France:Presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has had a nightmare campaign, writes Lara Marlowein Paris.
The opinion poll in yesterday's Le Parisienwas like manna from heaven for Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.
Five days before the first round of the presidential election, it showed her tied for first place, 50/50, against the right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 6th runoff.
It was the first time in a month that Royal had caught up with Sarkozy; little matter that another poll by a different institute showed Sarkozy would win by 52 per cent against 48 per cent for her.
The poll shows Sarkozy ahead for Sunday's first round, with 27 per cent, and Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean Marie Le Pen on 25, 19, and 15.5 per cent respectively.
It has been a difficult campaign for Royal. "Nothing has been spared me," she complained on Sunday night.
Last November and December, Royal was "the Madonna of the opinion polls", the undisputed front runner who looked set to become France's first woman president. Since February, she's been fighting just to keep a place in the run-off.
In early 2006, I spoke to dozens of voters who said they wanted Royal to be president "because she's a woman". Unlike Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel, Royal played on her femininity. "I assume my womanhood as an advantage," she said this week. "It's an extremely powerful embodiment of change. . . When there will be three women in the G8, Angela Merkel, Hillary Clinton and me, that'll be something, won't it?"
Royal's emphasis on gender in the last stage of her campaign is shown by her new slogan: "La France Présidente", meaning something like "presidential France", but in the feminine. In the meantime, fickle French voters seem to have zapped away from the gender question; no one this year has told me they will vote for her "because she's a woman". If Royal loses, it will be more because France is right-wing rather than sexist. The combined first-round vote attributed to right-wing candidates is more than 60 per cent.
Initially, Royal's strict Catholic upbringing in a military family reassured right-wing voters. In the early days of her campaign, she gave the impression she would transform French socialists into modern social democrats. She spoke approvingly of Tony Blair's economic policies, and threatened to use the army to discipline juvenile delinquents.
But instead of consolidating and enlarging her centrist electorate, Royal tried to court the extreme left, with little success. Arlette Laguiller, the Trotskyist candidate, calls her a traitor to the workers' cause. A few reformist socialists still delude themselves that, like General de Gaulle who promised to keep Algeria French and then granted it independence, Royal could be elected on promises to preserve the welfare state but then oversee France's adaptation to the reality of market economics.
Unlike Sarkozy, Royal gives the impression of being ill at ease with the media and public speaking. She is a poor orator; her delivery is monotone and wooden. Sarkozy is a close friend of the owners of the leading French radio and television stations, and at least three leading newspapers and magazines.
By stringing even major media along for weeks, then repeatedly cancelling interviews at the last minute, Royal has not endeared herself to journalists.
Her foreign policy gaffes have increased her distrust of media, and strengthened concerns about her competence. Only last week, she suggested sanctions against the "Taliban regime" in Afghanistan if two French hostages there were harmed. The Taliban was overthrown in 2001.
To be fair, there has been a double standard. When Royal did not know how many nuclear submarines were in the French fleet, she was mocked. When Sarkozy gave a wrong answer, it went almost unreported.
Earlier in her campaign, Royal postponed difficult policy questions, saying she did not have all the answers, that she would respond in due course. It was like waiting for Godot; the answers never came.
She has tried unsuccessfully to make joblessness and declining purchasing power key issues. Voters are not convinced that her promises of 500,000 state-financed jobs for young people, or to raise the minimum monthly wage to €1,500, will really solve these problems.
Sarkozy is a master at manipulating news events, whereas Royal's first reaction to breaking news is often "no comment". Last weekend Sarkozy made political hay from a murder case, publicly hugging the mother of a young woman in Marseilles who'd been stoned to death. Two days later, Royal gave the impression she was trying to catch up, announcing at a rally in Nantes that she had telephoned the family of a young woman from that city whose had been raped and murdered.
Royal loves proposed measures; her presidential programme consists of 100 of them. But they don't add up to a clear sense of vision. If she loses the presidential election, it may be because the French fear she's offering the old socialist recipes of meetings, quotas, verbiage and reports.