This was essentially as suspected. Sarkozy filled predictions by becoming the first ever incumbent president of France, the resident president, to lose in the first round of a French general election. Francois Hollande, the socialist who previously had promised to tax the rich at 75%, took the win by gaining 28.6% of the vote to Sarkozy's 27.1%.
Ten candidates took part, so the vote was split over a wide range of people. The shock and some might say horror of the night was the fact that Marinne Le Pen of the National Front won 18.1% of the vote..thereby coming in third place.
The gap as it stands between Hollande and Sarkozy is relatively small, however pollsters predict that the eventual final result after the upcoming round two, remember the top two candidates fight on, will be a solid 55% of the vote to Hollande against Sarkozy's 45%.
So pollsters are expecting the lost votes of the other eight candidates to mostly go to Hollande. The only fly in the ointment in relation to that prediction, is that Marinne Le Pen polled higher than pollsters expected. If Sarkozy was to seduce her supporters into voting for him, both being right wingers although one much further right than the other, he could just win through. But as it stands most of the other candidates are throwing their weight behind Francois Hollande.
According to pundits Sarkozy is generally deeply unpopular in France right across the board, his own supporters apart, Carla Bruni his wife has not proved to be an asset. So to sum up...the next couple of weeks should be interesting with Sarkozy in effect fighting for his political life. If he loses he is clearly finished with bigtime politics, so things could get nasty and desperate.
Francois Hollande is not hugely charismatic, he is the ordinary man, the normal guy, the chap at the corner shop buying a bottle of milk and a bagette...but it looks like he is going to win and wont be cowtowing to Merkel on the EU stage. Further instability could be coming up for the Eurozone.
Here is the man himself as seen in post 10 but now the image becoming ever more significant..