France presidential race: Francois Fillon wins conservative candidacy

With votes from almost all of 10,229 polling stations counted, Fillon had won 66.5 percent of the votes in the primaries organized by the center-right Les Republicains party.

While the call for more investment is coherent with the rest of his programme, the IFRI’s Pertusot said, the eurozone “directorate” is more in line with the views of Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president, with Fillon alongside him as prime minister.

None of them correctly estimated the strong support that Fillon gathered by campaigning relentlessly on the ground, while Sarkozy or Juppe had relied mainly on Parisian debates and television appearances.

While Trump’s election in the US and the surprise triumph of Brexit in the United Kingdom has forced France to come to terms with the possibility of an unprecedented victory by the radical right, Fillon securing the nomination may complicateLe Pen’s path the presidency.

“France can no longer bear its decline”.

Fillon has said he wants to drop sanctions against Russian Federation over its aggressive actions in Ukraine and partner with Russian Federation in the fight against Islamic State extremists.

Fillon is a rare fan of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Polls in France have consistently shown that the far-right Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, will make it to the final round runoff but that it would be hard for her to win.

Fillon easily beat Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppé in the Republican Party’s first ever US-style primary runoff Sunday, getting about 66% of the vote.

Hollande has two weeks to decide whether to run in January’s Socialist primary race.

Opinion polls show Fillon, a social conservative with a deep attachment to his Catholic roots, going into the race as the clear favorite after stunning his centrist challenger with a massive surge in support just before the November 20 first round.

A devout Catholic, Mr Fillon has also drawn criticism for his opaque stance on abortion.

Fillon, who defied predictions to emerge surprise victor of Les Republicains’ first-round primary on November 20, was boosted by a convincing performance in a televised debate against Juppe on Thursday.

French Republicans will be hoping he can do the same to Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, in a popular vote for the French president in May next year.

Whoever wins office next May will take over a country where growth and employment lag European averages and where terrorists have killed more than 200 people in less than two years, stoking religious tension and triggering soul-searching about France’s national identity.

Neither of them would get more than 9 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential election and neither would qualify for the run-off, the Harris Interactive flash poll on Sunday showed.

But Fillon’s hard-line reforms plans – cutting public spending by 100 billion euros over five years, scrapping a tax on the wealthy and pushing the retirement age to 65 and cutting public sector jobs – hand a glimmer of opportunity to Hollande and his Socialists, and the broader French Left.

Fillon would turn that scheme into a permanent reduction in payroll charges, while also going further than Sarkozy’s plans by also cutting the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, from 33 percent now.