Post date: Apr 23, 2012 9:47:3 AM
PARIS, FRANCE (APRIL 23, 2012) (REUTERS) - President Nicolas Sarkozy met with party members and advisors on Monday (April 23), to figure out the path forward after Socialist Francois Hollande narrowly beat him in the first round of the presidential elections.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy meets advisors after his narrow first round election defeat to Socialist Francois Hollande. The group is expected to discuss the way forward to win over voters on the right after the extreme right National Front's Marine Le Pen records highest ever vote.
Sarkozy will seek to hammer home pledges to get tough on immigration and security as he seeks to win over record numbers of far-right voters and whittle down Hollande's narrow first-round election lead.National Front leader Marine Le Pen stole the show on Sunday (April 22) by surging to 18 percent, the biggest tally a far-right candidate has ever managed.
Her performance mirrored advances across the continent by anti-establishment Eurosceptical populists from Amsterdam and Vienna to Helsinki and Athens as the euro zone's grinding debt crisis deepens anger over government spending cuts and unemployment.
Sarkozy, the first sitting president to be forced into second place in the first round of a re-election bid, faced a difficult balancing act as campaigning restarted on Monday to attract both the far-right and centrist voters he needs to win the May 6 runoff.