A New Man in the Middle

Newsweek, March, 2007 by Tracy McNicoll

A month before the French go to the polls, François Bayrou's greatest asset seems to be who he's not. As voters have wearied of the in-your-face UMP party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialists' Ségolène Royal, the self-styled centrist Bayrou has bounded up the charts. His poll numbers have quadrupled since January, and a survey last week predicted he'd come out even with Royal (at 23 percent) in the first-round ballot on April 22. If he makes it to the May 6 runoff--still a big "if"--current polls have him beating Sarkozy by 10 points.

Not bad for a race once considered a two-way heat. But Bayrou's surge has come with a cost: new scrutiny. The press and voters suddenly want to know just who this classics professor turned farmer-politician really is. And so far, the...

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