ABSTRACT
By mid-1995, President Jacques Chirac, his party and coalition partners controlled the presidency, both houses of parliament, most regional and departmental councils and many large towns, including Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux and Toulouse. For many left-wing voters in 1995 the anxiety was whether there would be any left candidate at all at the second round, or whether the left would suffer the humiliation of 1969, when two conservatives, Centrist Alain Poher and Gaullist Georges Pompidou, came ahead on the first ballot and were therefore the only two candidates entitled to contest the second, decisive ballot. Chirac was not the first candidate to have won an election with conflicting promises designed to accumulate maximum electoral support and to hold together divided partisan supporters. The presidential poll still dominates French politics, and the forced bi-polarity of its second ballot helps bolster the eroded but still dominant left/right cleavage in French politics.
