France's regional elections

Not quite a wipeout

Nicolas Sarkozy still faces tough decisions after his party's crashing electoral defeat

PRESIDENT Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party was soundly beaten in the second round of French regional elections, held on Sunday March 21st, though the defeat could have been worse. In the end, the UMP held on to Alsace, one of only two regions out of 22 in “mainland” France that it governed, while it lost the other, Corsica. The party scored just 35% nationally, next to the 54% bagged by the Socialist Party and Europe Ecologie.

Mr Sarkozy had engaged in damage limitation ahead of time, arguing that a regional poll had no national consequences. But it is hard not to see this result as a mid-term warning to the president two years before he stands for re-election, not least because a raft of government ministers stood on regional lists, and lost. French regions do not have great powers; only a minority of voters can name their regional president. So the elections are often treated as a chance for a protest vote, as happened last time around, in 2004, during Jacques Chirac's presidency, when the Socialists swept up 20 regions.

Nothing to do with me

French voters snubbed Mr Sarkozy in more ways than one. In certain regions, they plumped, massively, for the Socialists and the greens. In Poitou-Charentes, for instance, Ségolène Royal, the regional president, was triumphantly re-elected with over 60% of the vote—up from the 55% she achieved in 2004. But many voters turned to the far-right National Front, which secured 17.8% in the regions in which it was on the ballot in the second round of voting. In Provences-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party's firebrand 81-year-old leader, improved on his first-round score by 2.6 percentage points, grabbing a massive 23%. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, also upped her result in Nord-Pas de Calais, securing 22%.

In some ways, the protest vote reflects economic fears as much as political discontent. The French recession may have been milder than in other European countries, with GDP falling less and for a shorter period than in Germany or Britain. But unemployment has risen fast, and is now running at 10%. Every week seems to bring more factory closures or industrial job losses, and those in work are fearful that they are next in line.

Yet there is also a growing disillusion with Mr Sarkozy and his government. The president's popularity rating has fallen to 36%, its lowest point since he took office. Voters are beginning to doubt his ability to keep his promises, especially about stopping job losses and industrial relocation to low-cost countries. They are uneasy about his plans to reform pensions. And after a string of recent miscalculations, including an effort by his undergraduate son to preside over the board overseeing Paris's La Défense business district, they are also starting to query his judgment. Why, for example, did Mr Sarkozy launch a debate on “national identity” just months before the regional poll, which seemed only to boost the National Front and split the right? Even deputies from within his own political family have begun, openly, to criticise his choices.

Before these elections, Mr Sarkozy had suggested that he would keep his prime minister, François Fillon, whatever the result. The two were due for talks at the Elysée presidential palace on March 22nd. But the president needs to tread a delicate line between his own view that this was not a mid-term protest, and so requires no political response, and the charge that he is deaf to voters' concerns. Claude Guéant, his chief of staff, said that Mr Sarkozy had “decided to listen to the message”, suggesting that some ministers will have to go.

Martine Aubry, leader of the Socialist Party, is triumphant, calling the victory “unprecedented”. She emerges looking, for the first time, like a credible leader on the left. She will no doubt use the result to tighten her grip on the party, and to test her popularity as a potential presidential candidate for 2012. But she also faces troubles of her own. Not least is the fact that her official candidate polled miserably in one region, Languedoc-Rousillon, while Georges Frêche, the outgoing regional president whom she had evicted from the party over an anti-Semitic slur, was re-elected with 54% of the vote. Socialist triumphalism should also be tempered by the fact that, after the party's regional victory in 2004, it then went on to lose the presidential elections three years later—to Mr Sarkozy.