According to the polls, which are building up without contradicting themselves more, the presidential election would seem to be over: Francois Hollande will be elected. What could still negate this forecast?
First, the results of the first round might be totally different from what the polls announced today. It is quite possible indeed that Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Melenchon may have more votes than shown by recent surveys. It is less likely in any case that they are so wrong that they call into question the balance of power that is shaping up, one week before the first round, between left and right, installed, in favour of the left, at higher levels than ever, even more than in 1981.
If this balance of power was different, if the left was not at more than 44% in the first round, it would cast a severe disrepute on polls and would make obsolete everything that follows. If, on the contrary, todays’s polling data reflect current realities, Francois Hollande’s victory is certain, unless the balance of power can be changed by May 6, is this possible?
Nicolas Sarkozy seems to believe so, and his vision of France leads him to believe that the best way to do this is to replicate the old strategy of the Right in power, so often effective: to frighten with the unknown, to become the protector of the country against those who could question matters that were believed to be done and dusted.
For now, this argument does not seem to be enough: assuming that the French think that the outgoing President is more protective in times of crisis, it would take many other crises, much deeper, for the balance of power to be reversed. But what crises?
A deepening of the financial crisis? An attack by Israel on Iran? Protests getting out of hand and ending in violence between the two rounds, especially on the 1st of May? Hard to believe that none of these scenarios, perfectly plausible, lead enough voters to do without a vote and believe that they should not change teams. Although these events are truly cataclysmic, and whatever their merits, the outgoing President has failed to convince a large majority of the French population that he was irreplaceable, and that Francois Hollande would necessarily do worse than he. He is no longer seen as a protector, though he played his entire campaign on that. And in this he has already lost.
What else then could reverse the current trends? Defamation that could not be seriously denied on time? Hardly credible, with a candidate as clear as Francois Hollande.
Last chance for the right: a week gone by without a significant development. If the outgoing President really believed in the virtue of his program, he should indeed think that the only effective grain of sand would precisely be that the next week be only crossed by a profound silence, like a calm before the storm. The French could then think and understand, should he think, that they should not call into question a policy that, should he support, begins to get the country out of the crisis.
By choosing to play everything on fear, he reveals his vision of the French: according to him, they are not rational and are not interested in the agendas of the candidates . Only facts will tell if he is wrong.