Q&A: French elections

France has been stunned by the defeat of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin by the far right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election. BBC News Online looks at the background to the poll.

Why has the result caused such a shock?

Nobody expected the National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to make it to second place in the presidential elections.

As a result, Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has been eliminated from the race and has announced he will resign from politics, leaving the Socialists without a leader.

Mr Le Pen will now stand against the right-wing President Jacques Chirac in a second round on 5 May.

French voters who align themselves with the left will therefore have no candidate of their own.

Demonstrators are also horrified by Mr Le Pen's anti-immigration policies. He has described the Holocaust as a "detail of history".

To what does Le Pen owe his success?

Mr Jospin lost many votes to far-left candidates such as the Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller, who drew on working class resentment of the prime minister's consensual economic policies

But Mr Le Pen's success can also partly be attributed to voter apathy, which resulted in the lowest turnout in the fifth republic's 44-year history.

However, Mr Jospin has said he takes full responsibility for his defeat. His lacklustre campaign tried to fight the right on its own ground rather than concentrate on traditionally socialist issues.

What were the results of the first round?

The top three candidates were all fairly close, each polling less than 20% of the vote.

Mr Chirac won 19.67%, Mr Le Pen won 17.02%, and Mr Jospin won 16.07% of the vote.

In fourth and fifth places were Francois Bayrou, of the Union for French Democracy, with 6.87% and Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller with 5.85%. Jean-Pierre Chevenement of the Citizens Movement (MDC) came sixth with 5.29%

There was a record 16 candidates in total.

So what happens next?

Jean-Marie Le Pen will now stand against the right-wing President Jacques Chirac in a second round on 5 May.

More demonstrations are expected in the run-up to polling day, especially on 1 May.

The Socialist Party has called on its supporters to back Mr Chirac to prevent a Le Pen victory.

Correspondents say Mr Le Pen has little chance of victory, but his strong performance is a sign that the National Front could do well in parliamentary elections on 9 and 16 June.

How does the presidential election work?

A candidate can win in one round if he or she secures an absolute majority of the votes (half the votes plus one).

If nobody secures an absolute majority, the vote goes to a second round two weeks later with only the top two candidates from the first round going through.

The president will be elected for a five-year term.

What is cohabitation?

Up to now, French presidents have served a seven-year term, while the National Assembly has been elected for five years.

This has resulted in periods of "cohabitation" between a president of one political party, and a prime minister of another - such as President Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin.

From now on, however, the president will be elected at the same time as National Assembly deputies.

This is intended to result in strong government. There is no cast-iron guarantee, however, that cohabitation will not continue to arise, even with simultaneous elections.