A map of party support in the French blogosphere

The original and further detail, in French, can be found here. What this is essentially saying is that the socialists have the greatest number of conversations within the tightest knit community. It does not necessarily indicate influence, but can be read as reach perhaps. The pattern is largely static since 2007, Segolene Royal's Segosphere was fairly dominant, maybe contributed to her coming a close second, but is no indication of real political support or even of getting into the second round. What it does indicate though is that, online, each party (except the extreme left/gauche) has an active strongly networked hub of supportive webloggers pushing messages out.

Was it social media that won it for Sarko?

A brief piece on For Immediate Release discusses the role of Loic le Meur in developing the web presence of Nicolas Sarkozy and getting him to interact online. Explaining his role on his blog, le Meur describes the interactive element as follows:

"I finally joined the Sarkozy campaign as one of Internet advisers and took care about the conversation. That means anywhere on web, in a decentralized way. Based on the previous debates experience, I thought I should start by finding a way to sort the questions and launched a digg-like for Sarkozy, debat-sarkozy, people could ask their question, then vote for the most important one, and Nicolas Sarkozy committed to answer the questions: 1500 questions were answered and more than 8000 comments appeared on the site, a good start... We started having a very close relationship with bloggers from all political areas of society, invited them to the campaign headquarters every week to meet a political figure, about a thousand bloggers showed support to Sarkozy, many others who would not vote for him were still happy to be in touch with us, and by the dialog that was created"

And it was not simply a process of interacting with the online community through formulating answers to the most popular questions:

"[le Meur] also launched an island in Second Life, l'ile Sarkozy, which has been an amazing experience. The island has been managed by voluntaries who created the buildings and monitored it 24 hours a day, more than 400 avatars joined a Sarkozy group and many became residents of the island. We survived attacks from opponents which were interesting to see, bumbs, naked people, insults, mines dropped, weapons, demonstrations.... The island has been packed during the entire campaign, reaching the SL max avatars limit most of the time [see screenshot below]. The most interesting for me was when we started streaming the debates at the real headquarters in the virtual headquarter on SL and had lots of interactivity, we took questions from SL and had the political figure answer them. The conversation and bridge between the virtual and the real life was fascinating"

There was a downside for le Meur getting involved, he had to start moderating comments to his blog, but this is also a measure of the level of engagement across the online community. As Sallie Goetsch agreed, this could be 'a harbinger of what is coming in political communication' as 'blogging and politics go well together as people have strong views'. The online environment provides a variety of ways for the political candidate and electorate to form connections; but it must have the interactive element. There must be a connection between equals not the traditional top-down from politician down to voter approach that seems most common and is simply a transference of techniques used for old media to new media. Many lessons can be learned from the French presidential elections, possibly this is an indication of the shape and style of things to come.

Principles without Power

Francoise Bayrou, the centrist candidate, gained 18% of the vote and has 6.8 million supporters, but he will not tell them how to vote. Given that he disagrees with the direction offered by both candidates, his message seems to be that his voters should search their own consciences and decide who offers the best, or least worst package for the future of France. This seems to be quite a refreshing stance in modern politics. Not only are there clear political lines and so clear voter choices but there also seems to be an ideological integrity that often is lacking when power can be exercised.

What Bayrou could gain from playing the role of Kingmaker that the media have ascribed to him is unclear. But in many other countries third placed candidates would be running around brokering deals to gain power and influence and even a place in a cabinet. One wonders what shibboleths the Liberal Democrats might abandon if power sharing or a coalition in Westminster was offered? Or indeed, given the example of the Scottish Assembly, how far Labour members would become off message if bolstered by more leftist partners. Bayrou cannot gain anything, but perhaps this will protect his image and his politics in a way that many other careers have become tarnished, think about the German Greens and Joschka Fischer. His biography may well read that he sold out his principles for a position of power; Bayrou seems to want just the opposite.

Real Choice = Real Engagement

The 'voting panel' commenting on the French election are part of the media hype of the contest, however they and the levels of registration indicate a high degree of engagement with the campaign and its issues. Take Muriel Calvez, a 19 year old student; she finds none of the candidates programmes map completely on to her vision of an ideal President, shame but her level of knowledge about the candidates and her ability to articulate reasons for not supporting the vast majority demonstrate a real interest in the campaign. So perhaps the levels of choice and belief that the contest matters for the future of French politics has encouraged more to take notice of the campaign and get involved. OK these are the voters panel, they should be more engaged shouldn't they?

The UK panel, from the 2005 election seemed to talk more about the issues not being addressed, or the parties being too similar on the major issues; so not offering a choice. Muriel's counterpart Paul Holdsworth complained of the lack of a 'World Poverty Day'; his overview of the campaign was "Too few issues of any importance were discussed and too much effort was placed on dull, stale issues which failed to resonate with much of the electorate". The contrast with the French election is stark, issues are central to the panelists' remarks and there seems no shortage of information. Yes, something is wrong with UK elections; is this a surprise?



Voters appear to feel the UK 2005 election campaign to lack saliency, relevance to their lives. Any marketer will tell you that to get people involved then they need to feel they have a reason to listen in the first place. Not to say all voters do not listen at all, but the arguments suggest that when the lsiten they hear nothing of value so have difficulties making an informed choice; the French seem to have information overload. At the last election research showed that Labour were closest to the public in their prioritisation of issues, but were still not completely in sync; this does not the seem the case in France even if the 'offerings' lack appeal to everyone the voters seem to understand the nature of each of the candidates political stance (perhaps vive la difference is not appropriate here)!

I'm a Celebrity, elect me!

The polls could be closer, Segolene Royal on 22%, Nicolas Sarkozy on 30.5%, but with a quarter being undecided such gaps are trivial. The battle then is between the centre-right Sarkozy and the socialist Royal. Both are also fighting on a similar front, yes they have their politics, but they also have a far more important weapon; the perception of them as authentic, real people with a celebrity status.

Royal features often in glamour mags, even in a bikini. Sarkozy comments on football and is a darling of the chat show. Their shifting of politics to primetime TV has created a buzz around the election. But it has also bred uncertainty. Ideology is second place to personality as they market themselves as the product, not their political leanings. This new aspect of the post-modern or professional campaign appears to be both successful in gaining significant support but has also succeeded in confusing the French electorate. A nation where ideology means something needs politics of substance, but where is the substance here? It seems this is the question being asked: will they find an answer before the first round of voting on April 22nd?