PARIS (Reuters) - French voters defied expectations on Sunday by throwing ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy out of the race to be the conservatives’ nominee for the presidential election and propelling his ex-prime minister Francois Fillon to top spot.

French politician Francois Fillon (R), member of the conservative Les Republicains political party, arrives after partial results in the first round of the French center-right presidential primary election at his headquarters in Paris, France, November 20, 2016. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

A social conservative with economically liberal ideas, Fillon will face Alain Juppe, another ex-prime minister, in a runoff on Nov. 27 which is likely to produce France’s next president in May.

Long trailing his rivals in opinion polls, Fillon goes into the conservative primaries’ run-off with a strong lead, the backing of defeated candidates including Sarkozy and a fresh poll that already tips him to win that second round.

“I’m telling all the French, no matter who they voted for, that change is on its way to lift France up,” Fillon, an admirer of late British prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, told supporters.

“My fellow Frenchmen have told me, everywhere, they want to break away from a bureaucratic system which saps their energy; everywhere they told me their desire for authority,” said 62-year-old Fillon, who is a rare economic liberal in largely statist France.

Juppe, a moderate 71-year-old conservative campaigning on an inclusive, “happy identity” platform, had for months been ahead in polls for both the primaries and the presidential election.

But he struggled to fire up voters as the election neared and seems to have suffered from constant attacks by Sarkozy calling him soft and branding him as being “hostage” to centrist allies.

Once Fillon, long considered a political has-been, saw his ratings improve just over a week ago after good performances in televised debates, Juppe lost some of the “anti-Sarkozy” tactical vote to him.

Sounding downcast late on Sunday, Juppe told supporters he would “carry on fighting” and billed himself as the best option to defeat far-right party leader Marine Le Pen, whom polls predict will make it to the second round of the presidential elections.

With the Left very divided and a majority of voters telling pollsters they are opposed to seeing the far-right National Front in power, the chosen center-right nominee is likely to defeat Le Pen in an expected election run-off next May.

But while polls have consistently shown Juppe would easily beat Le Pen, there are far fewer surveys on how Fillon would fare in such a match, in further evidence of how unexpected his top spot on Sunday was.

Polls have shown that Fillon, who had received backing by opponents of France’s gay marriage laws, is much less popular than Juppe amid left-wing voters, which could make it harder for him to get their vote versus Le Pen.

A BVA poll in September did however show him beating Le Pen with 61 percent of votes compared with 39 percent for Le Pen were they to fight off in the presidentials’ runoff, while Juppe would score 66 percent vs the far-right leader.

SARKOZY COMEBACK FAILS

Sarkozy, who was president in 2007-2012, was long considered a safe bet for the second round after campaigning on a hardline law-and-order platform that sought to tap into concerns over migration and security.

But that strategy, though popular among grassroots voters of Les Republicains party, alienated the centrist and leftwing voters who took part in the primaries and massively backed Juppe, a Harris Interactive poll showed.

Sarkozy conceded defeat and said he would now back Fillon in the runoff.

“It’s time for me to try a life with more private passions than public ones,” he said.

Slideshow (22 Images)

According to results based on 9,437 polling stations out of a total 10,229, Fillon was seen garnering 44.2 percent of the votes, Juppe 28.5 percent and Sarkozy 20.6 percent, with close to 4 million votes counted.

Fillon is seen winning next Sunday’s primaries’ runoff with 56 percent of the votes vs 44 percent for Juppe, according to the OpinionWay poll carried out amid 3,095 voters who took part in the first round of the primaries this Sunday.

The ruling Socialists and their allies are holding their own primaries in January. Socialist President Francois Hollande, who is deeply unpopular, has yet to announce whether he himself will stand again.</s>Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption People have been queuing up to vote in one prosperous area of Paris

French voters have taken part in a US-style primary to choose the candidate of the centre-right Republican party in next year's presidential election.

With most votes counted in Sunday's first round, ex-Prime Minister Francois Fillon appeared to be in the lead.

Alain Juppe, another ex-prime minister, also seemed likely to make the run off.

The partial results suggest former President Nicolas Sarkozy could come third, which would rule him out of the second round next Sunday.

