ABSTRACT

The 1995 election was marked by what the political commentator Georges Suffert termed ‘Poll-mania’ and Le Monde ‘Polling disease’. The 1995 presidential election was no exception to the rule. In the 105 days of the pre-election period, 114 opinion polls gave the voting intentions of the public, an average of 1.08 polls a day. In June 1994, the European elections caused the Socialist left in its turn to have doubts as to the identity of its presidential candidate. After Michel Rocard had been eliminated in June 1994, given the Socialists’ disastrous European election results, all the institutes concentrated on the candidacy of Jacques Delors until he withdrew his name from consideration on 11 December 1994. As in the case of Edouard Balladur in 1993, the results of the polls, and to an even greater extent the commentaries of the pollsters, had in part created a Delors phenomenon.