Credit: Reuters/Stephane Mahe
French voters cast ballots on Sunday in the runoff of a closely watched presidential election that will have significant implications for Europe and the euro as the region struggles to emerge from a prolonged economic malaise.
Opinion polls in the final days showed the Socialist candidate, François Hollande, maintaining a narrow lead over PresidentNicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity, along with other incumbent leaders across Europe, has succumbed to the powerful undertow of unemployment, austerity and looming recession.
With anxieties rising again over the fate of the single currency, the election in France — as well as a snap parliamentary election in Greece on Sunday — is being closely watched in European capitals and particularly in Berlin, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has led the drive to cure the euro zone debt and banking crisis with deep budget cuts and caps on future spending.
Such policies have come at a heavy political price for many of Europe’s leaders, whose opponents, emboldened by waves of voter resentment, have vowed to challenge the German push for deficit and debt reduction in favor of measures to stimulate economic growth.
In France, the Socialists have not held the presidency for 17 years. Their choice amounts to either doubling down on the left’s traditions and ample — some say, unaffordable — welfare state, or moving farther toward the kinds of reforms aimed at trimming the state and opening French labor markets that Mr. Sarkozy has long promised but has been largely unable to deliver.
At 5 p.m., Interior Ministry estimates put the turnout so far at just under 72 percent, slightly below than the 75 percent who have voted at the same point in the runoff vote five years ago between Mr. Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, a Socialist, and Mr. Hollande’s former partner. About 46 million voters are registered for the runoff.
The last polling stations were scheduled to close at 8 p.m. and the first official result estimates were expected shortly thereafter. French law bars the early publication of exit polls, although media organizations in neighboring Belgium and Switzerland were expected to publish initial results online from districts where the polls close at 6 p.m. as soon as they are available — around 6:30 p.m.
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Sarko’s out – isn’t he?
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE8450AR20120506?irpc=932
Yup mac….
Changes in the world political leadership going around…
Yes.. wonder if this is important… seems like Sarko & Merkel were running the project for a while.. this new guy does not immediately look… ehmm..
he looks very different than sarko.
He, he, he….
Well it’s what the French voted for….
We ALL will have to deal with his policies and learn to get past the looks….
Merkel acutually…
Germany’s Economy is the strongest in Europe…
Nicolas Sarkozy announces that, in order to preserve party unity, he will not be leading his party when it contests France’s legislative elections in June.
A centrist who “grudgingly” supported Sarkozy said that Sarkozy’s shift to the right (to appeal to the 18% who’d voted two weeks ago for Marine Le Pen of the National Front) didn’t work.
“Cette défaite de Nicolas Sarkozy confirme l’erreur stratégique de la droitisation de sa campagne électorale et de l’UMP.” “La présidentielle se gagne au centre. Nicolas Sarkozy n’a jamais voulu le prendre en compte. Il a eu tort.”
["This defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy confirms the strategic error of turning his campaign and party to the Right." "The presidential election is won in the middle. Nicolas Sarkozy never wanted to take that into account. He was wrong". -- Dominique Paille]
http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/05/06/a-l-ump-on-pense-deja-a-l-apres-sarkozy_1696632_1471069.html
Yep James…
Seems like Germany are doing many things right… the engine of EU… and biggest economy… tired of bailing out the southern states.. who refuse to raise the retirement age and so on….
Britain always messing up things to keep relative strength to the continent..
Not sure/familiar about these things.. but seems like the day Germans want the Mark back.. scrapping the Euro…. the Union is over … and that sort of looks a bit likely.
Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for: The Map.
Sarkozy lost 29 of the 95 (?) départements in mainland (metropolitan) France that he’d won in 2007, including the City of Paris.
The only one that swung from the Socialists to Sarkozy was Mayotte, an island off the East African coast that had been part of the Comoros (les Comores), but stayed within the French Republic when the rest of the Comoros chose independence.
Visit Le Figaro‘s main page, where you should see the election map below the banner picture and headline at the top (François Hollande: “You must give me a majority” in the National Assembly.)
Click the right hand box above the map that reads “Variations par rapport à 2007″ to see which departments (dark red) swung to Hollande. PS = Parti Socialiste (Socialist Party, pink and red); UMP = Union for the Presidential Majority (or something like that: Gaullist coalitions seem to change their names every couple of elections going back to the French Popular Rally [RPF] in 1946.)) Mouse over a department (just like the PBS or New York Times maps) to see the department’s name and result.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/
Check the post I just did….
Moe over at Whatever Works IS on to something….
I’ve taken it a bit farther….
Thank’s as usual for your follow-up!
Sidepoint; this might mean that DSK would’ve won it, too… sucks for him…