Word: socialists
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...novel outcome imaginable, but 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...
...Socialists, haunted by the trauma of 2002, who would most like to tattoo that phrase onto the conscience of left-wing voters. In the first that year, enough voters backed far-left and ecologist candidates on the assumption that they would have a second-round opportunity to ensure that Socialist Lionel Jospin beat out incumbent President Jacques Chirac, to cost the Socialists a place in the second round: Instead, Chirac faced the far-right National Front's Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off, putting many voters for whom Jospin had not been sufficiently left-wing into the incongruous...
...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...
...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...
...recent national poll gave Sarkozy 31.5% backing, against 24% for his Socialist rival Ségolène Royal (who, sinking in the polls, took her own stab at identity politics, suggesting in March that all French citizens should learn La Marseillaise). To some in Saint-Gilles, Sarkozy's allure is in his electability. "I'm voting for Sarkozy not only because I think he truly believes these policies are necessary," confides a retired Saint-Gilles farmer and past Le Pen voter who identifies himself only as André, "but also because Sarkozy has a far better chance of winning and applying them...