Following last weekend's latest latest "stunning" political outcome, in which French former PM Francois Fillon trounced pollsters' favorite Alain Juppe in the first round of the French conservative primary and which saw the latest political career termination for former president Nicolas Sarkozy, on Sunday the two former prime ministers are going head-to-head in a runoff vote for France's center-right presidential nomination, with the victor expected to face a showdown against a resurgent Marine Le Pen in the May 2017 presidential election.
In next year’s presidential election, the conservative nominee’s toughest competition will come from the right-wing National Front leader Marine Le Pen. Polls in the build-up to the primaries showed Le Pen ahead in the first round of next year’s vote, with a Republican candidate also making it to the runoff. France goes to the polls in April 2017 for the presidential election with the second round scheduled to be held in May.
In the first round of the Republican Party primary held on November 20, Fillon, who served as the prime minister from 2007-2012, won 44.1 percent of the vote, beating Juppe, who secured 28.6 percent.
The winner, either Francois Fillon or Alain Juppe, will most likely represent the entire French political mainstream against the National Front's Marine Le Pen, in what Reuters dubs another test of the anti-establishment anger in Western countries that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Americans elect Donald Trump as president.
Fillon is a surprise frontrunner who heads into the runoff on November 27 after being “more convincing” during the two hour TV debate with his rival Juppe, who was prime minister of France from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac.
Having previously declared Juppe a favorite for the presidency until last weekend, opinion polls have since swung and now show Fillon, a social conservative with a deep attachment to France's Catholic roots, as the clear favorite after stunning his more centrist challenger with a surge in support just before the Nov. 20 party nomination first round. Still, recent lessons from Brexit and the US presidential election suggest that one should be very careful with poll predictions, which is why a Juppe surge is not out of the question.
Voting opened at more than 10,000 polling stations across France at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and was set to close at 7 p.m. (1p.m. Eastern) with the first results likely up to an hour and a half later.
A 62-year-old racing car enthusiast who lives in a Loire valley chateau, Fillon promises radical reforms to France's regulation-encumbered economy, vowing to roll back the state and slash government's bloated costs.
Scrambling to regain momentum, Juppe, 71, a soft-mannered moderate who is now mayor of Bordeaux, has attacked the "brutality" of his rival's reform program and says the Paris lawmaker lacks credibility. But in a blow to Juppe, television viewers found the harder-line Fillon more convincing in a head-to-head debate on Thursday.
While both candidates are running as Republicans, there are substantial difference in their platforms, with the following key distinctions in foreign, economic and social policy courtesy of RT:
- On foreign policy, Fillon is seen as having little experience with international affairs. Juppe, on the other hand, was in office when the Arab Spring unfolded in the wider Middle East. Fillon, unlike his rival, has a positive outlook on Paris’ relations with Moscow. Unlike Juppe, who sees Russia as more of a threat to be contained, the 62-year-old has called Moscow a “crucial partner” for Europe and has supported calls for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. The two hopefuls also diverge on Syria. Seventy-one-year-old Juppe said Russia had committed “war crimes” in Syria, while Fillon wants closer cooperation with Moscow in fighting terrorism. Fillon is the author of a book called, “Beating Islamic Totalitarianism,” and advocates a hard line against Islamist terrorism at home. He wants to bar French jihadists from returning to France after fighting in Syria or Iraq by stripping them of their citizenship. Juppe has a somewhat softer approach to terrorism and supports the arrest of jihadists returning from Iraq or Syria. He has also made calls to place suspected Islamist radicals who pose a threat under house arrest.
- On the economic front, Fillon advocates tough free-market positions. His economic proposals include cutting 500,000 to 600,000 civil servant jobs and cutting public spending by €110 billion ($117bn). He also wants to raise the retirement age from the current 62 years to 65 years and VAT rates by 3.5 percent. The Republican also advocates for ending the 35-hour work week, allowing unions to negotiate up to 48-hour working weeks. Juppe has similar proposals but without the shock therapy. His proposals include firing only 250,000 civil servant jobs and cutting public spending by €100 billion ($106bn). The 71-year-old wants to end job guarantees for civil servants, and increase the work week to 38 hours. Just like Fillon, Juppe wants to raise the retirement age. He also wants to increase VAT rates by 1 percent.
