joke since..... well since something that happened along time ago....

I don't see why the Liberal Democrats are a joke. Just because they're a third party? Or is it because they're a relatively successful third party? Or because you're just trolling?

[Verily]

It seems like so far neither Sarkozy and Royal have exactly set the election alight (though Sarkozy seems to be very comparable to Thatcher or GW Bush in that people either love or hate him). I still think Sarkozy will win, but he's going to be a heck of a polarising President and will probably do France more harm than good in the long run.

Of course, you also think Thatcher did more harm than good.

Of course she bloody did! Unless you're, perhaps, a buy-to-let landlord or a hedgefund manager, then yeah, I suppose she was bloody brilliant. But not if you're actually a normal person with an average income. And I'm not just talking about wealth or material gains here, since I happen to believe that some things are more important than money -- which is downright freaky, I know, but true.

But actually, Thatcher is quite an apt person to mention here to further illustrate my point about Sarkozy. I don't actually mean their similarities in policies (which I wasn't talking about to begin with), I meant more their style of politics. I don't actually care all that much what Sarkozy stands for. If he wants to privatise the sh!t out of France, then fine, let him. What gets me is this whole partisan & deliberately polarising attidude, this "get screwed" bullyboy mentality towards anyone who may not agree with your policies, so espoused by the likes of Thatcher, Bush and Sarkozy, which does little but divide people and turn them against each other and which, quite frankly, belongs into the dustbin of history.

The mentality you speak of is only a result of the constant bullying of the right by the left. According to pseudo-intellectual leftists, people on the right can never be clever, are constantly belittled and pushed aside, care only for their personal interests and those of the wealthy, etc. No wonder there eventually comes a reaction from the right against people who think they own the truth.

"Let's attack the people making the argument instead of arguing against it!"

[Verily]

I live in England but I am Italian,and thankfully the fascists don't win seat in our parliament.We got the Lega Nord,but it's losing a lot of its appeal.And there is no way someone like Le Pen would get 15% in Italy.

Given that Italy is the only Western European country which has had fascists take part in governments and probably has the strongest brand of fascism in all of Western Europe I find that quite ironic. Sure, France and Belgium are not far behind, but Italy is one of the worse countries in these respects.

Blaming Italy for its past is not going to get anywhere. Alessandra Mussolini's party and those like it are considered the extreme fringe of Italian politics.

[Verily]

I live in England but I am Italian,and thankfully the fascists don't win seat in our parliament.We got the Lega Nord,but it's losing a lot of its appeal.And there is no way someone like Le Pen would get 15% in Italy.

Given that Italy is the only Western European country which has had fascists take part in governments and probably has the strongest brand of fascism in all of Western Europe I find that quite ironic. Sure, France and Belgium are not far behind, but Italy is one of the worse countries in these respects.

Blaming Italy for its past is not going to get anywhere. Alessandra Mussolini's party and those like it are considered the extreme fringe of Italian politics.

Lol, who said anything about the past? I'm talking about the present. And while I wasn't thinking in particular about Alessandra Mussolini either, "considered the extreme fringe" didn't prevent her from beign elected, did it?

She wasn't, at least not after being kicked out Alleanza Nazionale for being too radical.

[Verily]

Optimism has paid off before.

Sarkozy: 25
Bayrou: 22
Royal: 22
Le Pen: 20

[Verily]

If Royale wins expect Sharia law in france in 20-30 years

Oh, please. I'm no fan of Royal, but that's utter bullsh**t, and you know it.