And so one more tumbles to the popular wave of anger and discontent.
- Francois Hollande wins 51.9% of the vote according to exit polls
- The 57-year-old Hollande got about 52 percent against about 48 percent for Sarkozy, according to estimates by pollsters CSA and Harris Interactive
- Nicholas Sarzkoy concedes defeat in presidential election to Francois Hollande
From France24 [13]:
Socialist Party challenger François Hollande has beaten incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in a tight run-off election to win the French presidency with 51.9% of the vote to Sarkozy’s 48.1%, Ipsos exit polls show.
Not a surprising victory, and one which will likely have less immediate impact on Europe than the stunning result in Greece as noted yesterday [14], but still a huge move: this is the first socialist president of France since Francois Mitterande and the first loss of an incumbent in 30 years, as massive political changes continue to buffet a depressionary Europe.
In the meantime, farewell Sarko...
[15]
From Reuters:
Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won France's presidential election runoff on Sunday, beating President Nicolas Sarkozy by a clear margin, according to projections by pollsters.
Polling institutes predicted Hollande would win between 51.8 and 52.0 percent of the vote versus Sarkozy's tally of between 48.0 and 48.2 percent.
Hollande, who had led conservative incumbent Sarkozy in polls for months, would become France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995.
And Bloomberg [16]:
Nicolas Sarkozy’s defeat in the French presidential election makes him the ninth European leader to be booted out since the region’s debt crisis began.
Sanctioned for his flamboyant personal style and slowing economic growth, Sarkozy lost to Socialist Francois Hollande, who got 52 percent of the vote against 48 percent, five polling estimates showed. Sarkozy becomes the second French president to lose a re-election bid since World War II after former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing was vanquished in 1981.
With joblessness at a 12-year high and public debt at a record, the electorate proved unwilling to forgive the 57-year- old lawyer for foibles such as celebrating his 2007 victory at a chic Paris restaurant and a holiday on a billionaire’s yacht, making the election an anti-Sarkozy vote.
“If the French had jobs and more money in their pockets, they’d be confident and ready to forgive,” said Laurent Dubois, a professor at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris.
Sarkozy joins a long list of victims of the crisis, which began with subprime mortgages in the U.S. before causing government yields to diverge across Europe. Leaders in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia and the Netherlands were elbowed out from their posts.
A real time French vote map can be found at the Ministry of the Interior's website:
[17]