Le Pen gains as French presidential campaign starts

[Ignacio Upton]

Source: Yahoo!/Reuters



By Anna Willard Mon Apr 9, 3:33 PM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - France's presidential election campaign officially began on Monday and a new poll showed gains for the right-wing frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy and for far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Sarkozy has extended his comfortable lead over his main rival, Socialist Segolene Royal, an LH2 poll for RMC radio showed, while Le Pen has crept up on the third-placed centrist candidate Francois Bayrou.

Le Pen has edged up the polls in recent weeks, as the debate has turned to issues of security and immigration. Clashes between police and youths at Paris's Gare du Nord station have also highlighted the traditional themes of his campaign.

The LH2 poll, carried out on the same day that Le Pen grabbed headlines with a visit to a poor mixed-race suburb of Paris, gave him 15 points, just three points behind Bayrou and up 2 points from his score in the previous LH2 poll.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/wl_nm/france_election_dc

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070409/wl_nm/france_election_dc

[Ignacio Upton]

1. Fuck this Nazi-loving douchebag

I'm just glad that the left isn't segmenting itself like in 2002, otherwise Le Pen will make the second round again. I don't like Sarkozy, but he's still better than Le Pen.

[Unvanguard]

3. I believe it is.

Royal, Buffet, Bove, Besancenot, and a fifth whose name I don't recall.

Edit: I haven't checked the polls, though. The voters might be more concentrated.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. No, it isn't, but there is Bayrou as a centrist candidate

According to the latest LH2 survey reported in Le Nouvel Observateur, Mr Sarkozy has dropped one percentage point to 28 percent, Ms Royal has lost two percentage points and is clocking in at 24 percent while Mr Bayrou remains at 18 percent.

Far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, meanwhile, has gone up in the polls from 13 to 15 percent.

http://euobserver.com/9/23846

That only leaves 15% for all other candidates, which includes 2 other right wing candidates.

On edit: another recent poll, with full data. In 5th is Besancenot, with 4.5%. I think Bayrou would be the most likely candidate to take significant votes from Royal in the first round, not Besancenot.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/15347

[rockymountaindem]

2. I hope the French have the good sense to send that creep packing

in the *first* round this time.

[Kurovski]

9. I hear they've installed some "voting" machines in France.

Maybe the French can get "diebolded" along with America.

What in the HELL is going on with the Right getting traction in a world that's 80% against the war started and maintained by the Right?

What am I missing?

[rockymountaindem]

11. I don't think it's that bad

In 2002 Le Pen made it to the second round out of many, many candidates because there are so many leftists and centrists in the running that the lone far-right candidate was able to solidify his base. In the second round, Le Pen garnered a whopping 20%, no more. It seems that in any election between two candidates, an 80% victory for Chirac and sanity (even if not everybody in France is/was enamored of him at the time) is about as good as you could expect anywhere.

Le Pen causes a splash because of the fractious nature of French electoral and party politics. Imagine if instead of the primary process we had an election between Gulliani, Romney, Gingrich, Clinton, Obama and Edwards. If one of them cracked the 25% barrier that would be big news in such a crowded field. That's the main issue with France.

[Kurovski]

14. Thank you for the informed response. (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. There wasn't any large-scale support for invading Iraq in France

Chirac was centre-right; he opposed the invasion. So, it seems, did Le Pen (like many far right people): sorry about the source (I know antiwar isn't a source that DU likes), but it references an interview in 2002 by Haaretz with Le Pen:

what he has to say about Bush's projected invasion of Iraq:

"A war on Iraq is nothing more than a war for American material interests. During the Gulf War, I derided all those who portrayed Iraq as the fourth most powerful army in the world. It was ridiculous: To be one of the world's most powerful armies, you have to manufacture arms and ammunition. Iraq was crushed, its army was completely destroyed and the sanctions policy caused hundreds of thousands of people to die of starvation."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j042402.html

which seems to match with a shortened version The Guardian ran of the Haaretz interview:

In this context, I prefer a regime like that of Saddam Hussein to, say, Saudi Arabia. The Ba'ath regime is secular and even permissive toward other religions. Saudi Arabia is massively funding the spread of Islam. It, rather than Iraq, should be viewed as a dangerous movement of conquest."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,690114,00.html

While Sarkozy seems to have been closer to the American position on Iraq in the past, he too now distances himself from it:

Nicolas Sarkozy, a self-declared "friend of America", yesterday promised France he would not be the US president's poodle and would oppose any repeat of the Iraq war.

