On to Round 2

Now, the voters must choose

As France's parliamentary election campaign wound up last week, the candidates virtually scoured the thick French lexicon of political hyperbole. In a fire-and-brimstone attack on Premier Raymond Barre's anti-inflation policies, Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais declared in a Paris speech: "If I believed in God, I would promise hell for anyone who believes in austerity." Barre, for his part, ripped into Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand, whose Common Program with the Communists he likened to Dr. Faust's pact with the devil. Said Barre in the city of Caen: "Monsieur Mitterrand has played with fire, and now he is beginning to burn. He signed a pact, as Faust did, to regain his youth. Now the day of reckoning has arrived."

Despite the last-lap acrimony and the high stakes involved, the voters remained surprisingly placid. Yet there was the real possibility that the two-round election for the 491 seats in the National Assembly might produce the first French government in 31 years to include Communists among its members. And, as France's voters prepared to cast their ballots in last Sunday's first round, it was all but certain that the parties of the left would outpoll those in the center-right coalition and possibly capture an outright majority of the popular vote.

The last pre-election polls had given the combined left a substantial lead over the center-right parties. But it was far from clear whether a first-round victory would foreshadow a leftist triumph in the crucial second-round ballot next Sunday. Much would depend on whether the feuding Socialists and Communists could patch up their differences and agree to support each other in the Sunday runoff. If the left were to have any chance of winning, each of the two parties would have to withdraw its candidate in districts where the other's candidate had won in the first round. They would then have to put their combined weight behind the front runner, whether Communist or Socialist. Without such a deal, the leftist vote would be split in many districts, giving a strong advantage in the runoff to the center-right candidates led by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac.

Early this week Marchais was scheduled to announce whether or not he intended to make good his threat of last January to deny the Socialists his support in the second round if his Communists failed to win at least 21% of the vote in Round 1. Although Marchais' policy differences with Mitterrand were sharp--the Communists insist on sweeping nationalization of industry--there were indications that he planned to join forces with the Socialists in order to make a leftist victory possible in Round 2. Communist Historian Jean Ellenstein told TIME last week he fully expected a leftist accord after the first round. By delaying until then, Ellenstein explained, "the Socialists can pick up extra votes on the right, and the Communists can do the same on the left."

Even if Mitterrand and Marchais did manage to paper over their quarrel, imbalances in the makeup of France's electoral districts would require the leftist parties to win at least 52% or 53% of the popular vote before they could gain a majority in the Assembly. But a shift in France's political demographics may help the left attain that goal. Giscard's lowering of the voting age in 1974 created the youngest French electorate in 40 years. The increase in left-leaning young voters has more than counterbalanced the rise in the number of voters over 65, who tend to be conservative. The more conservative farm and small business population has declined precipitately as well.

There were some gloomy predictions about what might happen if the left won a majority of the popular vote but did not get at least half of the 491 Assembly seats. The result, former Premier Pierre Mendes France, a Socialist, warned last week, could be "chaos." Said he: "It would be an affront to the country to impose a government against the people's will." Barre's reply was blunt: "I don't understand Mendes France's argument. The same Frenchmen will vote in both rounds. There's an old saying in France: 'In the first round you criticize, in the second you choose.' " But this time there was a clear possibility that in the second round the French voters would opt for a change.

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