The 2012 French Presidential Elections: The Inevitable Alternation

International audienceFrançois Hollande’s election as President of the Fifth Republic in May 2012 did not come as a surprise to most commentators, so unpopular was the outgoing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy. Evans and Ivaldi’s book might be read first as a systematic attempt to provide a structured analysis of where the 2012 result came from. The book provides a very complete overview and analysis of the structural and conjunctural factors involved in understanding the 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections in France and draws pertinent conclusions in relation to the broader enterprise of electoral forecasting. Drawing on a mixed methods approach, Evans and Ivaldi identify and evaluate, in a precise manner, the structural and conjunctural factors that combined to explain why Hollande was elected President in May 2012 and why the parliamentary election confirmed this result a few weeks later. Evans and Ivaldi provide have produced much more than a study of the 2012 presidential election: the book demonstrates the continuing vigour of the institutional dynamics of the French Fifth Republic