Poll fever grips France as official campaign starts
Monday, April 9, 2007
THE official campaign in France's presidential election opens today, two weeks ahead of the first round of voting, with frontrunners Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal battling to ensure they make the all-important second round.
The vote is seen as one of the most exciting and important in recent French history, marking the transition to a new generation of leaders and defining the country's response to issues of globalisation and national identity.
Royal and Sarkozy continue to lead the race by several points, but opinion polls also show that the centrist candidate Francois Bayrou and the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen are still very much in the running. In theory any two of the four could make it into the deciding round of voting on May 6.
Today all 12 contenders enter the final straight, with official rules coming into effect for campaign broadcasts and postering at polling booths. A hectic nationwide series of public rallies and stump meetings then kicks in up to the first vote on April 22.
France is choosing a successor to Jacques Chirac, 74, the veteran leader who has been in office since 1995.
Last week the tone of the campaign soured as Sarkozy and Royal traded insults, each accusing the other of creating the conditions that triggered riots at a Paris railway station. Sarkozy accused Royal of "siding with fraudsters" and Royal said Sarkozy was a liar.
Analysts said that behind the heated exchanges lay a shared interest on the part of the two candidates to turn the campaign into a classic left-right confrontation and squeeze out their competitors.
Sarkozy last Saturday faced criticism from church and political figures for telling a magazine he was "inclined to think that people are born paedophiles".
He had attracted more bad press last Friday when a former minister recounted in a new book that Sarkozy once threatened to "smash" his face.
An array of polls last week put Sarkozy at between 26 and 31 per cent of the first round vote, with Royal at 23 to 27 per cent and Bayrou between 18 and 21 per cent.
Le Pen was between 12 and 16 per cent.
The latest survey, an IFOP poll for the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, gave Sarkozy 30 per cent of the first-round vote, a two percentage point jump from a similar survey last week.
Royal fell one percentage point to 22 per cent, her worst score since January, but she was still ahead of Bayrou at 19 per cent.
But there are still some 18 million out of a total of 44 million voters who have not yet made up their minds who they will vote for, according to a CSA opinion poll for yesterday's Le Parisien newspaper.
AFP
The vote is seen as one of the most exciting and important in recent French history, marking the transition to a new generation of leaders and defining the country's response to issues of globalisation and national identity.
Royal and Sarkozy continue to lead the race by several points, but opinion polls also show that the centrist candidate Francois Bayrou and the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen are still very much in the running. In theory any two of the four could make it into the deciding round of voting on May 6.
Today all 12 contenders enter the final straight, with official rules coming into effect for campaign broadcasts and postering at polling booths. A hectic nationwide series of public rallies and stump meetings then kicks in up to the first vote on April 22.
France is choosing a successor to Jacques Chirac, 74, the veteran leader who has been in office since 1995.
Last week the tone of the campaign soured as Sarkozy and Royal traded insults, each accusing the other of creating the conditions that triggered riots at a Paris railway station. Sarkozy accused Royal of "siding with fraudsters" and Royal said Sarkozy was a liar.
Analysts said that behind the heated exchanges lay a shared interest on the part of the two candidates to turn the campaign into a classic left-right confrontation and squeeze out their competitors.
Sarkozy last Saturday faced criticism from church and political figures for telling a magazine he was "inclined to think that people are born paedophiles".
He had attracted more bad press last Friday when a former minister recounted in a new book that Sarkozy once threatened to "smash" his face.
An array of polls last week put Sarkozy at between 26 and 31 per cent of the first round vote, with Royal at 23 to 27 per cent and Bayrou between 18 and 21 per cent.
Le Pen was between 12 and 16 per cent.
The latest survey, an IFOP poll for the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, gave Sarkozy 30 per cent of the first-round vote, a two percentage point jump from a similar survey last week.
Royal fell one percentage point to 22 per cent, her worst score since January, but she was still ahead of Bayrou at 19 per cent.
But there are still some 18 million out of a total of 44 million voters who have not yet made up their minds who they will vote for, according to a CSA opinion poll for yesterday's Le Parisien newspaper.
AFP
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