France Presidential Elections: First Round

Today was the first round of presidential elections. There were twelve candidates and today's elections narrowed the choice down to two. Realistically, only 4 appeared to have a chance: Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie LePen. Normally in the first round, French electors tend to vote for particular candidates for different reasons, even without expecting that candidate to have a chance to receive the first or second highest number of votes in order to advance to the round two finals two weeks later. However, because of the uncertain nature of this year's election, some voters immediately voted for the candidate who they thought would win it all, in order to not "waste" their vote.

5 years ago, the country was shocked when extreme rightist LePen got the 2nd highest number of votes and eliminated leftist Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round. In the final round, rightist Jacques Chirac was easily reelected over LePen in a strange phenomen that saw leftist parties like the Communist, Socialist, and Green parties voting for Chirac as the lesser of two evils.

Today had the largest percentage of voters participate in a number of elections. I think that 85% of registered voters went to the polls. Sarkozy led the candidates with 30.4% of the votes, while Royal was second with just under 25%. Centrist Bayrou surprisingly got 17% of the votes, while LePen got around 11%

So, the next two weeks will be highly political around here. I'm curious to hear the proposed programs of both candidates, as well as the particular steps that they propose for getting from here to there. One commentator said today that Royal's platform was a regression to the socialism of two years ago.

It will be important to pray for the elections in the next 2 weeks.