Riots after Sarkozy victory...

... although they must not be anything to write home about because they haven't cracked the front page on BBC.com or the Guardian. It looks like Segolene's warning came true. (Although since this is France, predicting riots after an election is like that the sun would come up in the morning, or that Roger Clemens would return to the Yankees).

Sarkozy wins

Nicolas Sarkozy will be the next president of France, with 53% of the vote. Segolene Royal has conceded defeat. I hope that Sarkozy can shake up the French political system and pass some needed reforms. In any case, this is a good day for the United States because he's very pro-American.

I wonder if we'll see any of that violence Segolene was promising...

UPDATE: From Sarkozy's acceptance speech:

Sarkozy added that he wanted to tell his "American friends that they can rely on our friendship ... France will always be next to them when they need us."

He did make clear that friends can sometimes differ and called on the US to lead the fight against global warming.

French election update: Segolene pulls a Cheney

Nicolas Sarkozy is in the lead over Segolene Royal 54.5% to 44.5%. Segolene is warning (or threatening) that violence will occur if she loses.

"Choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice," Royal told the radio station RTL.

"It is my responsibility today to warn people of the risk of his candidacy concerning the violence and brutality that would be unleashed in the country," she said, suggesting that unrest was especially likely in the volatile suburbs that were the site of rioting in 2005.

Classy. It's sort of a French version of Dick Cheney's charge that giving the Democrats control of Congress would lead to another terrorist attack in the US. Sarkozy's response:

"She's not in a good mood this morning," he told Europe 1 ratio. "It must be the opinion polls."

French election update: presidential debate

If you're bored with coverage of the Republican primary debate, you can check out what happened at yesterday's debate between the two remaining French presidential candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal, here, here, and here.

French election update

Segolene goes negative.

Ségolène Royal intensified a desperate final effort yesterday to tar Nicolas Sarkozy, her presidential opponent, as a dangerous tyrant whose election would threaten the peace of France.

Ms Royal, the left-wing candidate who is about four points behind the conservative Mr Sarkozy in polls, denounced her opponent for the “great violence” and “brutality” of a campaign that she maintained was frightening away voters.

She will use a critical television debate with her opponent tomorrow to contrast her “France at peace with itself” with Mr Sarkozy’s “France of the hard Right”.

Ms Royal’s line of attack, five days before the country goes to the polls, was amplified yesterday by aides and supporters. In the latest torrent of anti-Sarko vitriol, 100 stars of the arts and sciences declared that “Sarkozy embodies a hard radicalised Right . . . with all its fears and hates. Entrusting the presidency to a demagogue like this means real danger.”

Yes, it would be a shame to entrust France to someone who uses fear to manipulate voters.

Segolene being pushed to the center

An interesting article in the Guardian about how Socialist candidate Segolene Royal is being pushed to the center in the second round of the French election.

Ségolène Royal, the first woman with a chance of leading France, began re-shaping her campaign yesterday as she faced a runoff with the clear favourite in the presidential election, the rightwing former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy.

....

With the candidates racing to win over the 7 million people who voted for the centrist third-man François Bayrou, party advisers said Ms Royal would stand no chance of winning if she fought a traditional socialist campaign of "left versus right". Instead she set out to reassure the centre ground she could be all things to all people, to prove, despite her critics, she could reinvent the nation.

The 84% turnout, the highest since 1965, would give any winner a mandate for change in a country plagued by unemployment, debt and social unrest, where voters are keen for renewal. Mr Sarkozy's score of more than 31.18% was the highest for any rightwing politician for three decades. Socialists hailed Ms Royal for her 25.87%, the highest for a leftwing politician since François Mitterrand in 1988. But the total leftwing vote in France was the lowest since 1969. The other six leftist candidates, whose votes are expected to transfer to her camp, polled less than 11%, providing Ms Royal with a very small reservoir to draw on at the May 6 runoff.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the German Green MEP and hero of Paris's student protests in May 1968, said a leftwing campaign would be "hopeless" for Ms Royal. He held crucial talks in the early hours of yesterday morning at the Socialist party headquarters to convince Ms Royal, whose campaign has been a mixture of leftwing economic policy and conservative social values, to move away from the traditional left. He told the Guardian: "If she tries to play it on the traditionally socialist card, she will lose, because France has veered right."

Of course, it's tough to shift to the center after running on a platform that included:

• Raising the minimum wage to 1,500 euros a month
• Abolishing a flexible work contract for small companies
• Offering all young people a 10,000 euro interest-free loan
• Raising pensions
• Guaranteeing graduates of France's overcrowded university system employment or further training within six months of graduation

These proposal are all part of an economic plan Royal introduced in part to protect herself against attacks from the left. Let's just say I don't see this thing being very easy to pull off.

Sego, Segolene, or Royal?

From the comments:

i believe the french tend to refer to mme royale as simply "segolene" (or "sego" if you want to get really familiar). interesting how we tend to refer to the women in politics by their first names (ex. condoleeza and hillary) and the men by their last.

That last sentence got me wondering. We call her Hillary... but we also called him Bill. And where does W. fit in?

French Election: Sarkozy vs Royal

The first round of the French election is finished, with a record turnout of over 85%. The two candidates with the highest vote totals have advanced to the next round. Click here for a rundown of the policy differences between conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist Segolene Royal.

Sarkozy appears to the be the more competent of the two. Though he has his faults, at least he realizes that the French economic system is in need of serious reform. Royal, on the other hand, is running on the back of an unaffordable wish list of market-distorting policies. Also, she has gone out of her way to prove her incompetence in foreign affairs. Among her most famous gaffes: suggesting that sanctions be imposed on the Taliban (apparently unaware that they were removed from power by the US invasion of Afghanistan) and praising the Chinese legal system as "faster" than France's. (A pesky respect for human rights does tend to clog up the courts.)

More on this later.