Michele Marchi - 29/03/2012

     Six weeks after re-candidature and with less than four to go before the first ballot, Nicolas Sarkozy appears to be benefiting from a massive publicity effort. What looked like an impossible task might just turn into a sensational re-election. To paraphrase a recent comment by Alain Duhamel, can Napoleon-Sarko be heading for a modern version of the battle of Marengo? All is fluid; absurd to make forecasts. The various polls seem unanimous on one point alone: since February 15th when he announced on television he was standing again, Sarkozy has seen his electoral prospects rise by 2.5% - something never witnessed since Giscard d’Estaing’s second candidacy. Sarkozy, in short, has created a positive trend.
     There are at least two keys to understanding how this electoral turn-around can have come about. First of all, Sarkozy has managed to deflect attention from his main “Achilles heels”: his track-record over the five-year presidency and his constantly low popularity ratings (from about six months into his mandate the French have never accorded him more than 40%, and at times as little as 29%). One must hand it to Sarkozy: he has contrived to live with his own unpopularity. At the start this was largely due to his attempt to de-sacralise the part of “republican monarch”, though bit by bit he has abandoned the pose of modernising the image.
     And now here he is turning his unpopularity to good account against Hollande: Hollande, the “normal” candidate, capable of winning esteem but presented as unreliable – not enough ministerial savvy, especially for these times of economic crisis. Concentrating all the attention on the president’s “commander-in-chief” task of saving the country from global crisis and Eurozone woes has helped to gloss over four and a half years of reforms marred by confusion of judgment and planning, despite the showmanship and vigour. In the end, unexpectedly, he has had a helping hand from Hollande himself who, basking in the “honeymoon” polls, has rested content with challenging an “unpopular president” instead of lambasting him for his mediocre performance.
     It seemed that Sarkozy was playing on the defensive, but in the month of March he has gone onto the attack, the high peak being the Villepinte jamboree on 11th March. In 2007 Sarkozy’s winning electoral card was “rupture”, as opposed to the rut of the Chirac years. (Even cohabitation was flaunted as rupture.) This time the president-candidate has invented a new watchword: squaring the “two Frances” – the half that voted Yes and the half that voted No to the constitutional referendum on May 29th 2005. Sarkozy’s thinking is based on a view of the country’s socio-economic development that owes much to C. Guilluy’s Fractures françaises. In 2012 France stands divided.
     There is an expanding modern part, cashing in on globalisation: the bourgeois France of the big conurbations, which can easily swing to right or left. But there is also the other 50% of the population living in centres of less than 10,000 inhabitants: a rural or peripheral France of lower classes that opt for extremes, if they bother to vote at all. That side of France is afraid of globalisation. Sarkozy’s gamble is to try and cover the whole gamut and represent both sides of the “fractured” nation. Where Chirac promised to heal the “social split” in 1995, Sarkozy today is going all out to bridge the “geographical divide”. To do so, as he pointed out at Villepinte, he is using the card of Europe. Hence his demand to tighten up Schengen, introduce community protectionism and tax financial transactions.
     There are various grey areas: with half a political eye on Melenchon’s voters and half on Le Pen’s, the President is larding his discourse with populism. There are also the political repercussions of Toulouse to reckon with. Security is back with a vengeance: it was decisive for Sarkozy in 2007, and has always embarrassed the PS. One fact is undeniable. The President may have made a half-hearted start, but now he has stepped into the ring, he has shaken Hollande’s certainty. Though still below the 32.2% he polled at the first 2007 ballot, he is now tipped to gain 28%. He can also be cheered by the growing Bayrou and Le Pen electors (30% and 50% respectively) – declared supporters of his at the second round – while the centre party, currently worth 40%, has not come out either way for the re-vote.
     Mind you, the polls still favour Hollande if it goes to round two: 54% versus 46%. But a word of caution: in 1995 Chirac too was tipped to poll 58%, and had to make do with a meagre 52.6. No moment for predictions, in short; but it must be noted that, little over one month into the electoral campaign, the outgoing President has dented over-confidence in various quarters and made the remaining weeks look less of a foregone conclusion.

Michele Marchi
(University of Bologna)