On 20 févr. 07, at 06:27, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> Royal has run a kind of post-Left campaign, both in style and
> substance, so if she's mainly losing votes to Francois Bayrou, she has
> only herself to blame.
IFOP is owned by he head of the MEDEF who also happens to be a good friend of Sarkozy.
Just like Chirac used to say, "don't trust polls".
Contrary to 2002, the "mainstream" left is less divided and even Bove has annouced he'd ask his supported to vote for Royal on the second round. And he is the most credible figure on her left (especially for the alter-mondialisation crowd).
I think the UMP, specifically, is using Bayrou to take the focus out of Royal. He makes a perfect orthodox third-left looking candidate for the second position. I don't know about core PS members but the new members (20 euros, close to half the current membership) are much more receptive to Royal's campaign, plus, I'd argue they are the ones who specifically _don't_ want 2007 to be a repetition of 2002, so even though they have left sympathies I think they chose the PS because thanks to Royal it is now proposing (at least on the surface of things) something different, while the traditional left (PC/LCR etc) have yet to renew their discourse (or the way it sounds) to attract more supporters.
This link: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Élections_présidentielles_sous_la_Cinquième_République
Shows that only twice in the history of the 5th republic the second round saw 2 canditates from the right: once in 69 (Pompidou-UDR, equivalent to the current UMP/Poher -CD, equivalent to the current UDF) and 2002 with Chirac and Lepen. In the case of Poher, he was already acting as interim president after De Gaulle left and even with that he lost to Pompidou. As for Lepen, it was more a case of the left being split (which is much less the case today) and Jospin not being sexy enough -even though he had acted as a relatively good prime under Chirac (the difference of voices was only 200,000).
I don't think the conditions today are any similar. Royal has a very strong core base and is very charismatic, as for the center, it is non existent. I think Bayrou will attract more right voices than left voices (especially those who are tempted by Royal because Sarkozy is too extreme but could not go that far to the left).
Jean-Christophe Helary