The 1995 Presidential Election Campaigns

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how candidates attempted to win votes at the first ballot and election to the Elysée at the second ballot of the 1995 presidential election, the features which distinguished the 1995 campaign from earlier campaigns and the methods by which Jacques Chirac won. Its concerns are the strategies adopted by the candidates and the resources and methods employed. The data are mainly derived from published sources, notably newspapers and studies of earlier elections.1 Opinion polls also provide information not only about how public attitudes changed during the campaign, but also about the significant minority of voters who remained undecided about how to vote until very near the polling days. Whether or not those voters finally chose in a ‘rational’ way, as Habert and Lancelot have suggested,2 their changes of preferences during the campaign explain not only why the maillot jaune passed from Edouard Balladur to Jacques Delors to Chirac, but also why the poll predictions for the first ballot proved so inexact.