Is the Marine Le Pen (and Nigel Farage, and more importantly Patrick Buisson) vision of re-organising the French Right around the FN viable? I prepared what follows for use elsewhere, but I think it helps here.

It isn’t as obvious as you may think that FN voters are the lost sheep of the Right.

In so far as they’re protesting, they’re protesting against French conservative neoliberal euro-atlanticism. This ought to be obvious, because who’s been in charge all these years? Conservative neoliberal euro-atlanticists. The 5th Republic has mostly been governed by conservatives.

Typical FN voters aren’t, in fact, ex-communist voters, but rather, PCF voters’ kids. Studies of the FN electoral breakthrough found that it was actually quite rare for people to switch from the PCF or the PS to the FN. Instead, FN voters in the 1988 and 2002 breakthroughs were typically first-time voters in places that traditionally voted Communist.

As Bernard Girard explains, this time out the FN did well with exurban voters, especially first-time house buyers who did the French equivalent of “driving until you qualify” in the US housing bubble. This meant that places suffering from rural depopulation were partly converted into suburbs, not necessarily getting any more in the way of public services or economic development in the process, and leaving the new exurbanites vulnerable to property and petrol prices. Interestingly, this suggests that the Tea Party and the modern FN are parallel phenomena.

It strikes me that a lot of French politics in the last decade can be summed up as “France discovers that it has suburbs” and in fact I did a post on Fistful about this back in 2007. So, after this somewhat protracted radar vectoring around the Ile-de-France basin, we finally come back onto final approach. If you vote FN, you probably don’t have any socio-cultural ties to French conservatism or any intellectual conviction of its ideas, which in any case are radically opposed to those of the FN, and you’re protesting against French conservatives because they’re the ones in charge, and it makes no sense to assume that you’ll necessarily come back to vote for the conservatives, because you are an extreme-rightist and not a conservative.

FN thinking is far more sceptical of capitalism, more protectionist, more anti-European, and more anti-American than UMP thinking. FN style and tone are far more working-class than the UMP’s. The FN is mostly after a different demographic to the conservatives. The exurbanites sound more like the material of a conservative party…if it wasn’t for the fact they are furious with the conservative party, furious enough to vote for the sort-of fascists.

This has two key consequences. The first is that trying to merge the UMP and the FN might not work, because UMP people don’t want the same things as FN people. The second is that trying to make the FN the replacement for the UMP might not work, because FN people don’t want to be a boring conservative neoliberal Euroatlantic party. They want to vote something that hurts the boring conservative neoliberals.

Now, before the election, pollsters were working on the principle that about 20-30 per cent of FN voters would vote Sarkozy, between 15-25% would switch across to Hollande, and the rest would follow the party line and spoil their ballot or stay at home. We’ll need more data to know whether this happened, and no doubt it is coming. My gut impression is that the pandering had some effect and is partly responsible for the late tightening in the polls, but I don’t actually have any data that supports it. Turnout fell noticeably between the rounds – the difference could be Mélénchonistes who decided that the Left would win anyway and they didn’t need to compromise in round 2, for example.

Anyway, it didn’t have enough effect to win, and winning counts.

If the PS isn’t going to give us red meat faction politics, who will? The UMP, that’s who. The parliamentary elections are only weeks away. Nicolas Sarkozy has ruled out taking part in the campaign, and so has Alain Juppé, who has decided not to stand for a parliamentary seat in favour of concentrating on his job as mayor of Bordeaux. (Don’t assume that means he’s ruled anything out in the longer term, though.)

Everyone will have to find some sort of modus vivendi to get through the campaign, but after that it’s a free for all. There are perhaps three key groups in the UMP. Let’s work through them.

One group are the sarkozystes, the former president’s personal following. Despite many efforts to identify a shared ideology among them, the biggest common factor between them is that they are relatively comfortable with the extreme Right, and many of them (like Sarko’s advisor Patrick Buisson) have a background in it, whether the FN, the wider extreme-rightist student movement, or the network around Charles Pasqua and the dodgy fringe of Gaullism. Sarkozy’s personal court was always pretty febrile, and the experience of defeat is only going to make them more so.

As Marine Le Pen is talking about trying to re-organise the Right around her party, they are the ones who like the idea and will try to reach out, although of course they will see it as bringing the FN into the UMP rather than vice versa. But they will also have to decide who their leader is, and that will be a vicious experience.

Group two are the traditional Gaullists, who weren’t particularly happy with Sarkozy and fluctuated between putting up with him and outright sabotage. They are deeply suspicious of the FN, and one of their leaders, the former PM and current senator Raffarin, actually broke surface to criticise Sarko for pandering even before he lost. Look out for much talk about needing to rassembler, social peace, and the Republic. They will see Sarkozy as having lost a great conservative opportunity, and will be after revenge.

And then you have the overlap with the old droite classique, the heritage of Giscard, who don’t like the Gaullists much and don’t really want to be in a party with them. Neither do they like the far Right much, even if some people have been involved in both.

Actually, memberships and life histories tend to overlap all three, which is not surprising in a party whose original raison d’etre was just to support Jacques Chirac in the 2002 parliamentary.

