Analyzing the First Round of the French Presidential Election: The Anger of France’s Losers of Globalization
by Gabriel Goodliffe

On the face of it, the first round of the French 2012 presidential elections went according to script. The Socialist candidate François Hollande—who came first with 28.6% of the vote—will square off, as predicted, against Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the Right who garnered 27.2% of the vote, in the second round run-off on May 6. However, beyond this widely anticipated run-off, the first round results confounded the pundits’ expectations in two important respects.