After two rounds of voting in France, the socialist candidate Francois Hollande was voted in as president.

Many surveys and analysts had already forecast that Hollande would win, because after the first round of voting Nicolas Sarkozy had lost much of his support and was losing still more. Marine Le Pen, like Sarkozy a rightwing candidate, called for her supporters to cast a blank vote, while leftist leaders publicly announced their support for Hollande. Perhaps most importantly, Francois Bayrou, the centrist candidate, who won 9.13 percent of the support in the first round of the election, gave his backing to Hollande. He was the first centrist politician in France to back the left.

There are many reasons why Sarkozy was so unpopular. But the main one was his incompetence in coping with the European debt crisis. Some media outlets are already referring to Sarkozy as the 11th European leader to be laid off by the debt crisis.