- On social policy, the 62-year-old Fillon, for instance, opposes same-sex partners adopting children. Such a conservative agenda has allowed him to secure votes among anti-gay marriage groups. He also advocates making it harder for children born to foreign surrogate mothers to obtain French citizenship. Juppe, while on the campaign trail, stated that he does not plan to amend the 2013 gay marriage law to prohibit adoptions or change France’s adoption rules.
Today's vote is expected to see a substantial turnout with Reuters reporting that according to organizers from the center-right party by midday the participation rate was 10 to 15% higher than in last week's first round.
Public reactions to the two candidtes are, as in other recent political votes, polarizing.
"He's not ashamed of being on the right, and even less of being Catholic," Fillon backer Valerie Sonnard, a childminder in her forties, told Reuters at a polling station in Toulouse, southern France on Sunday.
"My choice is Francois Fillon because I don't want a right that is tainted by the left," said Harold Bakinsian, a 51 year-old architect voting in Frejus on the Mediterranean coast.
As the two candidates voted, Fillon told reporters: "It is the voters who are talking now, not the candidate."
Juppe meanwhile said he was proud of his campaign, but also complained over the way he had been cast on social media as soft on Islamist militancy - a sensitive subject in France, where more than 230 people have died in Islamist militant attacks since January last year. "Some truths came out too late," he said.
Since any registered voter can take part in the primary, the outcome of the vote is especially hard to predict.
As noted above, another consideration in picking today's winner is that the he will be France's consensus candidate expected to stop the National Front, a fact which could help the more centrist Juppe, particularly if many voters from outside the ranks of the center-right take part. "I voted for Alain Juppe because I fear Francois Fillon's economic program, too rightist and too conservative, will divide society too much," said Daniel Dunia, a Toulouse-based researcher in his forties who considers himself a leftwing voter.
Which brings us again to the determination by local pollsters who have decided that the winner of the center-right primary will be the favorite to enter the Elysee palace, likely to place in the top two alongside Le Pen in a first round in April and defeat her in a run-off in May. Polls show either Fillon or Juppe would beat Le Pen, Juppe would do so by a more comfortable margin. But as even Reuters admits - whose daily Reuters/IPSOS polling showed Hillary Clinton a decisive leader in the days ahead of the US election - the shock results in the British referendum and U.S. presidential contest mean forecasters' assumptions are being treated with caution.
Like in the UK and US, local voters are angry: they say they are fed up with France's near double-digit rate of unemployment, nearly double that of some European peers, and sluggish job creation in an economy that is forecast to grow an anemic 1.4 percent in 2016.
Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande is so unpopular and his Socialists so divided that pollsters say he would be unlikely even to reach the run-off should he decide to run. With France still under a state of emergency since Islamist militant attacks over the past two years, cultural tensions in a country that hosts Europe's biggest Muslim community have been central to the election debate. Hollande has two weeks in which to decide whether to run for re-election. A win for Fillon and his hardline economic platform would give the 62-year-old Hollande a target to attack and could convince him to make a bid for a second five-year mandate against the odds. His Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, is also gearing up to stand. The Socialist primaries are due to take place in January.
* * *
For the first results of today's vote tune in around 2:30pm Eastern time, and remember there is much more excitement ahead: voter anger is sweeping aside establishment figures in Western countries, with Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi forecast to lose a referendum on constitutional reform on Dec 4, the same day as the Austrian presidential election revote in which a right-wing candidate is favorite to win. Germany's Angela Merkel faces a fight for re-election next year. Europe's full political calendar is below, courtesy of SocGen: