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O 301444Z MAR 07
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6130
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHC/DEPARTMENT OF LABOR WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE WASHDC
RUEATRS/DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY WASHDC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 PARIS 001283 
 
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: UNINFORMATIVE POLLS, URBAN 
VIOLENCE, AND "NATIONAL IDENTITY" ISSUE ADD UNCERTAINTY TO 
CAMPAIGN 
 
REF: PARIS 1155 AND PREVIOUS 
 
¶1.  (SBU) SUMMARY:  Three weeks from the April 22 first-round 
of France's presidential election, center-right former 
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist 
Poitou-Charentes Region President Segolene Royal remain in 
the lead.  Francois Bayrou, head of the centrist Union for 
French Democracy Party, remains within striking distance of 
the leaders in the latest polls, but has not renewed his 
mid-February to mid-March surge in poll numbers.  Right-wing 
extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen is holding steady at under 15 
percent of first-round voter intentions.  The unreliability 
of French polling figures is as notorious as the 
unpredictability of French voters.  An 8 percent increase in 
registered voters, resulting in the highest numbers since 
1981, also makes election predictions hazardous -- and 
testifies to the importance of this election in voters' minds. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) SUMMARY CONT'D:  The events of March 27 could 
change the candidates' standings, however, after groups of 
youths assailed police, set fires, and looted stores at the 
Paris train station that serves as the rail head for the 
city's poor, northern suburbs.  This highly-publicized 
flare-up of urban violence immediately permeated election 
coverage and re-emphasized left-right differences on the 
linked issues of immigration, urban safety, law-and-order and 
national identity, with the Socialists generally on the 
defensive.  To counter Sarkozy on these hot-button issues, 
Royal once again unsettled traditional leftists by 
encouraging supporters to proudly show the French flag and 
sing the national anthem (patriotic symbols not associated 
with the French left).  After quitting his post as Interior 
Minister March 26, Sarkozy plunged into a well-planned, 
whirlwind schedule as a full-time presidential candidate, 
energetically defending his record as France's top law 
enforcement official and his vision of an activist state able 
to compel respect for law across all segments of society. 
Bayrou, for his part, continued his stolid fulminations 
against both left and right.  END SUMMARY. 
 
CURRENT STANDING OF THE THREE (OR FOUR?) LEADERS 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
¶3.  (U) Though there will be twelve candidates on the ballot 
in the first round of France's presidential election April 
22, only three, possibly four, of those candidates have any 
realistic chance of making it into the second-round run-off 
May 6.  Former Interior Minister and President of the Union 
for a Popular Movement (UMP) party Nicolas Sarkozy is still 
the first-round leader -- though by varying margins -- in all 
polls.  Poitou-Charentes Region President and Socialist Party 
(PS) candidate Segolene Royal has solidified her second place 
standing, while centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) 
leader Francois Bayrou, though no longer rising the polls as 
he did between mid-February and Mid-March, is also not 
falling significantly.  Right wing extremist Jean-Marie Le 
Pen continues to be credited by all polls with more than 10 
percent and less than 15 percent of first-round voter 
intentions.  A poll of first-round voter intentions released 
March 29 and taken March 26 and 27 by the BVA polling 
organization credits Sarkozy with 28 percent, Royal with 27 
percent, Bayrou with 20 percent and Le Pen with 13 percent of 
voters' support.  The conventional wisdom remains that 
Sarkozy (1), Royal (2) , Bayrou (3), Le Pen (4) is still the 
likeliest finishing order on the morning of April 23. 
 
PREDICTIONS HAZARDOUS; POLLS UNINFORMATIVE 
------------------------------------------ 
¶4.  (U) That said, the conventional wisdom, when it comes to 
projecting what French voters will actually do on election 
day, is highly unreliable. French voters are notorious for a 
defiant streak that leads them often to vote against 
expectations.  The conventional wisdom never projected that 
Le Pen might get into the second round of the 2002 
presidential election, nor did it project that, in the 2005 
referendum on the EU Constitution, the 'no' would win with a 
resounding majority.  Adding to the uncertainty is the 
public's awareness that the upcoming election represents a 
watershed choice of direction for long overdue reform, even 
as voters' apprehension about the future, the volatility of 
their preferences and their mistrust of the political class 
remain at record highs.  The net result is that any 
predictions about first round vote totals are hazardous; 
current polls may well be a very misleading guide to final 
 
PARIS 00001283  002 OF 003 
 
 
vote counts. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) The raw data gathered by pollsters in France is 
heavily adjusted, in different ways by the different polling 
organizations, to make it better reflect "the reality" of 
opinion.  For example, respondents to polls are assumed to 
systematically under-report allegiance to Le Pen, so 
pollsters adjust -- sometimes by as much as doubling them -- 
Le Pen's numbers in the raw data.  The percentages 
represented by these adjustments of course have to come from 
somewhere -- often in large part from Sarkozy's higher 
numbers in the raw data, under the assumption that 
respondents over-represent their allegiance to Sarkozy, but 
will in fact vote for Le Pen or some other candidate.  The 
polls therefore only confirm what everybody already knows, 
that in the first round at least four-fifths of voters will 
vote for either Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou or Le Pen.  The exact 
proportions in which voters' will do so, however, remains 
highly uncertain, with some analysts predicting that Sarkozy 
and Royal will both finish with commanding leads over Bayrou 
and Le Pen, and others predicting that the four will finish 
within a half-dozen points of each other, all under 25 
percent.  Those who see the four continuing to converge, 
because Sarkozy and Royal remain unconvincing beyond their 
core partisans, do not dismiss the possibility of Bayrou (or 
even Le Pen) going to the second round against either Sarkozy 
or Royal. 
 
