FRENCH PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP is braced for a heavy defeat in the second round of regional elections tomorrow – the last electoral test before the presidential poll in 2012.
In the first round last week, the UMP won 26.2 per cent of the national vote, its lowest score on record. The opposition Socialist party became the most popular, with 29.4 per cent.
Mr Sarkozy’s hopes of containing the damage this weekend received a setback with the decision of the Socialist party, Europe Écologie alliance and Front de Gauche to merge their lists in 20 of the 22 regions in metropolitan France for the second round.
According to a CSA poll published by Le Parisien yesterday, Socialist-led lists are on course to win 56 per cent of the national vote, against 36 per cent for the UMP.
Having ruled out a voting pact with the resurgent National Front, the UMP has no second-round allies and is counting on some of the 53.7 per cent who abstained in the first round showing up for the second.
“I ask all the voters of the presidential majority to mobilise,” French prime minister François Fillon said at a rally this week.
In 12 regions where the far-right National Front won more than 10 per cent and thus qualified for the second round, it will win 14 per cent, the CSA poll predicted, draining potential UMP votes and clearing the path to victory for Socialist-led lists.
For the left to make a symbolically important clean sweep of all 22 regions in the French métropole, it would have to retain the 20 it already controls and wrest Alsace and Corsica from the UMP.
With expectations for Mr Sarkozy’s party so low after a heavier-than-expected defeat in the first round, holding on to at least one of these two regions would now mark a victory of sorts for the right. The UMP’s best hope appears to be Alsace, where a late opinion poll in Le Figaro showed the Socialist and UMP candidates on 43.5 per cent each.
Faced with record-low approval ratings and the highest unemployment rate in a decade, Mr Sarkozy has kept a low profile during the campaign and has made no comment on the first-round results.
The left senses he may now be vulnerable in the 2012 presidential election and believes the political landscape is shifting in its favour.
But the right points out that the left’s 20-region victory in 2004 was followed three years later by Mr Sarkozy’s election.