The big short term decision is what strategy to adopt for the parliamentary elections, and how far to cooperate with the FN. Three-way marginal seats between the PS (or other left-wing candidate), UMP, and FN are common, and the question is whether to ally with the FN or fight it for every vote. It’s not hard to see how this fits with the factional divide, but it fits so well with it that it may end up being fudged in order to maintain some degree of unity. The fudge would be to say nothing and tacitly leave it to local initiatives, which has happened before.

The strategic question is whether to head for the centre or to keep going with the Sarkozy/Buisson strategy of “droitisation”. The sarkozystes will point to the fact that the polls pulled in some between the two rounds as evidence that the strategy was working. Everyone else will point to the fact that they still lost as evidence that pandering to the FN turns off moderates, and perhaps that FN voters aren’t sociologically very compatible with the UMP.

Meanwhile, of course, the Left has its own analogous question, which is whether and under what terms to cooperate. Ensuring a left-wing government is very important to the PS, and the degree of influence that the Front de Gauche will have as an awkward partner is vastly greater than what it would have yelling in opposition. Their incentives are to agree, and the cultural gap is less troublesome. Also, coalition between the parties of the Left is a feature of some of its proudest moments, and you can’t say the same about cooperation between French conservatism and the extreme Right.

No need to guess what’s got the headlines. Mediapart published what purports to be a document demonstrating that (as has been repeatedly rumoured) Libya offered Nicolas Sarkozy a substantial sum of money (€50 million) for his 2007 campaign. The finances of Sarkozy and the broader French right are a deep dark subject, as the continuing Karachi affair makes clear – the treasurer of the 1995 Balladur campaign just described how they concealed large donations in used banknotes. Of course, the campaign manager was none other than Nicolas Sarkozy. Quite a few of the same personalities involved also turn up in the note. It’s not clear, even if the document is genuine, if the money was ever paid out, and its addressee denies ever receiving it. Meanwhile, the arms dealer Ziad Takieddine, who shows up in the whole range of scandals, says he was refused entry to France in the hope of preventing him from producing the document.

However, so far the response from the Sarkozy camp has just been to complain that it’s “undignified” and to point out that the legal maximum campaign spending is €22 million. Obviously you’d have to be naive to think that this somehow excludes finding something else to do with the spare money.

Obviously, the frantic last chance that the interval between the two rounds provides brings everyone with a grudge boiling up to the surface. Dominique Strauss-Kahn re-appeared, with what claims to be an interview with him appearing in the Guardian (rather-too-helpfully translated here) and causing Nicolas Sarkozy to start talking about him a lot. Weirdly, DSK then walked it back, denying that the piece was an interview. Perhaps it helped to move some books. The founder of Rue89 publishes an open letter calling on him to shut up.

Sarko, meanwhile, claims that he’s hoping for a unprecedented mobilisation of the electorate, although the 80% turnout in the first round didn’t seem to help his cause much. Both candidates finish their formal campaigns with a rally today, before the TV debate on Wednesday night.

In terms of actual content, the debate between the rounds has been marked by both candidates denying they were trying to suck up to the FN while also doing so. Rue89 takes a left-wing view of the FN electorate. Sarkozy announces he wants “a presumption of self defence” for the police, in a transparent sop to the FN, while also denying that he would ever form a coalition with them, although also basking in FN rhetoric. He also did a bit of culture war. There are limits to this: Sarko’s enemies in his own party, including two former prime ministers, are angry about the pandering.

Pandering is bipartisan, of course: Hollande has discovered a desire to have an annual parliamentary debate on an immigration quota, as well as doing a bit of security politics about policemen and cannabis. The PS has been measuring the dosage carefully, though – Ségoléne Royal was sent out to remind the public that the party wants foreigners to have the vote, at least in local elections, as a form of republican integration. However, this promise goes back as far as Mitterand’s 1981 campaign and has yet to be implemented.

Hollande is also trying to score off the European Union, or rather, off the ECB and Angela Merkel. In an interview this weekend, she suggested that she might be willing to support a “growth agenda”, perhaps making use of the EIB, but also said nobody was going to re-open the stability pact. Hollande took the credit and remarked that things had moved and were going to move further.

Le Pen and Mélénchon, meanwhile, are looking ahead to the parliamentary elections in June. Interestingly, the deal setting up the Front de Gauche gave the Communists the majority of parliamentary candidates in exchange for letting JLM run for president, but the man himself is bored with being an MEP and feels the need for a bigger megaphone in French politics. A big deal for both will be whether they can get an agreement with the bigger party on their side of politics to cooperate in three-way marginal seats. This is crucial for the smaller parties, as you need to get 12.5% of the vote in round one to be on the ballot in round two. The UMP and the PS are both playing hard to get.

Out with the PS in La Courneuve, where the local secretary reminds us that Barack Obama didn’t invent canvassing.

Apparently, Nigel Farage has been suggesting that Marine Le Pen dump the FN and create something like UKIP. All I can say to that is that perhaps he could give advice when he gets one in five Britons to vote for him as prime minister.

