They voted for him primarily because he represents in their eyes the kind of anti-Muslim position important to them.
The extreme right Le Pen voters pushed Sarkozy over the top to claim the French presidency, and they will probably get their anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant program from him. The rest of France’s domestic and foreign policy will remain much the same.
Nicolas Sarkozy, just elected President of France, asserted in his initial post-election statement that France has chosen change. To claim that one stands for change is not unusual among those who come to power. Did Sarkozy mean it, and if so, what did he mean by it? His election is being interpreted in the United States as that of the most friendly French president in the history of the Fifth Republic. No doubt he is, but does this mean that French foreign policy will change?
We should start by analyzing what accounts for his election. In Western electoral systems, there usually are two principal parties, one more to the left and one more to the right. This is true of France as well, where the mainstream right is represented by the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), Sarkozy’s party, and the mainstream left by the Socialist party, whose candidate was Ségolène Royal. Normally, in most elections, the base of each party votes for its candidates. In France, with a two-round system, this is surely the case. To win an election, there are three places to locate changeable votes in the second round — the further left, the further right, and the center. The center refers to those voters who are ready to switch between the two parties, and often do. The further left and further right normally choose between the mainstream party and abstention.
When François Mitterand won as the Socialist candidate in 1981 and again in 1988, he clearly drew his extra votes from the center. When Jacques Chirac won as the right-wing candidate in 1995, he ran on a “social” platform and thereby also drew his extra votes from the center. This is not what happened this time. The further left voted for Royal. The center seems to have split the way they usually do — two-thirds for the right and one-third for the left. Where Sarkozy got his extra votes was from the further right. Despite the explicit request of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the major candidate of the further right, that his voters massively abstain in the second round, they didn’t listen to him. They voted for Sarkozy.The question is why they voted for Sarkozy. Most of these voters are unconcerned with France’s relations with the United States. And they are largely unconcerned with the kind of conservative economic measures Sarkozy has promised. They voted for him primarily because he represents in their eyes the kind of anti-Muslim position important to them.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=20715