The winner of the conservative primary is likely to make the presidential run-off, where he or she will probably face far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Polls suggest that the Republican candidate would win that election. With the governing socialists unpopular and divided, it seems unlikely that any left-wing candidate will survive the first round.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The seven Republicans vying for the nomination

Organisers said turnout was high. More than three million people were expected to cast ballots.

Voting is not restricted to party members. Those taking part have to sign a statement saying that they "share the Republican values of the right and the centre".

The candidates are:</s>At a brasserie in Saint Pierre, the historic heart of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé’s supporters are settling down for an evening in front of the television.

On the screen is the crucial final debate in the centre-right Les Républicains’ primary race, before Sunday’s first-round vote. Juppé, the city’s mayor, is one of seven candidates, alongside former president Nicolas Sarkozy and several ex-government ministers, but the crowd in the Café Cajou only has eyes for him. He speaks and half the audience applaud while the other half tap frenetically on their phones in an attempt to out-tweet the opposition.

Two and a half hours later, the debate winds up and Juppé has his final word. The cafe crowd leaps to its feet. “JU-PPÉ PRÉ-SI-DENT”, they chant. “JU-PPÉ PRÉ-SI-DENT”.

In the hours to come, 71-year-old Juppé’s performance will be scrutinised, analysed, criticised. But here in the heart of a city that is his personal fiefdom, there is no time for pessimism or doubt. This is the man they believe should be, and will be, the next president of France. This is the man who can see off the far-right Front National’s Marine Le Pen.

“You know him, you’ve met him, it’s for you to go and convince people to vote for him. We’re counting on you,” a man in a grey suit says with evangelical fervour. Everyone cheers.

Interior decorator Jo Lescouran, 52, says she will be voting Juppé today. “He’s a good man. Since he has been mayor of Bordeaux it’s become France’s most popular city. Everyone wants to come to visit or to live here. Our hospitals are the envy of France. If he can do that here, I’m sure he can do this for the whole country.”

Alice Provost, 23, a politics student and organiser of the Jeunes avec Juppé youth movement, explains why a man old enough to be her grandfather appeals to voters her age. “He speaks to us. He is 71, but he is youthful in his head and more modern than all the other Républicains party candidates,” she says. “We know Alain Juppé, we know he will do what he says, and we think he is …” She pauses. “How can I say? We think he is great.”

Pierre de Gaetan Njikam, responsible for mobilising the African diaspora for Les Républicains, says Juppé is the barricade against a rising far-right tide. “Right now the [mainstream] right in France is seeing how far right it can go to pick up votes. The only man who can stop the right becoming far-right is Alain Juppé: that is my sincere belief.”

Each has different reasons for supporting Juppé, but even in the cold, grey light of a drizzly November day it is hard to find anyone with a truly bad word to say about the man who has been mayor of Bordeaux since 1995, not counting a two-year hiatus when he was forced to stand down after a conviction for corruption.

They love him in the dynamic, litter- and graffiti-free city centre, much of it pedestrianised and criss-crossed by squeaky-clean trams and buses with friendly drivers – all credited to Juppé’s administration. They love him in the grittier Capucins and Saint Martin districts, where middle-class liberals who complain of enforced gentrification pushing up property prices, live shoulder-to-shoulder with families under the poverty line, most of whom vote for leftwing candidates in regional and national elections.

Even the youths in hoodies and baseball caps, drinking beer on streets peppered with bottle tops, speak of Monsieur le Maire with respect, reverence and even affection. “Alain Juppé is king of Bordeaux,” says a young French-African lighting a cigarette outside the barber’s shop where he works.

His two smoking companions nod vigorously. “It’s a great city. There are very few problems here. Very little drugs or delinquency,” one adds. Is there anyone who doesn’t like Juppé? He frowns. “Not that I know of.”

This is what Les Inrocks magazine called Juppémania.

There are internet sites that label him Ali Juppé, claiming that he supports the Muslim Brotherhood, or Papy (Grandfather) Juppé, or “Hillary Clinton à la française”, with all the defeatist baggage that implies. The mayoral chief of staff Ludovic Martinez, whose office boasts a poster-sized magazine cover headlined “Juppé Superstar”, has two words for this: “What do you say in English? It’s total bullshit.

“After the attacks in Paris, there were marches here that included the mosque, the synagogue, the temple, the cathedral and even the Buddhists. This is a tolerant, calm, temperate city that avoids excess.

