Election night in Paris is a very different affair from our own, rather sober ritual, for which the nation looks to a reassuring David Dimbleby. To begin with, the night is over when the exit polls are published the moment the polls close at 8p.m. All the major candidates compete to address the live television audiences immediately, and before any actual results have been certified.
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Meanwhile, the news networks appear not to have discovered the Skycopter™, so the journey from candidates’ residences to victory parties (or otherwise) is a bizarre ritual where young overexcited reporters perched on the back of motorbikes chase the motorcades, defying death with late-night chases, trying valiantly to penetrate blacked-out windows as they speed through Paris. One young gun in charge of tracking down François Hollande for France2 found himself blocking the front-running favourite in a doorway. In a panic, he dived out of the way, only to then chase the Socialist leader down the stairs, giving a live update to millions about his proximity to the potential leader of the French Republic.
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As a guest of the First Family, I spend much of the evening cosseted at the Sarkozy celebration. La Maison de la Mutualité is a storied venue in French politics, and the hyperactive president is preparing to take the stage. We crowd around the television to study the exit polls; tempers are running high and there are some choice words for the supposed wisdom of the electorate. But it is, of course, a very emotional moment for the extended Sarkozy clan. The president’s brothers are in attendance, as is his eldest son. (He is a hip-hop producer, a career in which having a right-wing president as one’s father is not particularly helpful.)
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Once all the other candidates have spoken, and with all the television networks waiting anxiously, Sarkozy is ready to address the nation. I find myself whisked to the front row between Carla Bruni-Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac. (Chirac’s loathing for his successor is hardly a secret, but party unity calls for a united front at this critical juncture.) While Sarko (as he is universally known) has polled 1.5 per cent behind Hollande — a fate which has never befallen an incumbent president of the Fifth Republic — he has assumed the mantle of the underdog. And is relishing it. Realising that he must reach out to the disenfranchised supporters of National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who received a record 19 per cent of the vote, he implores them directly: ‘I know (your) worries, and I understand them.’
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Backstage, and the tension is palpable. The speech was a tour de force, and now family and friends gather around to talk of victory in round two. The stakes are high, for if he loses, he would be the first president since Giscard d’Estaing in 1981 not to win re-election. And perhaps there is a personal dimension. Rumour has been circulating in Paris that should the president lose in the second round, the glamorous First Lady may not remain Mrs Sarkozy for awfully long. You can sense the testosterone-laced determination to prevail two weeks from tonight.
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If the Obama campaign in 2008 was ‘the first Facebook campaign’, then these French elections may be the most intensely fought digital battleground, and the first contest in which le Twitter was dominant. Each of the major party candidates was thrilled to welcome Twitter founder and chairman Jack Dorsey to Paris last month, and to boast of their digital prowess. But the most credit must go to Sarkozy’s internet supremo, Nicolas Princen, who has built a crowd-sourced, open-platform ‘voter vault’ that is ahead of anything I have witnessed before. Princen is a bloodied veteran of the first Sarkozy term at the grand old age of 28, but is relishing the final two-week sprint. As the crowds dispel late on Sunday night, he is confident: ‘We are going to win this one.’
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It never ceases to amaze me how few senior French politicians speak English or, indeed, any foreign language. Sarkozy’s Anglais has always been poor, but even the politician-graduates of l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration fare little better. When François Hollande visited London last month, he specifically learned one English phrase: ‘I am not dangerous.’ The top aides to all senior French politicos are fluent, as indeed are the spouses. Carla Bruni has no such issues, having romanced Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton in their native tongue.
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If Hollande wins the second round, as the polls suggest, he will face a baptism of fire. The day after the inauguration marks the opening of the G8 summit at Camp David. It is hard to conceive of a sterner test of his stature on the world stage, particularly given the hostility shown by Angela Merkel and David Cameron. A similar test will befall Hollande’s companion of two years, Valérie Trierweiler (they are not married) if she takes part in the spouse programme curated by Michelle Obama. She has studiously avoided a prominent role, and when set upon by foreign correspondents, curtly informed them that ‘they were not campaigning as a couple’. Yet, as a former journalist for the chic Paris Match, she should understand what lies in store.