Opinion polls published last week showed Socialist challenger Francois Hollande winning an average of 53% of the votes against conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.
Second-round votes in French presidential elections of the past half century have generally been closely fought, except in a couple of atypical polls pitting two rightist candidates against one another.
Opinion polls published last week showed Socialist challenger Francois Hollande winning an average of 53% of the votes against conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in Sunday's election.
A narrower margin of victory could reduce Hollande's
authority to pursue his programme of balancing budget austerity
with growth-boosting measures.
The tightest finish was in 1974, when conservative Valery
Giscard d'Estaing beat Socialist Francois Mitterrand with 50.8% of the votes, a winning margin of just 1.6 percentage points, or about 400,000 votes. Turnout also peaked that year at
87.3%.
In 2002, conservative Jacques Chirac won a landslide 82.2% of the votes against far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had narrowly edged out Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round of voting. Left-wing leaders at the time had asked their voters to support Chirac.
Another atypical right-right duel, pitting Gaullist Georges
Pompidou against centre-right candidate Alain Poher in 1969, saw
Pompidou win with 58.2%.
Among the six remaining traditional left-right final duels,
the biggest victory was won by Charles de Gaulle in 1965, when
he crushed Mitterrand by 55.2% to 44.8% for a 10.4% margin.
Below is a list of France's second-round election results
since 1965. The turnout figure includes spoiled ballots. The
presidential term was cut to five years from seven after 2002.
1965:
Charles de Gaulle: 55.2 pct
Francois Mitterrand: 44.8 pct
Winning margin: 10.4 pct
Turnout: 84.3 pct
1969:
Georges Pompidou: 58.2 pct
Alain Poher: 41.8 pct
Winning margin: 16.4 pct
Turnout: 68.9 pct
1974:
Valerie Giscard d'Estaing: 50.8 pct
Francois Mitterrand: 49.2 pct
Winning margin: 1.6 pct
Turnout: 87.3 pct
1981:
Francois Mitterrand: 51.8 pct
Valerie Giscard d'Estaing: 48.2 pct
Winning margin: 3.6 pct
Turnout: 85.9 pct
1988:
Francois Mitterrand: 54.0 pct
Jacques Chirac: 46.0 pct
Winning margin: 8.0 pct
Turnout: 84.1 pct
1995:
Jacques Chirac: 52.6 pct
Lionel Jospin: 47.4 pct
Winning margin: 5.2 pct
Turnout: 79.7 pct
2002:
Jacques Chirac: 82.2 pct
Jean-Marie Le Pen: 17.8 pct
Winning margin: 64.4 pct
Turnout: 79.7 pct
2007:
Nicolas Sarkozy: 53.1 pct
Segolene Royal: 46.9 pct
Winning margin: 6.2 pct
Turnout: 84.0 pct
Source: French Interior Ministry
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