“Alain Juppé’s transformation of Bordeaux can be seen with the naked eye,” Martinez adds. “Everything was broken when he became mayor and look at it now. He’s a visionary and a doer.”

In Bordeaux, even Juppé’s political opponents afford him a respect that is far from grudging. Rather than criticise his administration, they talk of “reservations” about his leadership.

Michèle Delaunay, 69, a local Socialist party MP, beat Juppé in 2007 and 2012 to take the local parliamentary seat. She says that there is a paradox whereby the left wins local parliamentary and regional elections, but repeatedly fails to prise Juppé from the mayoral chair.

She has her reservations: Juppé has focused on prestige projects that have gentrified the city centre and drawn new residents and tourists, which is good, but this has been to the detriment of poorer, socially deprived districts, which is not, she says. She is also concerned that the public-private financing of major developments has plunged the city into decades of debt.

But the bottom line, she admits, is that “everyone agrees Alain Juppé has made the city better. It is the dominant view every time he is elected that he has done extraordinary things that have brought prestige to Bordeaux.”

British voters with Brexit, and Americans with Donald Trump, may have rejected political behemoths in favour of populist outsiders, but France is hoping to buck the trend. The three Les Républicains primary favourites – Juppé, former prime minister François Fillon, and ex-president Sarkozy – are all members of France’s ruling elite with almost 100 years of political experience between them. With French leftwing politics currently in disarray, one of them is likely to end up in the second-round presidential runoff next May with Le Pen.

But with Sunday’s first round open to any voter willing to sign a charter “sharing the republican values of the right and centre” and pay €2, nobody knows how far Juppé’s popularity extends beyond the city walls. After months of pollsters predicting a Juppé-Sarkozy runoff next Sunday, a last minute surge in support for Fillon – polls on Saturdaysuggested that he had overtaken both rivals – has made it an unpredictable three-way race.

For Juppé, who began his political career in the 1970s as a speechwriter for Paris mayor and later French president Jacques Chirac, the road to elder statesman has been as pitted as old Bordeaux’s cobbled streets. Twenty years ago the man once nicknamed Amstrad for his robotic efficiency and cold, grey image was widely loathed. In 1995 his controversial pension changes resulted in up to two million people taking to the streets, paralysing France in the worst strikes since 1968.

In 2004 Juppé received a 14-month suspended sentence and was barred from holding elected office for a year over a 1980s scheme that illegally put workers for Chirac’s party on the payroll of Paris town hall. It is widely accepted that Juppé sacrificed his own career out of loyalty to Chirac.

Juppé’s manifesto concentrates on three priorities: reestablishing the authority of the state and the “pride and happiness of being French”; reducing unemployment and spending; and modernising the education system. If elected he says he will not hesitate to use the ordonnance – a means of sidestepping a parliamentary vote – to impose legislation. Aides say his greatest strength will be as a unifying, paternal force for change.

Virginie Calmels, his deputy mayor, says Juppé’s local success makes him more credible as a presidential candidate. “Bordeaux is not France, but there is method in the work Alain has done, and that method can be applied to the whole of France,” she says.

Writer Gaël Tchakaloff, who spent 18 months shadowing Juppé, agrees. “Everything I saw suggests he is a man of state. As a person, I don’t believe he is comfortable with himself, and he can be brutal with others, but he is a political animal and the decisions he takes are always taken for the greater good.”

The most repeated criticism Juppé and his fans cannot bat away is that of age. At 71, Juppé has pledged that if elected he will serve only one five-year term. In the Café Cajou, Jo Lescouran says being a veteran is no bad thing. “We have a very good saying in France: the best soup is made in old pans.”</s>France’s centre-right heavyweights were forced to realign their loyalties on Monday, after “third man” François Fillon claimed a surprise victory in the first round of his party’s presidential primaries.

The gloves are now off between Fillon, 62, who scored 44% of Sunday’s vote, and Alain Juppé, 71, who scored 28%, for the second-round vote next weekend.

Whichever of the two former prime ministers wins will become the candidate of the centre-right opposition party Les Républicains, and is expected to be the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s only credible opponent in the presidential election next spring.

In the wake of Fillon’s triumph, former ministers and losing candidates – including former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who once described his one-time prime minister as “Mister Nobody” – declared they would support him in the second round.

