WI: Jospin vs Chirac in the 2002 French Presidential Election

The 2002 French Presidential Election runoff was supposed to be between incumbent President Jacques Chirac and incumbent Prime Lionel Jospin. However, the actual runoff came down to Chirac and far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen. So my question is, what if Chirac and Jospin actually did face off?
 
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It's Chirac, not Charic nor Chiraq.

And the answer is still a Chirac victory. There were good reasons why Jospin didn't make it to the second round and these would still be there.
 
It's Chirac, not Charic nor Chiraq.

And the answer is still a Chirac victory. There were good reasons why Jospin didn't make it to the second round and these would still be there.

The main reason that Jospin didn't make it to the second round is the awful numbers of Left-wing party splitting the votes . Chirac was very unpopular at that time and i do believe that he would have lost to Jospin .
 
Jopsin wins, Segolene Royal doesn't run for president in 2007 so she doesn't separate with Hollande, the PS doesn't move towards the center. Hollande doesn't run in 2012. 2002 gave some legitimacy to the FN and without it they are seen as a less serious party. Sarkozy doesn't return to politics in the early 2000s because Chirac isn't president. Hollande, Sarkozy, Royal, and by extension Fillon and Macron aren't major figures in French politics.
 
Jopsin wins, Segolene Royal doesn't run for president in 2007 so she doesn't separate with Hollande, the PS doesn't move towards the center. Hollande doesn't run in 2012. 2002 gave some legitimacy to the FN and without it they are seen as a less serious party. Sarkozy doesn't return to politics in the early 2000s because Chirac isn't president. Hollande, Sarkozy, Royal, and by extension Fillon and Macron aren't major figures in French politics.
My knowledge of French politics isn't especially deep, but wasn't Jospin a centrist himself? I've heard him described as the French equivalent of a Blair or a Schroder.
 
My knowledge of French politics isn't especially deep, but wasn't Jospin a centrist himself? I've heard him described as the French equivalent of a Blair or a Schroder.
Jospin was definitely to the left of the current PS. As prime minister he worked with the communist party a lot and pushed a lot of economically left wing policy.
 
The main reason that Jospin didn't make it to the second round is the awful numbers of Left-wing party splitting the votes . Chirac was very unpopular at that time and i do believe that he would have lost to Jospin .

Can we be sure that supporters of far-left candidates--especially the three Trotskyist candidates, who between them got over 10% of the vote--will vote en masse for Jospin in the second round? Might not many of them abstain? (After all, the choice is between Jospin and Chirac, not Jospin and Le Pen--and it's one thing for a far-left voter to support a social democrat against a fascist, another thing to support him against a conservative.)

The other big question is of course how the Le Pen vote will break.
 
Can we be sure that supporters of far-left candidates--especially the three Trotskyist candidates, who between them got over 10% of the vote--will vote en masse for Jospin in the second round? Might not many of them abstain? (After all, the choice is between Jospin and Chirac, not Jospin and Le Pen--and it's one thing for a far-left voter to support a social democrat against a fascist, another thing to support him against a conservative.)

The other big question is of course how the Le Pen vote will break.

It's between Jospin and Super-Liar (as nicknamed in France at that time) Chirac. They won't like it, but they will vote for him , the far-left generaly vote for the least bad candidate more often than the far-right
 
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