COPS AND HOODLUMS -- PRISM FOR POLARIZING ISSUES 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
¶6.  (SBU) Poll numbers are likely to change in the wake of 
the March 27 events at Paris' North train station.  This 
flare-up of urban violence that pitted police against bands 
of youths that afternoon and evening brought about an 
immediate change in the dominant issues of the campaign. 
Until then, the first-round campaign had largely gravitated 
around the issues of purchasing power, generating jobs, 
education reform and protecting the environment.  March 
27th's reminder of the violence and destruction that ran 
through France's immigrant suburbs in October and November of 
2005, re-focused the public, the candidates and the media 
overnight on the complex of issues that the French confusedly 
subsume under the rubric "immigration." 
 
¶7.  (SBU) The "immigration" catch-all includes everything 
from the debate over immigration policy and the rights of the 
undocumented, to differences over what to do about unsafe 
streets in metropolitan areas and how to adapt the "national 
identity" to immigration-driven social diversity.  It remains 
to be seen if these immigration, security and identity issues 
will remain dominant through the rest of the campaign. 
Further clashes between police and immigrant youths against 
backgrounds of fires and looting could easily marginalize 
most other issues in making up voters' minds. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) The events of March 27 have also had the effect of 
accentuating traditional left-right differences on 
immigration, security and "national identity" issues, 
polarizing the debate to the detriment of Bayrou's centrist 
message.  Sarkozy, in his direct, energetic way, vigorously 
defended his vision of an activist, effective state that 
equally and sternly enforces the law throughout society for 
the benefit of the law-abiding, especially the law-abiding in 
poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods.  In remarks to the press as 
he pursued a hectic schedule of campaign appearances, Sarkozy 
stressed that the individual, whose detention sparked the 
violence, was an undocumented immigrant with a criminal 
record caught riding without a ticket. To increase the 
pressure on the Socialists, he questioned if they were 
prepared to defend free-loaders on the system.  Royal 
identified the aggressive policing tactics associated with 
Sarkozy as being part of the problem, and decried the tension 
and mistrust that characterizes relations between police and 
immigrant youth.  She also made clear that she did not defend 
the individual whose detention set off the incident, 
stressing that users of public transport should of course pay 
for their tickets. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Bayrou, for his part, lambasted both left and 
right, and used the issue to make the case for the futility 
of polarizing policies, and therefore the necessity of his 
centrist, best-of-both alternative.  Sounding exactly like 
Royal and the Socialists,  Bayrou denounced Sarkozy for 
 
PARIS 00001283  003 OF 003 
 
 
having "chosen repression" while, sounding exactly like 
Sarkozy and French conservatives, he simultaneously denounced 
"the left's legacy of laxism."  Credibility on law-and-order 
issues has always been Sarkozy's strong suit, and it seems 
that the renewed salience of these security issues will work 
to solidify support for Sarkozy, unless his detractors are 
more successful in portraying his approach as part of the 
problem. 
 
ROYAL ADDS PATRIOTISM TO HER VISION OF CENTER-LEFT 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
¶10.  (SBU) Royal had earlier in the week -- again -- 
unsettled traditional leftists and many old-line PS party 
leaders by encouraging her supporters (and all French 
citizens) to proudly show the flag, and by ending her rallies 
with all present singing the French national anthem.  The 
"tri-color" and the "Marseillaise" are patriotic symbols 
closely associated with the French right, not the French 
left.  In appropriating these symbols and giving them a 
prominent place in her campaign, Royal recognized how social 
values throughout French society have been, in recent years, 
trending toward the traditional and conservative.  The number 
of voters who identify themselves as "of the left" is smaller 
than ever, and Royal is well aware that a second-round 
victory for her depends on winning the support of a range of 
centrist voters.  Whether or not this appropriation of 
patriotic symbols, associated with the French right, presages 
further, substantive moves by Royal to the center, away from 
the PS's traditional policy prescriptions remains to be seen. 
 Royal's appropriation of these national symbols was also 
intended to counter Sarkozy's popular proposal for the 
establishment of a Ministry of Immigration and National 
Identity (ref). 
 
RECORD NUMBER OF REGISTERED VOTERS 
---------------------------------- 
¶11.  (SBU) Also this week the Interior Ministry released the 
final voter registration figures for the upcoming election. 
Never have so many Frenchmen and women registered to vote. 
Almost 44.5 million citizens are registered to vote in the 
upcoming presidential and legislative elections, an increase 
of almost 8 percent over the number of registered voters in 
the last presidential election (2002), and the highest 
registration rate since the watershed presidential election 
of 1981.  While significant registration increases are common 
in the years preceding an election, there has been an 
exceptional surge in voter registration among young people, 
including in immigrant suburban neighborhoods. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
¶12.  (SBU) There is unprecedented public interest in the 
upcoming election, and there are an unprecedentedly large 
number of voters registered to participate in it. 
Apprehension, volatility and mistrust characterize the 
electorate, and a large portion of voters remain undecided. 
Which two of the leading candidates will come out on top in 
the first round is still very uncertain.  How the candidates 
perform in the final weeks -- and how deftly they react to 
unforeseen developments like the flare-up of unrest -- will 
be critical to their final vote totals.  End Summary. 
Please visit Paris' Classified Website at: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/paris/index.c fm 
 
STAPLETON