The
French presidential election of 1995 was the most surprising election result of the Fifth French Republic, and perhaps French history. By 1995, the left in the form of the Socialist Party was battered, beset by scandal, with an elderly, sickly president who had been forced to cohabit with a conservative majority in the National Assembly after the 1993 electoral wipeout of the Socialists. Prime Minister Jacques Chirac had laid the groundwork for a presidential run almost as soon as he was appointed prime minister. Crucially, his strongest rival, Foreign Minister Édouard Balladur told Chirac he would not run. However, Chirac’s poll numbers against former PM Lionel Jospin, the Socialist candidate, were not as strong as those of a potential Balladur-Jospin matchup, dragged down by Chirac’s association in the mind of voters with the struggling economy. This, along with a concentrated effort by right-wing politicians who preferred Balladur to Chirac, caused Balladur to renege on his promise and declare his candidacy.
Suddenly, the election to succeed Mitterand moved from a predictable fight between the candidates of the two wings of French politics to an exciting race to see which two would face off in the second round. Jospin used the opportunity of the two strongest opponents the right could offer tearing each other apart to shore up his numbers, and all three attempted to gain as much credit as they could from the ongoing talks in Bern between American and Soviet ambassadors that many believed (correctly) could lead to an end to the half-century of tension between East and West Europe.
To no one’s surprise, Jospin came in first in the first round, with the two conservatives sapping each others’ support. Balladur edged out Chirac to take second and advance to the final round. The two remaining candidates were, for almost the entire two-week period between rounds, were in a dead heat and unable to effectively break the stalemate- Jospin because of the wariness of some voters of giving the Socialists a third consecutive term and Balladur because his aristocratic speech patterns and whispers of his involvement in several scandals had made the most effective of his attacks against Jospin and Mitterand ineffective. French voters went to sleep on May 7, 1995 with no idea who they had elected as president.
In the end, an extremely thin majority went for Jospin. Out of the nearly 30 million votes cast in the second round, a difference of only 78,000 separated the two candidates. The French right, having gleefully prepared for a return to the Élysée Palace as Socialist popularity dragged during the last years of Mitterand’s second term, were left speechless as Lionel Jospin was inaugurated while both Balladur and Chirac looked on.