Opposition left favored over Sarkozy’s conservatives as French voters choose regional leaders

Sarkozy’s party expecting setback in regional vote

PARIS — French voters, many of them frustrated with President Nicolas Sarkozy and angry over economic troubles, cast ballots Sunday in regional elections expected to firmly favor the opposition left — and to set the stage for the 2012 presidential race.

Discouraged by Sarkozy’s handling of the stumbling economy, voters preferred the Socialists and like-minded parties in the first round of voting a week ago.

Apathy played a central role in that round, with turnout at a record low of 46 percent. By 5 p.m. (1600 GMT) in Sunday’s runoff, turnout was about 43 percent, the Interior Ministry said.

Sarkozy’s UMP party, or Union for a Popular Majority, has ended up pleading with voters to go to the polls. In last week’s vote, the Socialist-led left won 53.5 percent of the votes while the UMP-led conservatives had 39.9 percent.

Even in a politically active, and generally left-leaning, neighborhood in southeast Paris, one voting station stood empty for the first hour after polls opened Sunday. Eventually Jeanne-Marie Debras appeared and cast her ballot for a far-left list, including Communist Party candidates.

“I hope this election will breathe new life into (the left),” the 62-year-old retired teacher said. “We have the impression that we have forgotten about our rights,” she said.

Voters like Debras are angry at Sarkozy’s reform efforts aimed at loosening up labor rules to make the economy more globally competitive.

Even within Sarkozy’s party, some said voters were alienated by the president and urged him to slow down reforms and better explain them to a populace smarting from the economic crisis.

Workers across the spectrum are angry over layoffs and worried that planned pension reforms could shrink their old-age income — but polls show they are also worried about the growing deficit. Nationwide strikes and demonstrations in at least 70 cities are planned for Tuesday, by train drivers, teachers and others.

The elections determine control of regional councils concerned with local issues. France has 26 regions, 22 counting the mainland and Corsica, as well as four overseas, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.

France’s regions are gaining increasing power as the country decentralizes, and they can help mobilize voters for the presidential race in 2012, when the Socialists are looking to make a comeback.

The Socialists concluded a pact Tuesday in all but a few regions with Europe Ecologie, an alliance of green parties, as well as the Front de Gauche, which includes France’s Communist Party.

It’s time “to give a good smack to the right,” Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry said Thursday.

The far-right National Front surprised pollsters with its first-round performance — about 12 percent. The party’s standard-bearers, longtime leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and daughter Marine, made clear that concerns over security, immigration and France’s large Muslim population remain alive.

The governing conservatives went into the voting weak. The Socialists bulldozed their way across France in the last regional elections in 2004, leaving the right holding only two of the 22 regions — Alsace and Corsica.

Sarkozy will follow up the elections with a “modest reshuffle” of the government, his chief of staff Claude Gueant said.

“Some small adjustments deserve to be made” in response to the elections, Gueant said in an interview with the Catholic daily La Croix. He did not name any ministers who might lose their jobs.