French President Nicolas Sarkozy hunted for far-right votes yesterday after losing to Socialist Francois Hollande in a first round vote that saw a shock breakthrough by the anti-immigrant National Front.
We must respect the voters’ will, it is our duty to listen
The right-wing incumbent moved quickly to woo the 18 per cent of voters who backed the Front’s Marine Le Pen, saying they deserved an answer to their concerns, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel called her showing “alarming”.
Mr Hollande and Mr Sarkozy are to face each other in a run-off on May 6 after Sunday’s first round saw the Socialist beat the incumbent by a vote of 28.63 to 27.18 per cent, according to final official results.
Mr Hollande’s victory cemented his position as the clear leader in the race, dealing a blow to Mr Sarkozy’s hopes of gaining enough momentum from a first-round win to defy expectations and return to office.
But it was the showing of populist nationalist flagbearer Le Pen that shook up the race, setting up her National Front (FN) voters as potential kingmakers.
“We must respect the voters’ will, it is our duty to listen,” Mr Sarkozy told journalists before going back on the campaign trail in the Loire Valley in central France. “There was this crisis vote that doubled from one election to another, an answer must be given.”
Ms Le Pen’s score on Sunday was nearly double the 10.4 per cent her father Jean-Marie took as the FN candidate in the 2007 first round.
Mr Hollande resumed campaigning with a trip to the western region of Brittany, where he said that the FN’s first round score reflected anger in the country and that he would also listen to far-right supporters.
“Nicolas Sarkozy is to blame for the far-right’s high level,” he said earlier before leaving Paris. “There are voters who may have been been led to this through anger.”
Polls show most far-right supporters prefer Mr Sarkozy but up to a quarter – mainly working-class voters attracted by Ms Le Pen’s protectionist trade policies – could switch their vote to Mr Hollande.
Ms Le Pen’s high score stunned observers and she told supporters after the results that “the battle of France has just begun” and “nothing will be as it was before.”
In the first foreign reaction to the result, Mrs Merkel’s spokesman said: “This high score (for Le Pen) is alarming but I expect it will be ironed out in the second round.”
Mr Sarkozy, who had already swung to the right in the campaign, brandished his right-wing credentials in his first post-results speech on Sunday.
“These anxieties, this suffering, I know them, I understand them,” he said.”They are about respecting our borders, the determined fight against job relocation, controlling immigration, putting value on work, on security.”
The first opinion poll after the first round said that Mr Hollande would beat Mr Sarkozy by 54 per cent to 46 in the second round.
Analysts say it is extremely unlikely Ms Le Pen will endorse either candidate in the second round but she has said she will express an opinion on May 1 – a week before the run-off.
Mr Sarkozy, whose camp believes he is a stronger personal campaigner than Mr Hollande, went on the offensive yesterday with a challenge to the Socialist not to refuse his proposal for three televised debates before the second round.
“This is about debating before the French people, project against project, personality against personality, experience against experience. The French people have a right to know, Mr Hollande must not run away.”
Mr Sarkozy has challenged Mr Hollande to three televised debates, but the frontrunner insists one would be enough.
The left has not won a presidential election in a quarter of a century, but with France mired in low growth and rising joblessness, opinion polls had long predicted Mr Hollande would beat Mr Sarkozy.
Mr Hollande says Mr Sarkozy has trapped France in a downward spiral of austerity and job losses, while Mr Sarkozy says his rival is inexperienced and weak-willed and would spark financial panic through reckless spending pledges.