After failing to get over 50% of the vote in last weeks Republican party primary, the top two candidates Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe had a runoff election today.  Fillon has won, and will now head into next years French Presidential race against Marine Le Pen (French Nationalist Party, FNP) and the liberal/socialist party candidate most likely to be current President Francios Hollande.
(Via Reuters) Francois Fillon, a socially conservative free-marketeer, won France’s center-right presidential primaries on Sunday, setting up a likely showdown next year with far-right leader Marine Le Pen that the pollsters expect him to win.
With votes from four-fifths of 10,228 polling stations counted, Fillon, who went into Sunday’s second-round run-off as firm favorite, had won over 67 percent of the vote in a head-to-head battle with another ex-prime minister, Alain Juppe.  “I must now convince the whole country our project is the only one that can lift us up,” a visibly moved Fillon said at his campaign headquarters after Juppe conceded defeat.
All eyes now turn to the ruling Socialist party and to whether the deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande will decide to run for the left-wing ticket in his party’s primaries in January, amid signs that his prime minister, Manuel Valls, is considering a bid of his own.
All eyes now turn to the ruling Socialist party and to whether the deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande will decide to run for the left-wing ticket in his party’s primaries in January, amid signs that his prime minister, Manuel Valls, is considering a bid of his own.  (read more)