may be seen as a tolerable substitute to Sarkozy for right-wing people who will never vote for a socialist but cannot stand Sarkozy (there's quite a few, and many of them won't vote for le Pen or the other hard right candidates or de Villepin).

He is definitely of center-right persuasion (the "center" has been part of the right for most of the past 40 years) but he broke away from Chirac and then Sarkozy more credibly than previous centrists, voting against them in parliament a number of times on high profile votes. The result has been that he's lost most of his MP group - as they know that locally they will be elected by allying with the traditional right. Sarkozy has tried to nurture competing "centrist" candidates, who have funding and a parliamentary group - that's the Hervé Morin situation (but he's not well known and polls 0-1%)

Wind power