French Election: Sarkozy Seeks Far-Right Support After Losing First Round

April 23, 2012 from Al Jazeera English

Socialist candidate Francois Hollande is leading France's presidential election race. He has won the first round of voting, but the situation is still uncertain. Hollande still faces opposition from incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and pressure from the electorate of far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Tim Friend reports from Paris.

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Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy is a French politician who served as the 23rd President of France from 16 May 2007 until 15 May 2012. Before his presidency, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement. Under Jacques Chirac's presidency he served as Minister of the Interior in Jean-P... Explore this topic

François Hollande

François Gérard Georges Nicolas Hollande is the 24th and current President of France and Co-Prince of Andorra. He was previously the First Secretary of the French Socialist Party from 1997 to 2008, and the Deputy of the National Assembly of France for Corrèze's 1st Constituenc... Explore this topic

French presidential election, 2012

A presidential election was held in France on 22 April 2012, with a second round run-off held on 6 May to elect the President of France. The incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy was running for a second successive and, under the terms of the constitution, final term in the election. The ... Explore this topic

Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen is a lawyer by profession, a French right-wing politician and the president of the Front National, the third-largest political party in France, since 16 January 2011. She is the youngest daughter of the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen, former president of the... Explore this topic

Politics of France

France is a semi-presidential representative democratic republic, in which the President of France is head of state and the Prime Minister of France is the head of government, and there is a pluriform, multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legisla... Explore this topic

Union for a Popular Movement (UMP)

The Union for a Popular Movement is a centre-right political party in France, being one of the two major contemporary political parties in the country along with the centre-left Socialist Party. The UMP was formed in 2002 as a merger of several centre-right parties under Presi... Explore this topic

French Socialist Party

The Socialist Party is a social-democratic political party in France and the largest party of the French centre-left. The PS is one of the two major contemporary political parties in France, along with the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement. The party replaced the earli... Explore this topic

Far-right politics

The terms far right, or extreme right, describe the broad range of political groups and ideologies usually taken to be further to the right of the mainstream center-right on the traditional left-right spectrum. Far right politics commonly involves support for strong inequality... Explore this topic

France

France, officially the French Republic, is a unitary semi-presidential republic located mostly in Western Europe, with several overseas regions and territories. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine ... Explore this topic

Two-round system

The two-round system is a voting system used to elect a single winner where the voter casts a single vote for their chosen candidate. However, if no candidate receives the required number of votes, then those candidates having less than a certain proportion of the votes, or al... Explore this topic

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Nicolas Sarkozy

François Hollande

French presidential election, 2012

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