How often has an incumbent just declined to run again of a major Western Democracy due to low approvals
François Hollande will not run for French presidency
President tells nation he won’t be a candidate next year.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
12/1/16, 8:11 PM CET
Updated 12/1/16, 10:04 PM CET
PARIS — François Hollande will not compete in next year’s French presidential election, he said Thursday evening in a move that raises the prospect of his prime minister, Manuel Valls, running in his place.
Hollande’s announcement, the first time in postwar French history a president has not run for a second term, ended months of speculation around the plans of a deeply unpopular leader whose economic policies alienated much of his left-wing base.
It kicks off a contest between several left-wing candidates, including former economy and industry minister Arnaud Montebourg, who will vie for a presidential nomination during a primary election in January. Prime Minister Valls, who said last week he was “ready” to run in the primary, would find in him a tough adversary in the primary.
“I have decided not to be a candidate for president,” Hollande said in a televised address from the Elysée presidential palace. “In the coming months, my only duty will be to lead the country.”
In a 13-minute speech that started with a defiant defense of his presidential legacy, Hollande explained his decision by saying he could not risk the Left “breaking apart” and losing the presidential election to “conservatism or, worse still, extremism.”
Polls show former prime minister François Fillon, who won a conservative primary on November 27, competing against National Front president Marine Le Pen in the final round of a presidential election in May 2017.
Hollande acknowledged “errors” during his term, but said he had only one regret: having proposed a constitutional change, later abandoned, that would have allowed the state to strip convicted terrorists of their French nationality.
Valls the favorite
By dropping out of the race under pressure from Socialist heavyweights including his own prime minister, Hollande avoided a potentially humiliating defeat in the primary.
The president’s approval rating fell steadily after his election in 2012, then plummeted in 2014 following his shift to supply-side economic policies — a change that many left-wing voters felt was a betrayal of his campaign promises.
Despite a recent increase in job creation — Hollande had vowed he would not run unless unemployment fell this year — Hollande’s approval scores remained dismal.
Now attention will turn to the left-wing primary, which is to be held in two rounds on January 22 and 29.
Candidates must declare their intention to run before December 15. Among the contestants will be Montebourg, a fiery critic of globalization who resigned from government in 2014; Benoît Hamon, a leftist former education minister; and senator Marie-Noëlle Lienemann, a former MEP. They have all said they have enough support to be candidates.
But polls suggest that Valls, who put pressure on Hollande to drop out over the past month, will win. A poll of left-wing sympathizers conducted in November by BVA showed that Valls would beat Montebourg in the primary’s runoff round, by 53 to 47 percent.
In an interview last week with the weekly JDD newspaper, Valls said: “[The primary] must create momentum and hope … I am ready for it, I am preparing for it.”
Split left-wing vote
However, Valls bears the scars of his time in power alongside Hollande, and his poor popularity ratings. A poll by Harris Interactive conducted on November 28 and 29 showed that Valls would not make it into the presidential election’s second round, winning just 9 percent of votes in the first round — far behind Fillon and Le Pen and six percentage points behind Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a hard-left candidate.
If Valls runs, he will have to rally support from left-wing socialists who opposed his reform of labor rules.
Mélenchon will not participate in the left-wing primary. Neither will former economy minister Emmanuel Macron, a 38-year-old former banker who left the government earlier this year to mount a bid for the presidency.
Macron and Mélenchon are both polling higher than Valls ahead of the May election. Their parallel bids raise the prospect of a split left-wing vote in the election’s first round, which would increase the chances of no left-wing candidate making it to the runoff.
If Valls won the primary, he would make a strong adversary to Fillon, currently the presidential frontrunner.
In Hollande’s speech, the president said that he “respected” Fillon. But he criticized his plans to lay off 500,000 public sector workers as calling into question France’s welfare state — a hint of how the Left will go after the conservative pick.
Hollande also used his speech to criticize the far-right, arguing that protectionism was the “greatest danger” and that shutting France off from the world would be a “disaster for the Republic.”
François Hollande will not run for French presidency
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