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. (more…)