Chiswickite - formerly The Croydonian

The Belgian and Swiss sites which had been promising to give the early indications of the results of the first round of voting seem to have collapsed under the weight of traffic from curious French internautes, but Betfair is providing the necessary detail. Action on Bayrou, Le Pen and the rest seems to have stopped dead.

I took a fairly hefty punt on Sego earlier, which I am about to lay off for an instant win, come what may.


And care of a shy friend of a French persuasion, here are some snapshots from inside the polling room for les Francais/es de Londres at the Lycee:

Rather than putting a cross in a box, one has to take at least two papers with the name of candidate so it is a semi-secret ballot.




And it is 29.6% Sarko (Chirac 19.9 in 2002), Sego 25.8 (Jospin 16.2), Bayrou 18.5 (6.8), Le Pen 11 (16.9), Besancenot 4.3 (4.3), De Villiers 2.7, Buffet 1.8 (3.4), Voynet 1.7 (5.2), Nihous 1.3 (4.2), Laguiller 1.6 (5.7), Bove 1.4. So a big squeeze on the extreme left, compared to 2002 and Le Pen down too.


Sarko's going to walk it.

Live blogging courtesy of TV5:

And Sarko's saying that his vote is a 'victory for democracy' and he wants to say 'merci'. Which is nice. The shy French person (who voted Sego) says that Sarko sounds Vichyite. However, he is torn as if Sarko win he will make the French Lycee free - which would save said SFP circa £6k per annum.

Sarko is making lots of nice noises to the Bayrou etc voters. It will be interesting to see the frantic repositioning of Sego and Sarko to get the votes of the majority who ignored their blandishments this time round.

Bayrou has blamed the opinion polls but says he has broken the mould, so to speak.

Buffet of the PCF says that everyone wanted to vote for her, but voted tactically for Seg

(Irrelevant aside - all five natural blond/e people in France work in the media, and French pols have rather better fitting suits than our lot in these parts).

No sign of Sego yet, but apparently she has a problem with time keeping. Or maybe she just has a sense of occasion.

And she has just shown. Very, VERY wooden. The SFP reckons it the worst speech he has ever seen. Lots of platitudes, a nice outfit, but zero emotion or engagement. But her other half liked it, who in a rather disloyal fashion is loitering in the A2 studio rather then hanging adoringly on her every word. SFP thinks she might be on Prozac or has had her eau mineral spiked. And he voted for her.

Meanwhile, le facteur humain, Besancenot, is going mano a mano with Sarko's spokeswoman (and porn actress look-a-like - according to the SFP) Rachida Dita to no great effect.

Labels: France

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 22, 2007 at 4:08 pm. You can skip to the end and leave a response.