Brian
French Leftist Candidate's Polls Plummet
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: February 19, 2007 Filed at 2:09 p.m. ET
PARIS (AP) -- She brought excitement to French politics with her bid to become the nation's first woman president, but Segolene Royal now appears on the verge of seeing her campaign implode.
With just two months to go until the first-round vote on April 22, the Socialist's popularity is plunging. Her main rival on the right, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, has taken a clear lead, and she is also losing support to a dark horse contender claiming the center ground.
This week brings crucial tests for Royal, with a shake-up of her team planned and a major appearance on television Monday. Royal is often criticized as a lightweight on foreign policy and economic issues, and some analysts say she can no longer afford to make any mistakes.
''There is a lot of doubt on the left,'' said Jerome Sainte-Marie of the BVA polling agency. ''If it doesn't get better after this, things will become very complicated.''
Royal's poll numbers are her lowest yet. A survey by the TNS-Sofres-Unilog agency for Le Figaro newspaper suggested she would get 45 percent of votes if she makes it to the run-off on May 6, compared to 55 percent for Sarkozy. No margin of error was provided. Until only recently, the two were neck-in-neck in the race to replace 74-year-old conservative Jacques Chirac, in office for 12 years.
Royal had been counting on a big boost from a two-hour campaign appearance Feb. 11, her first major platform speech. She veered sharply to the left in her 100-point platform, promising to boost unemployment benefits, the minimum wage and youth jobs programs. She also left many wondering how she intended to pay for it all -- an issue she did not address. The same questions have also been asked of Sarkozy's promises to cut taxes, rein in debt and stimulate the sluggish economy.
Days later, Royal's economics adviser resigned amid rumors that he had a problem with her spending plans -- rumors the party denied. Numbers ''are not the essential, what's essential is the content in the measures,'' said her newly appointed economics adviser, Michel Sapin, on Europe-1 radio.
Sapin promised that Royal's reorganized team would be ''on the offensive more and more persuasive.'' Her campaign manager, Jean-Louis Bianco, said the changes would probably be announced Thursday and added that he wasn't worried about the polls.
Royal's true impact, he told RTL radio, ''does not show up in the polls, but it is extraordinary.''
Other Socialists did not hide their fear. Senator Jean-Luc Melenchon wrote on his blog: ''It's totally getting to me. The left is sinking.''
The 53-year-old Socialist candidate, a former environment minister who also held Cabinet posts in family affairs and education, outpaced more seasoned rivals to win the party's nomination in November. Royal's nontraditional profile -- a mother of four in a sea of men in suits -- appealed to party members, as did her upbeat, grass-roots campaign.
An irony of her current slide in polls is that she also owed the nomination in part to her previously high popularity ratings, which led many Socialists to believe that she was their best bet to beat Sarkozy.
Royal is gifted at figuring out the everyday concerns of the French. As government minister, for example, she instituted France's paternity leave. But she has made a series of gaffes on international affairs. Recently, Canada's prime minister rebuked her after she spoke out in favor of ''sovereignty and liberty'' for French-speaking Quebec.
With Royal looking weak, other candidates have pounced on her territory. Centrist Francois Bayrou, a gentleman farmer figure who writes historical nonfiction and raises racehorses, has made overtures to the left, and he even suggested he could name a leftist prime minister. His poll numbers have risen while Royal's have dropped -- yet at this point, surveys suggest Bayrou still could not knock her out of the final round of a two-round vote.
Under French rules, the candidate who obtains an absolute majority wins the election. This is a highly unlikely scenario in the April 22 voting because there are many candidates. The top two candidates would, therefore, go to a May runoff.
Sarkozy, meanwhile, has embarked on a full-fledged campaign of wooing voters away from the left. There are signs it is working.
Several prominent leftist intellectuals have defected to his camp, and a group called ''La Diagonale'' has gathered 1,000 leftists who plan to vote for him -- including some people who still hold Socialist Party membership cards.