Francois Fillon declares victory in presidential primary

Fillon, who went into Sunday’s second-round run-off as firm favorite, had won over 67% of the vote in a head-to-head battle with another ex-prime minister, Alain Juppe.

Polls suggest the 62-year-old Fillon, prime minister from 2007-2012 under ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy, would have a good chance of winning the French presidency in the April-May election.

Concern about the national debt, which stands at about 97 per cent of economic output, was the top motivation behind those supporting Fillon, according to Jean-Daniel Levy, a pollster at Harris Interactive in Paris.

Just a few weeks ago, Fillon was considered an unlikely bet for the presidency, but he won over voters with a polished performance in the TV debates.

“The moment has come for our political family to mobilize around Francois Fillon to guarantee the change that France needs more than ever in 2017, ” Sarkozy said in a statement following Fillon’s declaration of victory.

“There is in our country an vast need for respect and pride”.

“You now have a conservative right, which has vision of French life from the 1960s and vision of the economy from the United Kingdom of the 1980s”, Macron said on France 2 television.

“Sarkozy was such a big personality that I think a lot of people don’t really know who Fillon is”, said Aurelien Mondon, senior lecturer in French politics at Bath University. “I’m tagged with a liberal label as one would once, in the Middle Ages, paint crosses on the doors of lepers”, he has said.

Juppe, 71, congratulated Fillon on his “wide victory”.

“Fillon has an audacious program that restores the authority of the state, which the French are waiting for”, Philippe Goujon, a Republican lawmaker, said Sunday night in an interview at the candidate’s victory party.

With about half the vote counted and Fillon leading by nearly 40 percentage points, his rival Alain Juppe conceded and called on his supporters to rally behind the victor.

Le Maire, a former minister defeated by Fillon in the first round of the Republicans primary, declared Le Pen was right to be scared – to cheers from the mostly white, middle-class crowd.

Fillon’s win is another sign that France’s voters are shifting further and further to the right, as much of his policies are centred around keeping the market resolutely free of regulation.

The ruling Socialists, meanwhile, sought to quell talk of a fallout between deeply unpopular President Francois Hollande and his prime minister, Manuel Valls, over which of them should seek the party ticket in their primary set for January.

Some analysts believe that Mr Fillon might have to moderate his programme.

Sunday’s runoff comes after a bruising and highly adversarial end phase to the months-long primary contest. The conservatives previously chose their candidate internally.

He called for unity and calm after a campaign during which he had accused Mr Fillon of pandering to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim feeling.

In contrast to Mr Juppe’s optimistic vision, Mr Fillon had said that France is “on the verge of revolt” and that he wanted to reduce immigration “to a minimum”. Fillon insists “Russia poses no threat” to the West.