Lost in the City

The news came through my parents at 6:30, as I was in the metro, on my way to Jeanne's place. Two polls supposedly put Royal ahead of Sarkozy, and a third one put her right behind him. I was at Jeanne's a few minutes later and we could see on the "Le Temps" website (it's a French-Swiss newspaper) the first exit polls which gave Sarkozy ahead of Royal with respectively 29% and 26%. The final results are:
1. Sarkozy (31.18%)
2. Royal (25.87%)
3. Bayrou (18.57%)
4. Le Pen (10.44%)

Good side first: I am obviously glad to see that Royal made it to the second round. I am also extremely happy to see the high participation rate we had for this election: 83.78% is a score that would be unbelievable in the U.S. In France, we have to go back to 1965 to find such a high rate (84.7%). Last time around, in 2002, when we managed to have a second round between the right and the far-right, we had the lowest rate ever for a presidential election (71.60%)... which is still high compared to the U.S. situation, but still.

Bad side now: it doesn't look very good for the Left on the second round. First, because Sarkozy came about 5 poitns ahead of Royal yesterday. Second, because of the poor potential for vote transfer from eliminated candidates to Royal. Indeed, aside from Sarkozy and Royal, the two candidates who received significant percentages of the votes are Bayrou and Le Pen. Bayrou's electors will most probably split between Sarkozy and Royal on the second round, but 75% of Le Pen's electors should go to Sarkozy. Royal can only count on traces from the LCR (Revolutionary Communist League... hey, it's France we're talking about!), the Green Party and the Communist Party.

According to the first polls done yesterday right after the results, Sarkozy would win 54-46. I guess there is still a lot of leafleting to do... Let's not give up hope until May 6th though.