Word: royal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...France voted emphatically - and massively - for a classic right-left showdown in the battle for the nation's presidency. A whopping 85% voter turnout on Sunday fueled conservative standard-bearer and hands-on favorite Nicolas Sarkozy into the May 6 runoff against his principal rival, Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal. But while both finalists spent much of their late campaigning playing to their respective hard-right and hard-left flanks, their efforts to win the presidency now depends upon their success in wooing a new force in French politics: France's suddenly surging center...
...Segolene Royal, this year's Socialist contender, is running second in the polls behind conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy of Chirac's Union for a Popular Majority (UMP). Striking a pose of tranquility and confidence, she never explicitly invokes the prospect of a repeat of her party's ignoble 2002 debacle. But her partner, Socialist Party Secretary Francois Hollande, put it bluntly a few days ago: "If the left is to be position to rule the country, people have to vote for Royal in the first round...
...time, the Socialists are less concerned with the six far-left candidates, none of whom is polling as strongly as in 2002, than they are by the challenge of Francois Bayrou, the insurgent centrist whose spike in the polls since January comes largely from center-left voters disappointed with Royal's often vague, confused and gaffe-prone campaign. Pollsters had expected that Bayrou's pre-spring bloom would have withered by now - after all, his centrist Union for a Democratic France (UDF) has only 5% of the seats in the National Assembly. Instead, he has found real traction with...
...Bayrou has a potent vote utile argument of his own: Polls regularly show that he would have a better chance than Royal would have of beating Sarkozy in the head-to-head second round on May 6. His appeal has prompted several former Socialist ministers to break rank and urge their party to promise to govern in coalition with the centrists, prompting outrage from party leaders. But if Royal does make it into the second round, their tune could quickly change...
...presidents. Still, the former Interior Minister has consistently, although narrowly, led the polls all year, and has allowed his lieutenants to begin sketching plans for government as if their victory were assumed. But Sarkozy, too, faces a balancing act. Maintaining his two- to four-point lead over Royal depends on him continuing to attract at least some of the almost 17% of French voters who backed Le Pen in 2002. It is to secure their votes that Sarkozy has made calls for a clampdown on immigration and emphasis on France's national identity and Christian roots a centerpiece...