French Presidential Elections

French Presidential Elections is an original and comprehensive study of the sociological and psychological forces driving French voters' choices. Based on a unique comparative analysis of four French presidential contests over the last two decades, the book presents a rigorous examination of the long and short-term motivations that have played a key role in French voters re-electing the Socialist Francois Mitterand in 1988 and bringing the right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy to power in 2007. In doing so, the authors address many questions central to an understanding of contemporary French politics, including the effects of the double ballot system on key patterns of electoral behaviour, the evidence of change or continuity in contemporary French politics, and the relative contributions of short and long-term determinants of French voting behaviour in presidential elections. The authors conclude by examining the extent to which electoral behaviour in France is distinct from that observed in other mature democracies.

MICHAEL S. LEWIS-BECK is F. Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, USA. His interests are comparative elections, forecasting, political economy and quantitative methodology. He has authored or co-authored over 180 articles and books, including American Voter Revisited, Forecasting Elections, Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies, The French Voter: Before and After the 2002 Elections and Applied Regression: An Introduction. RICHARD NADEAU is Professor of Political Science at the University of Montreal, Canada. His interests are voting behaviour, public opinion, political communication and quantitative methodology. A Fulbright Scholar and a former chief advisor to the Prime Minister of Quebec, he has authored or co-authored over 120 articles, chapters and books including Unsteady State, The Anatomy of a Liberal Victory, Citizens and Le Comportement Electoral des Quebecois. ERIC BELANGER is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University, USA. His research interests include Quebec and Canadian Politics, political parties and party systems, public opinion and voting behaviour. His research has been published in numerous scholarly journals. He is also the co-author of Le Comportement Electoral des Quebecois.