Wondering what I meant about Mélénchon performing Frenchness? L’Humanité does an in-depth interview, in which he says as much. If you read French, well worth reading the whole thing. Anyway, his take-home message is that the mission is now just to beat (even to eliminate) the Right.

Elsewhere, IFOP reckons 31% of FN voters are reverse-switchers, but then they were off by 2.5 on both MLP and JLM, and not too good on Sarko or Hollande either.

So far, Le Pen has won one département, the Gard, a mountainous, wild, Protestant former Communist fief down south, where she got 25.5% of the vote, with Sarkozy and Hollande on 24% each and Mélénchon on 13%.

Looking at the first few results from Paris, I get the impression Mélénchon’s campaign did poorly in the capital. This may just be because some districts haven’t reported yet, but he got scores around 13% in quite a few départements and he’s struggled to break 10% in Paris so far. Hollande got 43% in the 18th, for example.

The first post-election poll is in, and it has Hollande winning 54% to 46%. The inner workings are interesting; they reckon that 33% of the Bayrou votes go to the PS, 32% to Sarko, and the rest nowhere, 86% of the Mélénchon votes go PS, 60% of the FN go Sarkozy, 18% go PS, the rest nowhere. You can see why Sarko is still trying to get more FN voters.

IPSOS was within 0.2 percentage points of the current estimated result for Hollande, which is excellent, and 0.6 for Sarko, which is OK, but they were out by 3 for Mélénchon and 2.5 for Le Pen, so set your Bayesian estimator accordingly.

Also, here’s a chart of the FN vote over time:

Rundown of the statements. Hollande, perhaps taking the accusation of being dull to heart: “Plusieurs faits majeurs sortent de ce scrutin. Le premier est que je suis en tête du premier tour.” Le Pen says the vote lets her supporters join the table of the elite, an odd statement from someone who certainly won’t be in round two. Mélénchon reminds everyone to be anti-Sarkozy, i.e. passing his support to Hollande without saying so. Bayrou’s saying nothing much until he’s met the two leading candidates. Sarko wants extra TV debates, gambling on survival.

Results are being revised down a tad, with the gap between the leaders a little less. For what it’s worth, IPSOS’s exit poll crossbreak for working-class voters is as follows: Le Pen 30 %, Hollande 27 %, Sarkozy 18 %, Mélenchon 12 %, Bayrou 8 %. IPSOS also reckons the 2nd round will go 54-46 Hollande.

Here’s an interview with some FN activists, quite a few of whom won’t behave as expected in round two. Some estimates put the percentage of reverse switchers (FN->PS) at up to 27%.

And here’s a table summarising the polling data. Everyone seems to have over-estimated Mélénchon and Bayrou and under-estimated Le Pen, but the estimate on Hollande seems to be improving a bit as the results tighten up.

The first estimated results are in. 28.4% Hollande, 25.5% Sarkozy, 20% Le Pen, 11.7% Mélénchon, 8.7% Bayrou.

The final polls for Sarko were pretty much right, in the context of a margin of error of 1% either way. That makes him the only sitting president to lose the first round, ever. Hollande beat the spread by half a percentage point beyond the margin of error – which makes him the best scorer ever for the Left in a first round, and makes the polls look poor. The margin or error for the second-tier candidates is wider, more like 2 points either way. But with Le Pen coming in 4 percentage points over the last polls, 2 points out of the spread, and Mélénchon almost as far below the polls, it’s been a bad night for the pollsters. In fact, Le Pen beat her father’s record from 2002, and nobody predicted that.

French radio has already made the interesting point that Sarkozy had pursued a strategy of turning to the hard right in the final stages of the campaign, with a view to moving to the centre for the second round. This is a classic recipe for winning the two-round election, but it hasn’t been missed that it was Sarko’s adviser Patrick Buisson who suggested it, and he’s the former editor of the extreme right’s favourite magazine, Minute, one of many old extreme-rightists on Sarkozy’s staff. The problem is that he still needs to get the centre on board, but with 20% of the electorate to his right, he needs to cover that flank as well, which may well be impossible.

So, the Socialists and the FN won; Mélénchon, Sarkozy, and the pollsters lost.

A longstanding attack line on Hollande was that he was a sort of vague fat guy. This was silly, in part – his biggest job in politics was running the PS organising machine, and that’s not the sort of thing you do if you’re flaky on details or unwilling to put in the hours. This NYT profile isn’t much cop but does contain something interesting.

He described how no one thought François Mitterrand, France’s first and only Socialist president, had a chance of winning. “Often people told me, ‘Oh, la, la, François Mitterrand, what charisma, what a president!’ But before he became president, they used to call him badly dressed, old, archaic, he knows nothing about the economy.” But the day he was elected, Hollande said, Mitterrand was transformed.

This is true. Back at the end of December, I took issue with the whole notion of being “presidential” on my own blog. I found that the last two occasions there was a change of prime minister in the UK both saw a strongly statistically significant uplift in polling data for the guy who got the job. In 2005, when Tony Blair remained prime minister, there was no such change.

If you want to look like the president, become the president. The qualities we think of as being those of the president are an artefact of the halo effect; we know he or she has them, because we associate them with the office.