The right-wing interior minister and presidential hopeful has been blasted by his critics as a kowtowing Atlantist and US-style neoconservative since his visit to George Bush last year when he declared his passion for the American way of life and criticised French "arrogance" in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.
...
But yesterday, in a speech setting out his foreign policy plans, he was careful to temper his pro-America stance, and repeated his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, which he called a "historic mistake".
...
Mr Sarkozy said sanctions were the best way to pressure Iran into suspending nuclear activities, warning against a repeat of "what has happened in Iraq".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2023807,00.html

[Kurovski]

15. Merci, muriel_volestrangler.

It seems quite different from our two-party, "them vs. us" system.

[LeftishBrit]

13. While I am not keen on voting-machines...

and think that they are far more susceptible to fraud than paper-ballots, I don't think that they would be used in France in the way that you think:

(1) The party system is different: more parties; proportional representation; ruling parties must often form coalitions or make deals with other parties. This in itself makes it unlikely that one party could fix the results across the country.

(2) To the best of my knowledge, there is no major party in France that supports the war in Iraq.

[Kurovski]

16. I pray someone still keeps an eye out for problems.

:hi: Thanks. The French system requires more compromise and deeper thought than does our "black/white" two-party mess in America.

I still remember during 9/11 when American talk show moderator, John McLaughlin could not immediately return to the US and so he broadcast a show from France.

He seemed to be at a loss, as the guests were measured, unemotional and thorough in their responses. The usual program would involve rapid-fire reactions, interruptions and raised voices/blood pressure.

[Odin2005]

17. The Right's gains in Europe have mostly been about immigration.

There seems to be almost a sense of contained panic in many European countries about immigrants from Muslim countries out-reproducing native Europeans and not assimilating. This seems to be why France banned head scarves in schools, for example.

[Kurovski]

18. That's another good point that I'm sure many DUers will recall. (nt)

[FVZA_Colonel]

4. Damn it this is worrying.

The idea of that neo-Nazi as the head of state of a major European power (one armed with nuclear weapons no less)...

[LeftishBrit]

19. He won't become president; there is no chance of that

The worrying possibility is that he might get enough votes to be in a position where other parties might be tempted to make some deals with him. However, I think that the chances even of that are small, judging by what happened last time, when the other parties united behind Chirac, to make absolutely sure that LePen would not get anywhere.

[UnseenUndergrad]

5. More far-right candidates?

I would have thought the french would have learned from Bush.

I wonder how 50,000 people outside his campaign HQ chanting "Vichy!" would sit with him.

[Hieronymus]

6. I'm shocked that that could happen in France.

[LeftishBrit]

21. Actually, it's not new; the LePen problem has been chronic in France for a long time.

He has been a disease in French politics for at least 30 years.

Fortunately, the French have managed to contain it so far, and there is every chance that they will continue to do so; though it is sensible for them to be vigilant. The biggest concern is IMO not so much LePen himself, as the fact that the size of his vote does represent a significant group of racist bigots, whose attitudes can at times spill over into active discrimination, and even violence, against immigrants, Jews, Moslems, etc.

[Judi Lynn]

7. It would be so helpful to know how to find out how much American taxpayers' money Bush is pouring

into the right-wing candidates' campaigns.

Is there any DU'er who knows how to track this information down? Is this something which will probably be hidden until well after the election?

It would be so much better to find these things out BEFORE elections at some point, so we actually understand how these things are happening before we get the information, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, many years in the future.

[LeftishBrit]

20. Little or none, I suspect

Whoever wins, they are not going to co-operate actively with the war in Iraq. Royal would probably oppose it more actively than Sarkozy, but even Sarkozy would definitely not bring France into the war. So there is little motivation for the American Right to support any of the candidates. Even LePen, though a danger to his own country, is not likely to be in league with the neo-cons: he is an extreme French nationalist, and would certainly not wish to play second fiddle to Bush in Bush's imperialist adventures.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Damn - 15% is too much for an evil racist like LePen

I hope that at least he loses in the first round.