Sarkozy crashed out of the primaries with only 20.6% of the vote. Shortly after his defeat he called on supporters to throw their weight behind Fillon.

Among those who responded to the call were former prime minister and presidential candidate Édouard Balladur, and Sarkozy supporters Brice Hortefeux and Rachida Dati, as well as fellow first-round loser Bruno Le Maire.

On the other hand, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morziet, who came fourth in the primary has announced she will support Juppé, as have former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin and former minister Valérie Pécresse.



The other first-round contenders, Jean-François Copé, former head of the centre-right party, and Jean-Frédéric Poisson of the Christian Democrat party, have yet to declare their second-round allegiance. François Bayrou, the president of the centrist party MoDem, has already called for his supporters to vote for Juppé.

For French pollsters and politicians alike, Fillon’s massive victory came almost out of nowhere. Just a week ago, polls had him rising in popularity but still relegated to third place, behind Juppé and Sarkozy.

But a strong performance in primary debates appears to have meant his programme, described as an “economic and social transformation” to the right of that proposed by the more centrist Juppé, cut through eventually.

Fillon’s key measures include increasing the 35-hour maximum working week to a 39-hour week for public sector workers, gradually raising the retirement age to 65, reducing unemployment benefits, increasing VAT by two points and reducing direct taxes, as well as cutting 500,000 public sector jobs and making €100bn spending cuts to reduce the public debt and balance the country’s books.



Juppé, who served as prime minister under President Jacques Chirac, has also pledged to do away with the 35-hour week in both public and private sectors, to increase the number of police and gendarmes to counter the terrorist threat, to create full employment by 2022, to make cuts in unemployment benefits and to reduce taxes, particularly for businesses, as well as cutting public spending.

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, of the ruling Socialist party, which will hold its own primaries in the new year – most likely without the desperately unpopular François Hollande – said: “The right has chosen a candidate who is well to the right, he’s the ultra candidate: ultra-conservative, ultra-liberal, ultra-anti-gay marriage, ultra-antisocial, he ticks all the boxes. It’s the ultra-right and it’s also a straight bridge with the Front National in terms of identity and the idea of the family.”

Although Sarkozy’s final speech on Sunday advised followers to vote for Fillon, an avowed Thatcherite, there is little love lost between the two veterans of French politics. 



In 2007, the newly elected president, Sarkozy, appointed Fillon to the PM’s post as a gesture of gratitude for a successful campaign, which the veteran politician had run. Those close to Sarkozy expected him to fire Fillon shortly afterwards.



The dismissal never came. Not because Sarkozy had changed his mind, but because Fillon’s popularity rose with the voting public, enabling him to doggedly cling to his post. The president then spent his five years in office humiliating his colleague, referring to him publicly as an underling there to carry out presidential orders and nicknaming him “Mister Nobody”.



On Sunday, Fillon served his revenge cold. “Fillon has signed Sarkozy’s political death warrant: this historical boomerang, a double surprise of the right and centre’s primary, will go down in history …” wrote Cécile Cornudet in Les Echos.

“On paper, François Fillon had no chance of finishing ahead in the first round Sunday … but the voters’ wishing to play with the predictions went in his favour,” she added. “History has shown us that nobody is ever dead in politics, and has added a nuance in this curious period where surprise has become the rule and when one can rise in the polls and reverse the table in less than three weeks.”



The French press agreed it was the ultimate humiliation for the former president who was declared the victim of a wave of “anti-Sarkozism”. Libération described it as “the Fillon miracle”.

“Behind the right’s primary was hidden a referendum over the return to business for Nicolas Sarkozy, but also a stupefying majority in favour of François Fillon,” it wrote.

Le Monde’s editorial said the second round would be a battle between the “Thatcher right and the Chirac right”. Fillon, it wrote, represented the “traditional right, solid, serious, provincial and Catholic, notable and well brought-up”. On the other side, it described Juppé as a successor to the former president Jacques Chirac, under whom he served as prime minister – unlikely to cause a social revolution after provoking three weeks of mass demonstrations over his proposed social security reforms in 1995. “He is the upholder of a more moderate, more careful and, he says, more realistic right,” it said.
The Republicans hold a primary election to select a candidate for next year's election. Partial results indicate that a second round of voting will occur with François Fillon and Alain Juppé as the two candidates in the second round.