Socialist on track for win as French campaign closes

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Socialist on track for win as French campaign closes
By Michael Mainville | AFP – 1 hr 12 mins ago

Socialist Francois Hollande was on track to defeat right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy as France saw the final day of campaigning Friday before its presidential election run-off.

Boosted by an endorsement from centrist Francois Bayrou, Hollande urged voters to hand him an "ample victory" on Sunday so he would have a strong mandate to implement his left-wing programme and fight EU-driven austerity.

Polls showed Sarkozy, who insisted the race was still close, narrowing the gap slightly but still four to seven points behind the frontrunner.

"I want an ample victory," Hollande told RTL radio. "If the French people must make a choice, they should do so clearly, overwhelmingly, so the winner has the capacity and means to act."


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/gloves-off-battle-french-presidency-044551553.html;_ylt=AmoP2jTIN6qfICbqIi2xO6Ss0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNidDExMWEzBG1pdAMEcGtnAzk2OTNhZTkwLWE0MjItM2FkZC1iZjQ1LTkyMDhjMDM5YTdiZARwb3MDNARzZWMDbG5fQUZQX2dhbAR2ZXIDOGIwMzRjNzEtOTYxZS0xMWUxLTk3YzktYjBmOTVkYjA5NTI0;_ylv=3

[geardaddy]

1. Awesome.

c'est magnifique

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Let's hope this is the beginning of a wave

Better yet, a tsunami.

[freshwest]

8. It would be an inspiration for the world to see them get the neo's out of office.

[unkachuck]

10. yes, a big inspiration....

....and allow the Socialists to demonstrate to the world how to spend our way to prosperity with government programs paid for by taxing the wealthy....

....everyone around the world is tired of the capitalists' austerity sham of balancing the wealthys' gambling debts on the backs of the middle-class and poor....meanwhile, these corporate criminals continue to corrupt our governments and loot our national treasuries....

[freshwest]

12. You forgot your sarcasm icon. Unless you think Sarkozy or LePen were wonderful.

[may3rd]

13. Did you see the blanks in the platform they are running on that is impressing the voters?

oui ?

[potone]

3. Goody!!

Let's hope this is the start of a trend. One half of Merkozy is gone, what about the other half?

[longship]

4. "French electorate pushes down button on Sarkozy's elevator shoes"

[regnaD kciN]

5. Don't get too giddy yet...

Seriously, I've been following French elections since I lived in Europe in the mid-'60s. There have been several times where the Conservative candidate pulled out a surprise victory after trailing in the polls all the way to election day. FWIW, it always seems like there's about a 5%-10% swing to the Conservatives when the votes are cast.

I'm hoping for a Hollande victory as much as anyone, but I won't count on anything here until the last votes are tallied.

[Vidar]

6. Vive la France!

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Perhaps this time 'round they will be a bit more socialist.

[Kingofalldems]

9. Internet moles won't like this one

[Rosa Luxemburg]

11. I hope

[suffragette]

14. Good to see Bayrou encouraging centrists to vote for Hollande

[pampango]

15. Krugman article: Hollande victory “a bleak prospect for all but new Keynesians and old socialists.”

Today’s FT is all Hollande, all the time. Some of it is sensible; some of it is like, well, this piece by Josef Joffe, which declares that Hollande’s likely victory is “a bleak prospect for all but new Keynesians and old socialists.”

I guess I should be flattered that Joffe considers the great debate to be between austerity hawks and … me. But he says that it’s a “tired” debate — because debating how to fight mass unemployment just gets boring, you know?

Philip Stephens has a very good pushback against Hollande hysteria:

The influential Economist has declared on its front cover that Mr Hollande is “dangerous” – though, being British, it did add a qualifying “rather” to this disobliging epithet. The would-be president, the magazine observed, “genuinely (my italics) believes in the need to create a fairer society”. Well, what could be more dangerous than that?

Such alarmism rests on some curious premises: that the lesson of the recent past is that governments should never meddle with the markets; and that Europe’s present economic strategy has been a roaring success in rebuilding public finances and restoring economic growth.

And Wolfgang Munchau is cautiously hopeful, as am I.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/hollande-hysteria/