The Socialist François Hollande has emerged with the upper hand from a bruising TV duel with the rightwing president Nicolas Sarkozy, as the two held their last rallies in the final 24 hours of campaigning before Sunday's presidential vote.
The
first opinion poll for LH2 Yahoo showed French viewers of the live TV
debate found Hollande to be the more serious candidate and also the
nicest, most sincere and closest to their daily concerns. Sarkozy was
seen to have been more dynamic and competent. Hollande was most
convincing on the issues that worry voters the most: jobs, making ends
meet as well as education, while Sarkozy was seen to be better on Europe, immigration and reducing France's debt.
Over
17 million French people watched the almost three-hour live TV
presidential debate, more than watch an X Factor final in the UK, but
fewer than tuned in to watch Sarkozy take on the Socialist Ségolène
Royal in 2007.
Sarkozy is trailing Hollande by five to eight
points in the polls and a classic televised battle of the personalities
had been seen as his last chance to turn the election around and win
over the large majority of France's 6.4m far-right voters he needs to
have a chance at re-election.
Pollsters were sceptical that
Sarkozy, who at times had seemed riled and on the defensive, would have
done so. French presidential debates do not usually yield an outright
winner, and some called this a draw.
But most commentators felt
Hollande had won on points, delivering the most memorable lines,
including repeating: "I, as president of the republic …" 16 times in a
bid to gain in leadership stature. Newspaper columnists felt the debate
would not produce an "earthquake" for the struggling Sarkozy, the most
unpopular president to seek re-election in France. Hollande was seen to
have cemented his advance.
He was given a further boost when the
centrist François Bayrou, who took 9% of the vote in the first round,
broke with his party's tradition and said he would vote for him. This
was a blow to Sarkozy, who needs to secure as many Bayrou voters as
possible.
If the TV slanging match was full of bile – Sarkozy
called Hollande "a little slanderer" and Hollande told him "you'd be
hard pressed to pass yourself off as a victim" – the political reaction
afterwards was just as laden with invective.
Nadine Morano, a
rightwing minister and Sarkozy ally, said the exchange with Hollande had
been like "extracting pus". Sarkozy's special adviser called Hollande
"grotesque". Jean-Marc Ayrault, tipped as a possible Socialist prime
minister, said Sarkozy had been aggressive. Hollande said the nature of
the debate had reflected the fracture, aggressiveness and tensions in
society "after five years of Sarkozy".
But Sarkozy insisted that
the election was on a knife-edge and all was to play for. "The opinion
polls are lying. An election has never been this open … It's even more
open after the debate," he told French radio.
He then gave a
highly personal interview seemingly to show himself as more human and
close to the people, saying he was so "rubbish" at technology that he
didn't know how to work the three TV remote controls at home, and
suggesting if his wife, Carla Bruni, wasn't with him he could barely
operate the television.
At his final major rally in Toulon, he said the "left and its laxity" had "ruined" France.
Hollande,
before giving his final open-air rally in Toulouse, was deliberately
cautious about Sunday's vote, warning that nothing was won. Some
observers have predicted the result could be closer than polls suggest.
Meanwhile,
media fact-checkers were poring over the highly technical parts of the
TV debate, when the candidates hurled statistics at each other. One
French site calculated that Sarkozy mentioned a figure every 47 seconds and Hollande mentioned one every 1 minute, 36 seconds, although not all were accurate.
The final runoff vote takes place on Sunday.
@Guardian
by Angelique Chrisafis
