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RR RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHFR #0709/01 0571041
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 261041Z FEB 07 ZDK
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 5139
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHC/DEPARTMENT OF LABOR WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RUEATRS/DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY WASHDC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 000709 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT ALSO FOR EUR/WE, DRL/IL, INR/EUC, EUR/ERA, EUR/PPD, 
AND EB 
DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA 
DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
SUBJECT: ELECTION SNAPSHOT: SARKOZY AND ROYAL STILL THE 
ONES TO BEAT 
 
 
PARIS 00000709  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  (U) Nine weeks from the first round of France's 2007 
presidential election, Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy 
still dominate the field of presidential hopefuls.  They 
remain strong favorites to win, on April 22, the first round 
of the Presidential elections.  That said, French voters have 
a long and distinguished record of confounding the 
conventional wisdom.  Two candidates have positioned 
themselves as alternatives to the two leading candidates: 
Centrist Francois Bayrou, who has enjoyed a recent surge of 
interest and rising poll numbers, and right wing extremist 
Jean-Marie Le Pen, who at 78 years old, is making his last 
run at the Presidency.  Each currently enjoys the support of 
about 15 percent of the electorate (about half of Royal's and 
Sarkozy's).  Le Pen's support appears stable; Bayrou's has 
been growing.  In France's two-round presidential election 
system, in which well over a dozen candidates can be on the 
ballot in the first round, small differences in first-round 
vote tallies can make a big difference in which two 
candidates make it into the second round.  That said, the 
electoral base and organizational strength provided by the 
two main parties continue to strongly favor Sarkozy's and 
Royal's chances. A continuing steady rise of Bayrou, and a 
poll-hidden reservoir of support for Le Pen could still 
conceivably put one or the other over the top -- but only if 
one of the two leading candidates should suffer an 
unforeseeable tanking of his or her electability.  End 
Summary. 
 
BLIZZARD OF POLLS OBSCURING THE BASICS? 
--------------------------------------- 
¶2.  (U) The French addiction to incessant polling, along with 
a media-saturated environment that whips every micro-movement 
in polling results into a major news story, has recently 
given the French public the impression of vertiginous 
movement in the prospects of their presidential candidates, 
when in fact the relative standing of the candidates remains 
anchored in well-established features of the political 
landscape.  The strength of French voters' identification of 
themselves as "left" or "right" has eroded during the past 
decade, but it still structures the electorate into two 
contending political sensibilities, to the benefit of 
France's only two relatively large political parties, the 
center-left Socialist Party (PS) and the center-right Union 
for a Popular Movement (UMP) party. 
 
¶3.  (U) Both these parties are riven by ideological 
factionalism and leadership rivalries; but, the necessity of 
unity, if their candidate is not to risk elimination in the 
first round, is a trumping antidote.  The candidates of these 
two parties, respectively, Poitou-Charentes Region President 
Segolene Royal and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy continue 
to tower over the field, and to benefit from the much greater 
financial strength and organizational depth of their parties. 
 
¶4. (U) Any other result April 22 than a second-round face-off 
between the candidate of the center-left and that of the 
center-right would be a big surprise -- requiring either a 
recrudescence of the "anomaly" of Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader 
of the extremist, right-wing National Front (FN), in the 
second round (as in 2002), or a tectonic restructuring of the 
French electorate to the benefit of the centrist, Union for 
French Democracy (UDF) party and its maverick leader Francois 
Bayrou.  Currently, campaign coverage is giving prominent 
play to both Le Pen's persisting strength at about 15 percent 
of first-round voters, and to Bayrou's current spike in the 
polls to over double the nearly 7 percent he garnered in the 
first round in 2002.  Le Pen has not yet collected the 500 
signatures from elected officials needed to get on ballot; 
should he fail do so (very unlikely in the view of most 
observers) by the March 16 deadline, this would put a 
significant bloc of potential swing voters up for grabs. 
 
¶5.  (U) In some polls, Bayrou has surpassed Le Pen, and is 
within sight of the 20 percent mark; Bayrou himself has 
confidently predicted, "Within a month, I'll be ahead of 
Segolene."   Le Pen has taken about 15 percent of the first 
round vote in the last three presidential elections (2002, 
1995, and 1988); most observers expect he will again put on a 
similar showing in 2007.   Ironically, should Le Pen again 
make it into the second round, he is again certain to lose 
against any other leading candidate; whereas, should Bayrou 
make it into the second round, he has a good chance of 
 
PARIS 00000709  002 OF 002 
 
 
winning against any other leading candidate. 
 
¶6.  (U) But the determination of the election's two "third 
men" to reach the second round and upset the apple cart of 
the two leaders, and the press coverage that suspensefully 
presents their respective strategies for doing so, minimizes 
both voters' wariness of repeating the fluke that catapulted 
Le Pen into a run-off against President Chirac in 2002, as 
well as the campaign clout in coming weeks of the two leading 
parties' dense and nationwide political organizations.  As 
campaign organizations, the UDF and the FN are not in the 
same league as the PS and UMP.  According to experienced 
observers of French presidential races, this should make a 
big difference in the final weeks of the campaign when a 
large number of voters will at last make up their minds. 
 
¶7.  (U) That Royal and Sarkozy are being tested by the rigors 
of presidential campaign for the first time has prompted some 
-- Bayrou, for one -- to question if one or the other will 
not break under the pressure.  Bayrou, like Le Pen, has run 
for president before (in 2002).  He has been through what he 
calls the "the wringer" of a presidential race and its 
invasive scrutiny, but Royal and Sarkozy have not.  Indeed, 
the newness of Royal and Sarkozy to presidential politics is 
part of the reason they have been successful in epitomizing 
change.  They remain the dominant candidates for now, and 
they hold the high cards of organizational wherewithal for 
staying there.  Though neither has a track record of holding 
up through what is the long and grueling, and brutally 
revealing, race for the French presidency, there is no reason 
now to believe that both will not hold up all the way through 
to their long-expected, second-round face-off May 6. 
Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm 
 
STAPLETON