2007 presidential election in France

Presidential election 2007 - first round of voting

Sarkozy (UMP)			31.2%
Royal (PS)			25.9%

Bayrou (Modem)			18.6%
Le Pen (FN)			10.4%
Besanzenot (LCR)			4.1%
Other			9.8%

Presidential election 2007 - second ballot

Sarkozy (UMP)			53.1%

Royal (PS)			46.9%

In the French presidential election in 2007 , a good 44 million French people entitled to vote selected the successor to President Jacques Chirac . Chirac announced on March 11, 2007 that he would not run again. The first ballot was held on April 22nd, and in some overseas territories on April 21, 2007. The runoff between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy took place on May 6, 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy emerged as the winner.

Candidates

The list of twelve officially admitted candidates was published on March 20, 2007. More than 40 politicians and other candidates had previously announced their readiness to run in the presidential election. For admission, each applicant had to submit 500 electoral sponsorships from elected representatives from all over France. Since the primary election of the members of the Socialist Party (PS), the former Environment Minister Ségolène Royal has been the PS candidate. She prevailed on November 17, 2006 against Laurent Fabius and Dominique Strauss-Kahn . As a candidate of the conservative ruling UMP party, party leader Nicolas Sarkozy was nominated almost unanimously by the UMP members in mid-January without opposing candidates. For the liberal Center Party UDF , party leader François Bayrou stood . Party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen applied again for the right-wing extremist Front National .

Other candidates were:

Olivier Besancenot , who started in 2002, spokesman for the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire ("Communist Revolutionary League", Trotskyists )
José Bové , non-party, left peasant leader and globalization critic
Marie-George Buffet , party leader of the Parti communiste français ("Communist Party of France", Eurocommunists )
Arlette Laguiller , since 1974 continuous candidate of the Lutte Ouvrière ("workers' struggle", Trotskyists )
Frédéric Nihous , CPNT ("Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition", conservative-traditional)
Gérard Schivardi , independent, nominated and supported by the Parti des travailleurs ("Party of the Workers", Trotskyists )
Philippe de Villiers , already in 1995, party leader of the Mouvement pour la France ("Movement for France", national conservatives )
Dominique Voynet , already started in 1995, former environment minister ("The Greens", Les Verts )

First ballot

Official end result

According to the official final result of the first round of voting announced by the French Ministry of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal came into the runoff election, which took place two weeks later on May 6, 2007.

Results of the first ballot

Results of the first ballot: candidate with a majority of the votes in the departments.

Nicolas Sarkozy

Ségolène Royal

François Bayrou

First ballot,
official final result
candidate	be right	proportion of
Nicolas Sarkozy	11,448,663	31.18%
Ségolène Royal	9,500,112	25.87%
François Bayrou	6,820,119	18.57%
Jean-Marie Le Pen	3,834,530	10.44%
Olivier Besancenot	1,498,581	4.08%
Philippe de Villiers	818.407	2.23%
Marie-George Buffet	707.268	1.93%
Dominique Voynet	576,666	1.57%
Arlette Laguiller	487.857	1.33%
José Bové	483.008	1.32%
Frédéric Nihous	420,645	1.15%
Gérard Schivardi	123,540	0.34%

voter turnout

The first ballot held on April 22, 2007 recorded the third-highest turnout in the history of the Fifth Republic with 83.78% of the people registered on the electoral lists . This is particularly due to the widespread dismay after the first round of the 2002 presidential election. At that time the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen unexpectedly became the second strongest candidate - ahead of the socialist Lionel Jospin (PS) - and ran against Jacques Chirac in the runoff election. April 21, 2002, the date of the first ballot, has since been considered a turning point in French politics. In the 2002 runoff election, Chirac achieved a dream result with 82.2%, as the sympathizers of the left spectrum were forced to vote for him in order to prevent Le Pen as president.

voter turnout
year	at 12 o'clock	at 5 p.m.	All in all
1965			84.8%
1969			77.6%
1974			84.2%
1981	25.9%	66.2%	81.1%
1988	27.1%	69.1%	81.4%
1995	23%	64%	78.4%
2002	21.4%	58.5%	71.6%
2007	31.2%	73.9%	83.8%

Second ballot (runoff)

Results of the second ballot (majorities in the departments).

