Presidential election in France 1965

The 1965 presidential election in France took place on December 5 and December 19, 1965 and was the second presidential election in the Fifth Republic . For the first time, French citizens were called upon to directly elect the new president in accordance with a constitutional amendment passed by referendum in 1962 . In the first presidential election in 1958 , the president was elected by an electoral committee made up of representatives from various levels of the French state and its colonial territories. The winner of the French presidential election in 1965 was incumbent Charles de Gaulle , who missed the required absolute majority in the first ballot on December 5th and was only elected in the second ballot on December 19th.

Election mode

The first ballot took place on December 5, 1965. The candidate who obtained an absolute majority of the valid votes was elected President. If none of the candidates achieve an absolute majority, the two candidates with the highest number of votes in the first ballot would run against each other two weeks later in a runoff election, in which the candidate with the most votes is elected president.

First ballot

Candidates

• Charles de Gaulle , incumbent, was a high favorite in the election. He advocated the further establishment of the Fifth Republic, which was largely founded by him. He saw himself - in contrast to the conditions of the Fourth Republic - as a personality standing above the parties. His Union pour la nouvelle République - Union démocratique du travail , on which he relied, was little more than an electoral alliance in support of his person and his politics. In order to stay out of the turmoil of the election campaign for as long as possible, he officially announced his candidacy relatively late, a good month before the first ballot.
• François Mitterrand , chairman of the small left party Convention des institutions républicaines (CIR), had managed to win the support of the socialist party SFIO , the communist PCF and some smaller left parties and thus stood as a common candidate of the French left. As such, he led a powerful opposition election campaign against de Gaulle.
• Jean Lecanuet ran as a candidate for the centrist parties. Similar to de Gaulle in the political spectrum, the then 45-year-old presented himself as a modern alternative to the general thirty years his senior. Relatively little known at the beginning of the election campaign, under the influence of the American Kennedy-Nixon presidential election campaign in 1960, he increasingly relied on modern campaign tools such as television appearances, PR advice and opinion polls.
• Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour was an independent candidate of the extreme right as well as thelargely anti-Gullist French who fled to the motherlandafter the Algerian war .
• Pierre Marcilhacy , Parti libéral européen
• Marcel Barbu , independent candidate

Election campaign

De Gaulle's re-election appeared very likely throughout the campaign; The main question was whether he could win an absolute majority in the first ballot. As a result, he tried to maintain his image as president of all French beyond the election and personally stayed away from the election campaign for a long time. At first he even refused to use his allotted speaking time on television, like the other candidates, until he finally decided to do so shortly before the election due to poor poll results.
Television proved to be an important new factor in this election campaign, which was already relatively widespread in France with over six million receivers. Jean Lecanuet relied heavily on this new medium and achieved a double-digit result. Right-winger Tixier-Vignancour, known as a good public speaker, was less convincing on the screen.

Result

candidate	Number of votes	in %
Charles de Gaulle	10 828 521	44.65%
François Mitterrand	7 694 005	31.72%
Jean Lecanuet	3 777 120	15.57%
Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour	1 260 208	5.20%
Pierre Marcilhacy	415 017	1.71%
Marcel Barbu	279 685	1.15%

De Gaulle clearly missed an absolute majority and had to go to the runoff election against François Mitterrand.

Second ballot

Result

candidate	Number of votes	in %
Charles de Gaulle	13 083 699	55.20%
François Mitterrand	10 619 735	44.80%

As a result, Charles de Gaulle was confirmed in office for a further seven years. However, it had been shown that he, too, was vulnerable. François Mitterrand's good result made him one of the leading politicians on the French left.

Web links

• www.election-politique.com (French) candidates, results, election posters and televised speeches