French Presidential Election 2002

[TommyAllum16]

i wasn't sure where to put this because there is no politics section. For my AS Level French course i have to choose a topic of discussion from a francophone country, i chose ''why did the french public nearly vote for Le Pen to become president?', i was wondering if anyone knew any detailed websites about this, and possibly people's reactions and opinions?
Merci!

[jake-the-peg]

 I read a good discussion of this in a book recently called " 60 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" It's a bit long to detail but in essence the French Presidential voting whittles the candidates down to two for a final vote.

Lionel Jospin the socialist Prime Minister had his vote split by various communist/trotskyite/green factions which meant that although the left wing parties polled 43%, Jospin came in third behind Le Penn. There then followed what could only be described as a Duh! moment and Chirac won the final vote with 82% of the poll which was an all time record.

I can strongly recommend the book but there's some more about it here:

http://www.lines-magazine.org/Art_Aug02/david.htm