I just wrote a whole lot and then Internet Explorer crashed because the Flash plugin crashed. That was annoying. I got a screenshot of most of it though. Perhaps Blogger should automatically save drafts like Gmail does.

As predicted, Sarko and Ségo got through to the second round. I watched TF1 and it was pretty boring. They didn’t break down results by département or anything, though the breakdown is available today. Every hour or so they had a new update with their fancy election music in the background. All the channels had a countdown until 20:00 when polls closed and they could announce preliminary results. They stayed pretty much the same all night: Sarko with 30%, Sego with 25% and Bayrou with around 18%. And Le Pen with 10% – a lot less than last time.

It was funny though. A lot of the interviewees were, when they were getting annoyed with PPDA (who was talking over people quite a bit – including his cohost, Claire Chazal), talking to him by name “Je crois blah blah blah, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor” – much in the style of “that’s not what I was saying, Paul” (or “Mr Holmes” in Winston Peters’ case).

Here in the Alpes-Maritimes, Sarko won by quite a bit (more than the average). In the first round of the 2002 elections, Le Pen was out on top here, but thankfully he was fourth placed. Many pundits think that Le Pen lost quite a lot of votes to Sarko, who, I think Jean-Marie Le Pen’s spokesperson (and daughter), Marine, described as “Le Pen Light” (as Diet Coke over here is called Coca-Cola Light). In any case, it wifi be interesting to see whether the left all gets behind Ségo and the right behind Sarko (and how the centrist Bayrou’s supporters will vote) and whether there wifi be as high a turnout in two weeks as there was today.

I got quite a few hits yesterday after writing about the election, quite a lot from France. Not sure if people were looking for commentary in English, mais mix Français, merci de venir lire mon blog !

Today is the first round in the French presidential election. A candidate has to get a majority (i.e. > 50%) in order to win. If nobody gets over 50% today, then there is another election in two weeks with the top two candidates from today, who most people expect to be Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal.

I was wondering how often the first place getter in the first round doesn’t win in the second round. It turns out it happens quite often. In the 5th Republic of France, there have been 7 elections that needed a second round. In three of those elections the second place getter won the Presidency. Thanks Wikipedia. Actually, I could be wrong about the exact numbers as I figured that out this morning and could have forgotten by now. Interesting, anyway.

Tonight there will be election coverage on all the main channels. It will be interesting to see the French way of doing things. I wonder if someone will hijack a plane and threaten to fly it into the Eiffel Tower?

Campaign posters don’t just go up anywhere. There are special boards that are erected in each town with all the posters on them. The usual vandalism happens (usually putting Hitleresque moustaches on Le Pen and Sarkozy) and the posters tend to get replaced fairly often too. I haven’t see any campaign ads on TV though (because I don’t watch much French TV).

I wonder what these will be replaced with next week, for the second round?