Nicolas Sarkozy

Ségolène Royal

Official end result

The conservative Nicolas Sarkozy emerged as the winner of the second ballot.

candidate	be right	proportion of
Nicolas Sarkozy	18,983,138	53.06%
Ségolène Royal	16,790,440	46.94%

voter turnout

In the runoff election between Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, according to the French Interior Ministry, the turnout was 34.11% at 12 noon, three percentage points higher than in the first ballot. Such a high voter turnout at that time, at 35.62%, was last seen in 1974 in the runoff election between Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and François Mitterrand . At 5 p.m., 75.11% of all eligible voters had cast their vote. After the polling stations were closed, voter turnout totaled 83.97 percent, the highest level in more than 40 years.

Course of the election campaign before the runoff election

A debate planned by the private television broadcaster Canal + between Royal and the liberal-conservative Bayrou, who ranked third after the first presidential election, was canceled at short notice by the broadcaster with a blanket reference to "legal problems", as there is a rule for the French television stations, according to which both presidential candidates standing in the runoff election are entitled to the same airtime and speaking time. Bayrou then attacked in an interview with the French radio station RTL Sarkozy, who had put pressure on Canal + to prevent the broadcast. The allegation was publicly denied by Sarkozy.

Finally, the discussion between Royal and Bayrou was organized in a hotel in Paris and broadcast live on April 28, 2007 between 11:00 am and 12:30 pm on the private news channel BFM TV . The broadcaster had previously announced that the modalities of the discussion had been agreed with the French media regulator CSA. In this discussion, Royal and Bayrou, alluding to Sarkozy, affirmed that such an exchange of views must be a matter of course in a democracy. Incidentally, Bayrou was careful to clearly differentiate itself from the program content of Royals, which in turn tried to win over Bayrou's voters.

On May 2, 2007, the TV duel between Royal and Sarkozy, followed live by around 23 million television viewers, was broadcast on TF1 and France 2 at 8:30 p.m. in prime time. The French press judged the television duel to be rather undecided, while a survey by the French Opinionway institute carried out on behalf of the conservative French daily Le Figaro found the majority of viewers to be “more convincing” of Sarkozy.

The day after the TV duel between the two finalists Royal and Sarkozy, Bayrou had publicly announced that he would not vote for Sarkozy on May 6, 2007. This statement, in fact support for Royal, corresponds to assessments in "well-informed circles" that, if Royal were elected French President, Bayrou would have expected a good chance of becoming French President in the next but one presidential election in five years France's economic strength achieved by then will be the touchstone for the French head of state elected on May 6, 2007.

Calls for the runoff election

The candidates who were eliminated in the first round of voting, Besancenot, Buffet, Voynet, Laguiller and Bové, called on their voters to vote for Ségolène Royal in the runoff election, while the National Conservative de Villiers, after a brief hesitation, recommended Sarkozy's election.

Due to the high number of 6.8 million voters in the first ballot, the election recommendation of the UDF top candidate Bayrou was not considered to be particularly important. Bayrou told the press on Wednesday after the election that he could not support either Ségolène Royal or Nicolas Sarkozy. Therefore, he wants to leave the decision entirely up to his voters. When asked about his personal voice, he said: “ I still don't know what I'm going to do. I'm starting to know what I'm not going to do. “Referring to Nicolas Sarkozy, Bayrou said that he disapproved of the way in which the UMP candidate was striving for power as“ very closed, very callous, very worrying, threatening ”. The causes of his differences with Ségolène Royal, however, lie in their economic program and the way in which they lead the French to believe that " the state can do everything for its citizens ". A few days before the runoff election he declared that he would "choose not Sarkozy" . He left it open whether he would abstain from voting or choose Royal.

At the FN's May rally, Jean-Marie Le Pen called for an election boycott or abstention from the runoff election.

After the election

Sarkozy was arrested by French police on March 20, 2018 . He is suspected of having received 50 million euros from the Libyan dictator Gaddafi to finance his election campaign.