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PARIS (By Elaine Sciolino and Ariane Bernard, NYTimes) May 6, 2007 — Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative candidate, was elected president of France today, sweeping into office in a decisive victory that keeps the right in power for another five years, television projections said.
“To all those French who did not vote for me, I want to say that beyond political battles, beyond differences of opinion, for me there is only one France,” Mr. Sarkozy told supporters in Paris.
“I want to tell them that I will be president of all the French,” he said, according to Reuters.
Mr. Sarkozy, trounced his Socialist adversary, Ségolène Royal, who had hoped to make history by becoming the country’s first woman president.
“Universal suffrage has spoken,” Ms. Royal said. “I wish the next president of the Republic the best in accomplishing his mission in the service of all the French people,” she said, according to Reuters.
Mr. Sarkozy received 53 percent of the vote to 47 percent for Ms. Royal, according to estimates of the CSA polling institute. The IFOP institute published similar results.
Mr. Sarkozy, 52, the former interior and finance minister, ran an extraordinarily disciplined campaign with a united team and a single message: change but not too much change to scare off voters.
Ms. Royal’s direct grass-roots outreach to the French people and her pledge to be their “protector” was revolutionary. But Ms. Royal, a former schools and environment minister, found herself in the odd position of being the candidate of her Socialist Party without enjoying the support of its elite.
Her campaign was fraught with mixed messages, defections and shifting strategies. She never seemed to convince voters that she had enough substance for this powerful office.
Today’s balloting was marked by an extraordinarily high turnout. An estimated 85 percent of France’s 44.5 million registered voters cast their ballots, according to both polling institutes, about five percentage points higher than the level in the second ballot five years ago. In most overseas territories that voted early on Saturday, turnout was significantly higher than in the first round, the Interior Ministry said.
Mr. Sarkozy’s victory means that the Union for a Popular Movement, the party founded by President Jacques Chirac and headed by Mr. Sarkozy, will control the presidential Élysée Palace for a total of 17 years.
The winners were announced when the voting closed in France at 8 p.m. using estimates. Under French election rules, no polls can be released before that time.
Numerous polls had shown Mr. Sarkozy, 52 years old, leading the race, sometimes by 10 points over Ms. Royal. The 53-year-old Ms. Royal was the first woman to ever qualify for the runoff of the presidential election.
Mr. Sarkozy’s style as a tough-talking politician who promised to make the French work harder won him 31.2 percent of the vote in the first round of voting. Ms. Royal cashed in her more consensual image, the nurturing mother figure who pledged to reform France without “brutalizing” it and received 25.9 percent of the vote.
“I voted for Sarkozy,” said Florence Netzier, a 48 year-old marketing specialist after she cast her ballot in the Ninth Arrondissement of Paris. “For his program, because of what he promises on labor and retirement pensions.” Ms. Netzier also likes Ms. Royal, particularly her personality, but, she said, “I don’t trust her capacity to make alliances with others, to put in place what she said she wants to do.”
This view is expressed by many of Ms. Royal’s supporters, with a majority of her backers telling pollsters they chose her either because of loyalty to the socialist party or because they oppose Mr. Sarkozy, mainly on his personality.
“I voted for Sego, but I’m not convinced,” said Sylvie Murelli, a 50-year-old retail real estate developer, after she had voted in Paris. “I am a Socialist by tradition. But even so, the measures that Mr. Sarkozy announced, they are not bad. But he scares me. In itself, if he was able to do what he says, it wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
Even if she supported Ms. Royal, Ms. Murelli said she could live with seeing Mr. Sarkozy move into Élysée Palace.
“I wouldn’t necessarily be unhappy,” she said. “I don’t like how divisive he is, but we will see.”
The pleasant weather and temperatures did not appear to have affected turnout. There is also the temptation to go away for the four-day weekend ending Tuesday, which is a holiday in France.
The official campaign ended on Friday night, giving the French a day of respite from a campaign that has captured the minds of the country. Daily polls and sometimes tense speeches and remarks directed by one candidate reached a fever pitch in a face-to-face televised debate on Wednesday, which Mr. Sarkozy appeared to have won, according to polls.
The two media-savvy candidates, Ms. Royal and Mr. Sarkozy, are also from a generation born after World War II, and the presence in the runoff in 2002 of the far right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen also contributed to building a high-stakes race, with a turnout close to 84 percent in the first round two weeks ago.
Mr. Sarkozy this morning voted with his two step daughters but without his wife in the affluent suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the city of which he was the mayor for almost two decades. Ms Royal arrived alone to cast her ballot in the Poitou-Charentes region, where she is the top official after she conquered this bastion of the right in 2004. Neither spoke to the news media.
Police have readied reinforcements to curb potential outbreaks of street violence upon the announcement of the results tonight. Mr. Sarkozy is seen as a divisive figure among youths of immigrant origin. He famously called young thugs in France’s underprivileged suburbs “scum” in late 2005, just a few days before the country was gripped by a three week wave of unrest after the accidental deaths of two ethnic youths north of Paris.
Ms. Royal in the first round came largely ahead of Mr. Sarkozy in France’s ethnically diverse suburbs. The “anything-but-Sarkozy” phenomenon is particularly strong there.
“I fear a greater narrow-mindedness with Sarkozy in power,” said Pierreck Longatte, 35, a store manager who voted in Aubervilliers, north of Paris. Europe “doesn’t need more Berlusconis or Sarkozys,” he said, referring to the former Italian prime minister.
But Ms. Royal’s perceived deficit of credibility, also won her some opposition.
“It’s a vote against Ségolène, I find her completely lame,” said Francis Ethesse, a 50-year-old teacher at a disadvantaged high school north of the capital, as he voted in Paris. He said he supported Mr. Sarkozy, particularly for his position concerning France’s troubled suburbs.
Mr. Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant who fled communism, has two sons from a first marriage and a young son from his current wife, Cecilia, is a lawyer by training. He served as interior minister and finance minister during President Chirac’s second term, starting in 2002. He was also budget minister and government spokesman in the early 1990s.
Ms. Royal, the daughter of a career military officer, has four children with her partner, the Socialist Party leader François Hollande. She is a magistrate who graduated from France’s top school for civil servants, the ENA. She served in various junior minister positions in the 1990s, under François Mitterrand and under Mr. Chirac.
