ABSTRACT
The 2002 presidential election really began in 1997, with the election of the plural left headed by the socialist leader, Lionel Jospin, after a calamitous miscalculation by the president, and the dissolution of the National Assembly. After 1997, it was the left in the ascendancy while the right appeared to be in dire straits, after the fiasco of the 1997 elections, having, in fact, appeared invincible after 1993. Elections such as the Euro elections in 1999 saw failure and internal chaos, and all this without the then partner right-wing UDF profiting either. Round one of the presidential elections of 2002 electrified the world and changed the course of French politics. The logic of symbolic party politics in the Fifth Republic is to pretend, especially when there is nothing else to win, that its true purpose is not the presidential elections but the National Assembly.
