Reuters, Jan 23, 2017 – Benoit Hamon, a former Socialist government rebel, won the first round of a primary on Sunday and will meet ex-prime minister Manuel Valls in a runoff to decide who will be the candidate of the beleaguered left in a presidential election in spring.
Hamon, 49, a traditional leftwinger who was sacked from government by President Francois Hollande for criticizing his economic policies, coasted to a comfortable win ahead of Valls, a former Hollande loyalist in government, according to partial results.
With the field now whittled down from seven candidates to two and Valls and Hamon set to meet mid-week for what could be a testy televised debate, the final outcome was hard to predict.
But former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg, who trailed in third place, gave Hamon, a party ally on the left, an advantage by criticizing Valls’s pro-business policies and urging his supporters to vote for Hamon next Sunday.
Either way, opinion polls indicate that no Socialist candidate has much chance of getting beyond the first round of the election in April-May.
The Socialist party, for decades one of the main political forces in France, has become marginalized as Hollande failed to bring high unemployment down and alienated left-wing voters with his economic policies.
But the Socialists’ final choice on January 29 could have an impact on the election fortunes of the front-runners for the Elysee – conservative Francois Fillon, far-right leader Marine Le Pen and popular independent Emmanuel Macron.
Polls indicate Fillon, a former prime minister who has The Republicans ticket, is most likely to win if he is pitted against National Front leader Le Pen in a May 7 head-to-head.
But Macron, a 39-year-old former banker and one-time economy minister who pushes a centrist agenda and tries to appeal to both left and Right is attracting large crowds to rallies and could yet upset the balance.