...have all elected center-right governments in recent years. And unless he's caught in bed wirh a live boy or a dead girl, Tory David Cameron looks poised to be the next PM of the UK.
Looks like democratic socialism has started to lose it's luster. There's hope for Western Civilization yet.
French Voters Turn Out in Record Numbers
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May 6, 11:39 AM (ET)
By ANGELA DOLAND
PARIS (AP) - French voters turned out Sunday in numbers not seen in nearly 40 years in a presidential election offering divergent choices for the future, with conservative Nicolas Sarkozy urging the French to work more and Socialist Segolene Royal pledging to safeguard welfare protections.
Surveys suggest Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, has a strong edge over Royal, who would become France's first female president if she wins. The most recent survey, taken by Ipsos/Dell on Friday, said he was leading 55 percent to her 45 percent.
As evening fell, turnout at the polls was at 75 percent in mainland France - the highest comparable rate on record, going back to 1969, the Interior Ministry said.
Both Sarkozy, who says he had to fight harder because of his foreign roots, and Royal, a mother of four who says she had to overcome sexism, are originals in French politics and energized an electorate craving new direction.
Whoever wins, the race marks a generational shift, because a 50-something will replace 74-year-old Jacques Chirac, in office for 12 years. But Sarkozy and Royal, nicknamed Sarko and Sego, have radically different formulas for how to revive France's sluggish economy, reverse its declining international clout and improve the lives of the impoverished residents of housing projects where largely minority youth rioted in 2005.
Sarkozy, 52, says France's 35-hour work week is absurd and proposes relaxing labor laws to encourage hiring. A former interior minister, Sarkozy cracked down on drunk driving, crime and illegal immigration.
He is an admirer of the United States who has borrowed from some American policy ideas. Tough-talking and blunt, he alienated many in France's housing projects when he called young delinquents "scum."
Police were quietly keeping watch for possible unrest Sunday night in France's poor, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods if Sarkozy is elected. Authorities in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris - the epicenter of the 2005 rioting - refused officers' requests for days off Sunday, one official said.
At a polling station near Paris' Champs-Elysees, Anne Combemale said she voted for Sarkozy because of his market-oriented economic platform.
"He has the willpower to change France," said Combemale, 43, who is unemployed.
To push through change, the winner will need a majority in French legislative elections in June. Sarkozy has drawn up a whirlwind program for his first 100 days in office and plans to put big reforms before parliament at a special session in July: One bill would make overtime pay tax-free to encourage people to work more, and another would put in place tougher sentencing for repeat offenders.
Royal, 53, is a former environment minister who believes France must keep its welfare protections strong. She wants to raise the minimum wage, create 500,000 state-funded starter jobs for youths and build 120,000 subsidized housing units a year. But she's also pragmatic and acknowledges that the 35-hour work week has had both benefits and drawbacks that she wants to smooth out.
Bechir Chakroun, a 26-year-old who works in marketing, said he liked Royal's commitment to helping the poor.
"She represents change, I want to see what a woman can do," he said.
Royal is strong on the environment and schools but has made a series of foreign policy gaffes - suggesting, for instance, that the Canadian province of Quebec deserved independence. During the campaign, Sarkozy's camp portrayed Royal as a lightweight with unclear ideas, while hers painted him as brutal, a bully - once Royal even called Sarkozy the "bogeyman."
If Royal loses, it will mark the Socialists' third straight defeat in presidential elections. The party managed to glue itself back together after splitting in two over the 2005 referendum on the proposed European constitution, when many of its leaders broke from the party line to urge the French to vote it down.
The rise of centrist candidate Francois Bayrou - who had a strong third-place showing in the first-round vote on April 22, though he was eliminated - suggests the Socialists will need soul-searching about whether to move toward the center like other leftist parties around Europe, or stick to their traditional alliances with the far-left.
This week, as poll numbers suggested Royal's chances were slim, she made a last-ditch effort to rip into Sarkozy, warning of the chance for new riots if he is elected and calling him "a dangerous choice" for France.
Sarkozy retorted in an interview published in Le Parisien newspaper's Web site: "I think that in the history of the Republic, we have never heard such violent or threatening comments."
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070506/D8OUVDUG0.html
