This is the tally in Castelfranc for the first round of the presidential elections. It was only around 7:15, just after closing and lovely Virginie, the postmistress and election worker, had just posted it on the Salle des Fêtes where people put their voix in the urnes. It looks like Sarkozy's goose is cooked and that he was unable to suck support away from Marine Le Pen the extreme-right winger. They both competed for who could be more anti-Muslim. Sarko spent a lot of his 5 year term expelling illegal immigrants à l'américaine. Le Pen, on the other hand, made much of her distaste for the EU, big government, and big business. Melanchon was my favorite. He made no bones about calling for a new constitution largely to do away with the monarchical presidency and the Senate. He spoke out strongly against austerity and the stranglehold the oligarchs and their tools in the European Central Bank.
He is right of course. I believe those who predict that the pseudo-socialist Hollande will win and will be more rightwing than Sarko in terms of giving the 1% the austerity and destruction of the social welfare system or what's left of this stunning achievement of the post-War left. If he causes the same Great Depression levels of unemployment here as in Spain, Portugal, Greece, and many other countries, there could be serious riots and something like civil war. The only way he will be able to avoid it may be to leave the euro but that may require an awareness and sense of purpose that he probably lacks.
They sure do know how to run an election in this country. The campaigns only went on for a month or so. The national networks are stringently controlled on the number of minutes each candidate is allowed for campaigning. Le Monde the newspaper of record circulated an extensive poll to each of the 10 or so candidates and then put up an interactive page where you could line up any single candidates positions against one or more other candidates. Posters must be likewise tightly regulated. The only candidate posters you see are the ones pasted over shreds of other posters from other elections, put up on identical stands in front of the polling places and only for about one week before voting. Campaigning is illegal during the last day before the election. The results are tabulated fast and accurately. I haven't heard of attack ads.
The balding Hollande, the likely winner in the second round, is utterly without glamour or even great hair. He was photographed picking his nose.
