The results of the first round on April 22 of the French presidential election underlined that France's economic stagnation caused by the 2008 Lehman Brothers shock and the eurozone sovereign debt crisis was an important factor. They point to people's strong dissatisfaction with the austerity policy being pushed to tide over the current crisis.

In the history of the Fifth Republic introduced in 1958, President Nicolas Sarkozy became the first incumbent president seeking re-election to have failed to win a first-round vote. A runoff on May 6 will be a contest between the Socialist candidate Mr. Francois Hollande, who won by garnering 28.63 percent of the ballots cast, and Mr. Sarkozy, who finished with 27.18 percent.

In his five-year first term, Mr. Sarkozy called for working more and earning more and promised to lower the unemployment rate to less than 5 percent. But the current unemployment rate of 10.0 percent is the worst since 1999. The first-round election results show that Mr. Sarkozy failed in a vote of confidence.