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Abstract
The victory of François Hollande over Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of the 2012 presidential election was the first success for the left in France's top political contest since François Mitterrand's re-election in 1988 and brought to an end a run of three straight defeats for the Socialists (1995, 2002 and 2007). The final result was no great surprise. While the two main contenders had vigorously fought to occupy the lead position in the first round of voting, for several months Hollande had consistently been the clear leader in the opinion polls to win the decisive second round run-off. Sarkozy was the first incumbent candidate not to gain pole position in the first round and only the second not to secure re-election, emulating the failure of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the 1981 contest against Mitterrand.
Hollande's election was followed by a clear victory for the left in the parliamentary contest in June, with the Socialist party and its closest allies gaining an overall majority without the need for the support of other groups on the left such as Europe Écologie-Les Verts (the Greens) and the Front de gauche (a leftist coalition that included the Communists). President Hollande thus obtained strong parliamentary backing for his reform agenda, while the regime's dominant institutional model based on mutually supportive presidential and parliamentary majorities now worked in favour of the left as it had for the right in 2002 and 2007 (Levy and Skach 2008). Indeed, with the Socialist party also controlling the Senate and the overwhelming majority of regional and departmental councils, Hollande benefited from a more dominant position in the French political system than even Mitterrand had enjoyed when the Socialists first won the presidency in 1981.