French Elections

▪ 2003

      France's 2002 presidential election campaign started in lacklustre fashion. The two presumed main rivals—Pres. Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin—declared their candidacies in February and were joined by a record 14 other contenders for the Élysée Palace. Many voters appeared bored by what seemed to be just a rerun of the Chirac-Jospin contest of 1995 and bemused by the plethora of candidates in a campaign that focused more on crime and immigration than broader economic or foreign policy issues. The upshot was record apathy for a presidential election—a 28.4% abstention rate in the first round of voting on April 21—and the shocking success of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front.

      The April 21 poll was close, with Chirac polling 19.88% of the vote, Le Pen 16.86%, and Jospin 16.18%. Only the top-two vote getters moved to the second round, and a stunned Jospin was thus left out of the runoff. Le Pen had received only 230,000 more votes than he had in 1995, but he was helped by the low turnout, the poorer-than-expected showing by Jospin (whose schoolmasterly approach attracted few outside his own Socialist Party), and the fragmentation of the vote.

      Chirac refused to hold the customary TV debate with his opponent, saying he did not want to give Le Pen any more of a platform than he already had. The president also may have feared that Le Pen would air the accusations of corruption that swirled around Chirac from his nearly 20 years as mayor of Paris. In the May 5 second round, the left voted reluctantly but massively for Chirac, who gained 82.05% of the vote, against 17.95% for Le Pen. Chirac thereby broke two records for a Fifth Republic president, winning the lowest score in the first round and the highest in the second.

      Jospin immediately resigned as prime minister, and the president replaced him with Jean-Pierre Raffarin. (See Biographies (Raffarin, Jean-Pierre ).) The result of the parliamentary elections, which began on June 9, was almost a foregone conclusion. The demoralized Socialist Party swung to the left with a manifesto calling for an end to privatization and a rise in the minimum wage. On the right there was a historic closing of ranks between the Gaullists and much of the centre-right, which formed the Union for Presidential Majority (UMP). In the second round of voting, on June 16, the UMP won 353 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly. The centre-right Union for French Democracy won 27 seats. The Socialist Party lost over 100 seats to end up with 140. Among the casualties were several prominent Socialists, including Martine Aubry, the creator of the 35-hour workweek. The Communist Party won less than 5% of the vote, which left it with 22 seats, and Communist Party leader Robert Hue lost his seat. Dominique Voynet, leader of the Greens, also was defeated, as was former interior minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, who lost the seat he had held for 29 years.

David Buchan

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