The French Legislative and Presidential Elections of 2007

The presidential and legislative elections that were held during spring2007 in France were closely watched over after the ‘earthquake’ of 2002(Perrineau and Ysmal 2003; Gaffney 2004) and the ‘no’ to the Europeanconstitution through the referendum of 29 May 2007 (Sauger et al. 2007).The 2002 presidential election in France was seen as boiling down to acontest between an incumbent president of the centre-right, Jacques Chirac,and an outgoing prime minister of the centre-left, Lionel Jospin, comingafter a period of cohabitation between left and right that marked the end ofthe final seven-year presidential term (...).