Mitterrand’s Rise in Polls May Boost Vote for Socialists

PARIS —  The final published polls indicate that the governing Socialist Party, although it is the strongest single party in France, will lose control of Parliament in next Sunday’s elections to a coalition of two conservative parties.

But the polling may have been conducted too soon to detect a possible increase in Socialist strength that could keep the conservatives from getting a majority.

The publication of polls is banned by law in France during the last week of the campaign, and the last two polls, distributed by the newspaper Le Figaro and the magazine Paris-Match, were mainly taken before a long television interview March 2 in which Socialist President Francois Mitterrand made his case for a Parliament that would support him.

Mitterrand Popular

A dramatic upturn for Mitterrand has appeared in recent surveys rating his performance in office, and many analysts expect this to help the Socialists’ legislative fortunes in the elections. The president, whose term runs through 1988, is not a candidate himself this year.

Although the campaign has been regarded as a quiet one, there was an outburst of lethal violence Friday night when a Socialist was fatally stabbed. Under French law, all parties are allotted public billboards on which to paste their posters, and the victim had removed a poster of the extreme right-wing National Front from the Socialist board to make room for a Socialist poster when he was attacked.

Socialist witnesses said the attackers seemed to be members of the National Front, but that was denied by the party, which is led by Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Forecasting the election has been complicated by a proportional representation system that will be used for the first time since the Fifth Republic was founded under President Charles de Gaulle in 1958. In the elections of 1981, under the old system, the Socialists won a majority of the seats. But they have practically no chance of doing this now.

Large Parties’ Advantage

The new system is weighted to eliminate very small parties and to favor large ones, rather than divide parliamentary seats among parties in exact proportion to their percentage of the vote. Experts believe that a party or coalition can win a majority of seats in the National Assembly, as the main house of Parliament is known, with 43% of the vote.

According to the Paris-Match and Figaro polls, conducted between Feb. 27 and March 4, the two main conservative parties, the Rally for the Republic of former Premier Jacques Chirac and the Union for French Democracy led by former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, will win 44% to 45% of the vote.

That percentage would give the coalition of these two parties 298 to 306 seats, a majority of the 555 from mainland France in the assembly. The polls do not cover the various overseas departments and territories, which have 22 seats.

The polls indicated that the Socialist Party, doing better than had been expected several months ago and still the strongest party in France, may reach the 30% vote that analysts look on as the difference between clear defeat and some kind of moral victory. According to the final polls, the Socialists will win 28% to 30% of the vote, for a total of 185 to 201 seats.

Choice of a Premier

The 30% figure is considered significant because it could conceivably prevent the coalition of two conservative parties from controlling a majority of the seats, thus giving Mitterrand a good deal of room in his selection of a premier. Instead of feeling forced to choose Chirac, the leader of the largest conservative party, Mitterrand, with a 30% Socialist vote, could try to choose a more neutral premier.

On the extremes, the polls indicated that the Communist Party will win 10.5% to 11% of the vote and the National Front, 6.5% to 8%.

The Communists probably could not help the Socialists win control of the assembly even if the Socialists pass the 30% mark. But the National Front could make up the difference if the two main conservative parties fail to reach 43%.

Mitterrand, who would presumably lose a good deal of power if forced to name an opposition premier, has campaigned extensively for Socialist votes. This has helped his personal standing, but it is not clear whether it has helped the Socialist Party very much.

According to the polls, 51% of the French electorate now feels that Mitterrand is doing a good job as president, 46% approve of his policies and 46% have confidence in him as president. Seven months ago only 41% felt that he was doing a good job, only 34% approved of his policies and only 38.5% had confidence in him.

Throughout the Fifth Republic, the French president has always had a compliant premier. Now, though, there is a good deal of speculation that a conservative premier, with a majority of the National Assembly behind him, would have more power than Mitterrand.

But the president, in his television interview, warned that he would not let a premier take any constitutional power from him.

“I would rather quit my job than give up its powers,” Mitterrand said. “I will not be a cut-rate president.”

The proportional representation system is controversial. Critics often blame proportional representation for splintering French parliaments during the Fourth Republic of the postwar period and making it difficult to form majority governments. The conservative parties have vowed to do away with it if they take control of Parliament.