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| Update
on French Politics
Because of quirks in its electoral calendar, France held both presidential and legislative elections in spring 2002. After considerable political wrangling, it was decided to hold the presidential elections first. Everyone assumed that the decisive second round of voting would pit incumbent President Jacques Chirac, a Gaulist, against incumbent Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, a Socialist. Altogether 16 candidates ran at the first ballot, so everyone knew for weeks ahead of time that no one would win a majority at the first ballot. What's more, both Chirac and Jospin saw their support in the polls dwindle. Still, going into the final week of campaigning, both seemed likely to claim the top two spots and the right to proceed to the second round of voting. Then, the remarkable happened. The polls had it wrong by a couple of percentage points. When the votes were counted on 21 April, no candidate won even 20% of the vote (though Chirac came close with 19.9%). More remarkable was the fact that the all but avowedly racist Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front edged Jospin and came in second (16.0% to 16.2% full results are available at Election World). Jospin immediately resigned as prime minister, and Chirac appointed the little-known Jean-Marie Raffarin on an interim basis. Voters from all the other parties rallied to Chirac's candidacy at the second ballot two weeks later. Many did so reluctantly--newspapers carried pictures of lefist voters going to the polls with clothespins on their noses to demonstrate their distaste. As a result, Chirac won over 80% of the vote and LePen barely topped his first ballot total. Not surprisingly, the left was dispirited going into the legislative elections held on 9 and 16 June and suffered a humiliating defeat. Altogether, the various left parties only won about 40% of the vote and, depending on which parties you include on the left, no more than 180 of the 571 seats in the National Assembly. The Gaullists and their allies (now dubbed the Union for the Presidential Majority) won virtually all of the rest of the seats. Raffarin became Prime Minister without the "interim" tag, and all the signs are that Chirac and he will remain in office until their terms end in 2007. It is hard to tell what the elections mean. Despite the landslide victory, no one interprets the election as a mandate for change. Chirac and his supporters more because voters rejected alternative parties and candidates, not because they supported Gaullist party goals. What's more, from a historical perspesctive, there was relatively little dividing left and right in 2002. In short, most observers expect more of the same with perhaps a more noticeable shift toward privatization and decentralization. Perhaps most notably of all, unlike Chirac, Jospin, and dozens of other politicians in the limelight before 2002, Raffarin does not come from the Parisian middle class elite educated at ENA or other grandes ecoles.
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