Sure, but it does no good to simply say, "well those people aren't really for the left." Because by that standard, those who are "truly" on the left aren't anywhere near 50%, which is in the end the sole purpose of the exercise.

See afew's comment below. Maybe nobody on the left, but possibly people in the left's constituency.

"It's the statue, man, The Statue."

I'm not sure what I said about the size of the left? That the left was in the minority in France? That some of the drift towards different right-wing movements/candidates (as seen in desmoulins' diary) was not something new, it had already been pointed out? That it was an uphill battle for the left? Did I claim anything else?

As for the article, it is by a pollster, Jérôme Jaffré - who, like all pollster/pundits, wants to have new and astounding analysis on sale. He may be basing this on the CEVIPOF survey, (which is only available for cherry-picking by "analysts"), but what are we supposed to make of this : he says there's a group (identified by the tag hors-système, outside-system, and we don't know if he invented that tag or not) that say they want neither right nor left, but who strongly support Nicolas Sarkozy ("very high percentage"). Does it reveal anything of importance or use about French politics, making out there is a coherent group of "neither-right-not-leftists", who are obviously on their face incoherent?

Also, a trend that has been seen for one year becomes "structural". That's quick structure-building. I suspect Jaffré has to say this, because, like all pollster/pundits, he prefers surveys to actual elections. He points out that the first-past-the-post electoral system encourages a bi-polar political system (le scrutin majoritaire qui favorise la bipolarisation). He omits to discuss the last elections held in France, the regional, local, and European, in 2004. Of those three only the local (election of one-third of "departmental" councillors) was first-past-the post, the other two - more important - were proportional representation.

With PR, you'd expect the meltdown picture Jaffré paints to show through in a varied and broad spectrum of votes. In fact, the regional elections showed a very solid position of the left:

Liste de gauche             12 896 820      49,91%     
Liste divers gauche           111 720       0,43%     
Liste régionaliste             99 512       0,39%     
Liste de droite              9 519 416      36,84%     
Liste divers droite             11 094       0,04%     
Liste du Front national      3 199 392      12,38%

The Interior Ministry is responsible for grouping the results left/right (with the FN apart), but that mirrors reality - councillors divide along those lines in the regional councils. Strange that all those disenchanted voters gave the left a push that led it to take over all the regional councils but one.

The European elections are even more open, in the sense that party positions are less entrenched. Yet these elections resulted in:

PSE 33  
PPE 28
Greens 6, assorted far right 12 (inc. 7 FN)

Where's the centre? (Bayrou sat with the PPE when he was MEP, in other words with the right...)

I'm not denying that there is an overall tendency towards disillusionment with the left. Nor am I denying that Royal is not, for the moment (and may never) making much progress on that score. I am saying that Bayrou is an illusionist when he pretends to be both left and right. He may get to the Elysée that way, I don't know. But the election is far from over, and I am getting tired of pollsters and survey analysts who are mostly interested in taking centre stage and promoting their guru careers.

While we're looking at Le Monde articles, this one is interesting. It describes worries on the extreme right - FN to be precise - that some of its electorate will choose the vote utile for Bayrou in the first round, to make sure the right wins but not Sarko.

(Hardcore political frontists find Sarko soft on Muslims, and in any case hate anyone associated with Chirac and Gaullism... historical rancour going back to Vichy... it does not apply to the UDF and the Giscard tradition, which always had bridges with the Xtreme right...)

I think everyone should vote Bayrou in the first round. You know, he's the one who's going up in the polls... ;)